Alfons Goppel

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Alfons Goppel
Alfons Goppel in 1963
Minister-President of Bavaria
In office 11 December 1962 – 6 November 1978
President	Heinrich Lübke Gustav Heinemann Walter Scheel
Chancellor	Konrad Adenauer Ludwig Erhard Kurt Georg Kiesinger Willy Brandt Helmut Schmidt
Preceded by	Hans Ehard
Succeeded by	Franz Josef Strauss
Minister of the Interior of Bavaria
In office 9 December 1958 – 11 December 1962
Preceded by	Otto Bezold
Succeeded by	Heinrich Junker
Personal details
Born	(1905-10-01)1 October 1905 CSU
Spouse	Gertrud Wittenbrink
Children	6
Occupation	Lawyer

Alfons Goppel (1 October 1905 – 24 December 1991) was a German politician of the CSU party and Prime Minister of Bavaria (1962–1978).

Biography

Alfons Goppel was born in Reinhausen (now Regensburg), one of the nine children of the baker Ludwig Goppel and his wife Barbara.

He married Gertrud Wittenbrink in 1935 and they had six sons.

Goppel studied law in

(1937) in the following years.

He took part in the campaigns in France and Russia in the German

and later became an instructor at the Infanterieschule Döberitz, near Berlin, a training camp of the German army.

Returning from the war, he became an official at the city of Aschaffenburg, responsible for housing and refugees. He was elected to the Bavarian Landtag in October 1947 but barred from taking up his seat due to his political past. He, unsuccessfully, campaigned for the Landtag in 1950 again, became second mayor of Aschaffenburg in 1952 and finally, in 1954, was elected to the Landtag and permitted to take up his seat. He remained in the Bavarian parliament until 1978, when he gave it up to become a member of the European Parliament.

He unsuccessfully ran for mayor of

in 1972/73. In 1974 he gained the highest election victory for the CSU in Bavarian history with 62.1% of the votes.

From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the European Parliament, as such being part of the first freely elected group of MPs in 1979.^[1] He died, aged 86, in Johannesberg, near Aschaffenburg.

One of his sons, Thomas Goppel, later served amongst others as Minister of Science, Research and the Arts (2003–2008).

The Alfons-Goppel-Stiftung (Alfons Goppel Foundation), formed in 1980 and named after him, supports needy children in

countries.

Honors

• Honorary doctorate of the
  St. John's University Minnesota
  .

References

External links

• Alfons-Goppel-Stiftung, official website (in German)
• Official Bavarian government website - Alfons Goppel biography (in German)

Political offices
Preceded by Hans Ehard	Prime Minister of Bavaria 1962 – 1978	Succeeded by Franz Josef Strauss