1. Eberhard Diepgen was born on 13 November 1941 and is a German lawyer and politician who served as Mayor of West Berlin from 1984 to 1989 and again as Mayor of Berlin, from 1991 until 2001, as member of the Christian Democratic Union.
16 Facts About Eberhard Diepgen
1. 2.
Eberhard Diepgen was born on 13 November 1941 in the Berlin district of Wedding.
3.
In February 1984, the West Berlin House of Deputies elected Eberhard Diepgen, who ran unopposed, as the city's new mayor.
4.
Eberhard Diepgen replaced Richard von Weizsacker, who resigned to take the post of President of West Germany.
5.
The anniversary is notable for Eberhard Diepgen being invited by East German leader Erich Honecker to come to East Berlin to join celebrations, an invitation later canceled.
6.
The CDU went into opposition, and Eberhard Diepgen Diepen returned to the position of leader of the opposition.
7.
In 1996, Eberhard Diepgen campaigned in favor of the ultimately unsuccessful referendum to unite Berlin and Brandenburg he had spearheaded with Stolpe.
8.
Amid the revelations of the CDU donations scandal in early 2000, Eberhard Diepgen opposed Angela Merkel as new chairwoman of the party.
9.
On 6 July 2000, Eberhard Diepgen signed a treaty with Matheus Shikongo, the Mayor of Windhoek, on a twin city partnership between the two municipalities.
10.
In September 2000, Eberhard Diepgen pardoned two former members of the East German Politburo, Gunter Schabowski and Gunther Kleiber, who were jailed for their role in East Germany's shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall.
11.
Ahead of the 2002 federal elections, Eberhard Diepgen resigned as chairman of the CDU in Berlin after having failed to secure the top position on the party's list for the elections.
12.
Eberhard Diepgen was a CDU delegate to the Federal Conventions for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2017 and 2022.
13.
In 1986, Eberhard Diepgen acknowledged accepting 50,000 West German marks, or about $21,000, from real estate investor Kurt Franke without having reported the amount as a party contribution as demanded by law.
14.
At the funeral of actress Marlene Dietrich in 1992, a simple graveside service at Stadtischer Friedhof III, Eberhard Diepgen was booed by Berliners who had been angered and disappointed by the city's failure to mount a formal tribute.
15.
Eberhard Diepgen did not attend the inauguration of Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, stating his agenda was too full to make it.
16.
Eberhard Diepgen had backed a plan for a far smaller stone memorial inscribed simply with the words Thou Shalt not Kill proposed by theologian Richard Schroder, saying that its precision, dignity and modesty gave it more power than Peter Eisenman's project.