Willi Birkelbach CBE was a West German politician.
24 Facts About Willi Birkelbach
2.
Willi Birkelbach was a member of the West German Bundestag between 1949 and 1964.
3.
Willi Birkelbach was born in Hochst, the son of Johann Birkelbach by his marriage to Luise Schafer.
4.
Johann Birkelbach worked, at different stages, as a coachman and as a factory worker.
5.
Willi Birkelbach was an active trades unionist and participated, in his later years, in regional politics.
6.
Slightly unusually for the time, Willi Birkelnach was the child of a "mixed marriage": Johann Birkelbach was from a Catholic family while Luise Birkelbach was a Protestant.
7.
Willi Birkelbach completed his schooling at a secondary school in 1932 and joined a company called "Marx und Hart" where between 1932 and 1935 he undertook an apprenticeship in business, with a particular focus on foreign trade and industrial accounting.
8.
Still aged only 17, Willi Birkelbach joined the Social Democratic Party in 1930.
9.
Willi Birkelbach worked illegally between 1934 and 1938 for the Socialist Workers' Party which had broken away from the mainstream SPD in 1931 in order to push, belatedly, for closer collaboration between Communists and Socialists so as to block a take-over by nationalist populists.
10.
On 10 October 1938, Willi Birkelbach was arrested by the Gestapo.
11.
Willi Birkelbach faced the justice system and was charged with preparing to "commit high treason", which was the usual charge under such circumstances.
12.
Willi Birkelbach was convicted and sentenced to a thirty-month jail term.
13.
Willi Birkelbach spent those thirty months in prisons in Butzbach and Munster.
14.
Willi Birkelbach managed - possibly with others - to desert and join up with Greek partisans, whom he accompanied northwards into Albania.
15.
Willi Birkelbach spent approximately two years, between 1944 and 1946, as a Prisoner of war.
16.
Willi Birkelbach remained a Bundestag member till retiring from the chamber on 30 September 1964.
17.
In December 1961, Willi Birkelbach headed up a European Parliamentary Commission mandated to recommend the criteria for new member states.
18.
The resulting "Willi Birkelbach Report" covered geographic and economic criteria, but it extended to political considerations such as democracy and the rule of law.
19.
Willi Birkelbach lined up with Wolfgang Abendroth, accepting the need for modernisation, but without abandoning the party's socialist core.
20.
From 1964 to 1969, Willi Birkelbach was employed as a secretary of state and, in effect, the head of the State Chancelry of the State of Hessen.
21.
Willi Birkelbach was sent back to East Germany where she was feted as a peace-scout in 1981 as part of a wider "spy-swap".
22.
Between 1966 and 1976, Willi Birkelbach was a member of the broadcasting council of the Frankfurt-based public broadcaster, Hessischer Rundfunk, as a representative of the state government.
23.
In 1971, Willi Birkelbach became the first ever Ombudsman for Data protection in the State of Hessen.
24.
Simitis was installed as Willi Birkelbach's deputy and there was a widespread perception that Simitis was the real moving force in the new department, but Simitis, despite having been educated in West Germany, was Greek.