11 Facts About Alfons Goppel

Alfons Goppel was a German politician of the CSU party and Prime Minister of Bavaria.

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

Alfons Goppel married Gertrud Wittenbrink in 1935 and they had six sons.

Alfons Goppel joined the state prosecutors office in 1934 and was posted to Mainburg, Kaiserslautern and finally Aschaffenburg.

Alfons Goppel joined the conservative Bavarian People's Party in 1930 and was a member until the party's self-dissolution in November 1933.

Alfons Goppel joined the SA and the NSDAP in the following years.

Alfons Goppel took part in the campaigns in France and Russia in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War and later became an instructor at the Infanterieschule Doberitz, near Berlin, a training camp of the German army.

Alfons Goppel was elected to the Bavarian Landtag in October 1947 but barred from taking up his seat due to his political past.

Alfons Goppel remained in the Bavarian parliament until 1978, when he gave it up to become a member of the European Parliament.

Alfons Goppel unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Wurzburg in 1956 and became an under secretary in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice the year after.

One of his sons, Thomas Alfons Goppel, later served amongst others as Minister of Science, Research and the Arts.