Richard Stücklen

Richard Stücklen
Richard Stücklen
	Stücklen in 1972
President of the Bundestag ; West Germany
	In office; 31 May 1979 – 29 March 1983
Preceded by	Karl Carstens
Succeeded by	Rainer Barzel
Personal details
Born	20 August 1916; CSU

Richard Stücklen (20 August 1916 – 2 May 2002) was German politician of the

Christian Social Union (CSU). He had previously been a member of the NSDAP (1939–1945). From 1957 to 1966, he served as Federal Minister for Post and Communication. A member of the German parliament for more than 40 years, he served as the seventh president of the Bundestag

from 1979 to 1983.

Early life and career

Stücklen was born in

electrical engineer in Mittweida, after which he became a departmental manager at AEG

. After 1945, he worked in his parents' locksmithery at Heideck. He co-founded the BMS Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG engineering company in 1952 and was a company associate until 1989.

Political career

Stücklen joined the Nazi Party in 1939.^[1] After the end of World War II in 1945, Stücklen was one of the founders of the CSU in Heideck and in Hilpoltstein. He was elected to the Bundestag in 1949 as representative of the electoral district of Weißenburg.^[2] He was the youngest member of the first Bundestag^[3] and stayed a directly elected member of the Bundestag (first representing Weißenburg, later Roth) for eleven legislative periods until the end of 1990, longer than any other member before or after him.^[3]

Stücklen was part of a group of parliamentarians who unsuccessfully proposed changing the German voting system to

plurality voting

in 1955.

After the 1957 Federal elections, Stücklen became Federal Minister for Post and Communication in Konrad Adenauer's cabinet on 29 October 1957.^[4] He was the youngest German Federal minister at that time. He kept his post in the cabinets of Ludwig Erhard. On 1 December 1966, Stücklen left office and was replaced by Werner Dollinger in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's grand coalition cabinet. Between 1967 and 1976, he was chairman of the CSU parliamentary group and deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU group.^[2]

After the 1976 Federal elections, where he ran as a potential minister in a possible

Bundesversammlung had elected Karl Carstens as President of Germany, Stücklen became his successor as President of the Bundestag.^[5] After the 1983 elections, Rainer Barzel became president of the parliament, and Stücklen returned to his vice presidential post which he held until he quit parliament on 20 December 1990.^[6]^[5]

One of the most famous Bundestag sessions presided over by Stücklen was that of 18 October 1984, when Stücklen excluded

Green Party member Jürgen Reents from the session for calling Helmut Kohl "bought by Flick". Christa Nickels then requested an interruption. Stücklen turned her microphone off, which prompted Joschka Fischer to address him, "With respect, Mr. President, you are an asshole", for which he in turn was excluded by Stücklen. Fischer apologized to Stücklen two days later.^[7]

Personal life and death

Stücklen was married and had two children.

heart disease

.

References

^ "Stücklen, Richard". Deutsche Biographie (in German). Retrieved 28 July 2021.
^ ^a ^b "Richard Stücklen – ein Parlamentarier der ersten Stunde". CSU-Landesgruppe (in German). Retrieved 28 July 2021.
^ ^a ^b (in German) Speech Archived 3 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine by Wolfgang Thierse on the occasion of Stücklen's death.
^ ^a ^b "Richard Stücklen". DER SPIEGEL (in German). 4 August 1964. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
^ ^a ^b "Dr. h.c. Richard Stücklen (CDU/CSU) 1979 – 1983". Deutscher Bundestag (in German). Retrieved 28 July 2021.
^ "Richard Stücklen". Geschichte der CDU (in German). 26 August 2019. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
^ (in German) Günter Pursch, Auch Abgeordnete sind nur Menschen Archived 12 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine.