Uwe Barschel
Encyclopedia


Uwe Barschel was a West German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 politician (CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...

) and from 1982 to 1987 Minister-President
Minister-President
A minister-president is the head of government in a number of European countries or subnational governments, in which a parliamentary or semi-presidential system of government prevails, who presides over the council of ministers...

 in the State of Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig...

. The circumstances of his death are still not entirely clear, and inquiries have not been able to prove or disprove theories of suicide or murder.

Brief Background

Barschel grew up in Börnsen
Börnsen
Börnsen is a municipality in the district of Lauenburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany....

 near Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. He was raised by his grandparents. In 1971 Barschel was licensed to work as a lawyer. In addition to his political activity, Barschel published about public law and political science.

Political career

Barschel joined the Junge Union
Junge Union
The Junge Union Deutschlands or JU is the jointyouth organisation of the two conservative German political parties CDU and CSU...

 in 1960. Two years later he became a member of the CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...

. In Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig...

 Barschel was chairman of the Junge Union from 1967 to 1971 and deputy chairman of the CDU as of 1969.

Barschel was a member of the Landtag
Landtag
A Landtag is a representative assembly or parliament in German-speaking countries with some legislative authority.- Name :...

 in Schleswig-Holstein from 1971 until his death. In 1979 he was appointed finance minister by then minister-president
Minister-President
A minister-president is the head of government in a number of European countries or subnational governments, in which a parliamentary or semi-presidential system of government prevails, who presides over the council of ministers...

 Gerhard Stoltenberg
Gerhard Stoltenberg
Gerhard Stoltenberg was a German politician and minister in the cabinets of Ludwig Erhard, Kurt Georg Kiesinger and Helmut Kohl. He served as minister-president of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein from 1971 to 1982 and as such as President of the Bundesrat in 1977/78.-Life:Stoltenberg was...

. In the same year he took over the Ministry of the Interior and he became one of the delegates from Schleswig-Holstein in the Bundesrat
Bundesrat of Germany
The German Bundesrat is a legislative body that represents the sixteen Länder of Germany at the federal level...

.

After Stoltenberg had been appointed Federal Finance Minister
Federal Minister of Finance (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of Finance is part of the German federal government and is responsible for managing the federal budget. The finance minister is the only minister who can veto a decision of the government if it would lead to additional expenditure...

 by new chancellor Helmut Kohl
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1973 to 1998...

 Barschel was elected the new minister-president in October 1982. Aged only 38, he was the youngest minister-president in history of the FRG
FRG
FRG may refer to:* Free Radical Gasification, a carbon conversion process developed by Responsible Energy Inc.* Family Readiness Groups in the United States Army...

.

Under his leadership the CDU defended their absolute majority at the State elections in 1983.
In 1985 Barschel was one of the founding members of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
The Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival is a classical music festival held every year in summer time all over the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany....

.
In May 1987 shortly before the beginning of the election campaign he narrowly survived a plane crash at Lübeck Airport
Lübeck Airport
Lübeck Blankensee Airport , marketed by some airlines as Hamburg Lübeck Airport, is an airport in Germany located south of Lübeck city centre and northeast of Hamburg. The airport serves the Hamburg Metropolitan Area and is second after Hamburg Airport....

.

"Waterkant-Gate"

The so-called Waterkant-Gate (an allusion to the Watergate affair
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...

, with Waterkant from Low German
Low German
Low German or Low Saxon is an Ingvaeonic West Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands...

: "coast") became one of the biggest political scandals in German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 post-war history.
Barschel's media adviser Reiner Pfeiffer told German news magazine Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...

that he was ordered by Barschel to spy on the SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

's top candidate for the upcoming state elections Björn Engholm
Björn Engholm
Björn Engholm is a Lübeck born German SPD politician. He was Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein from 1988 to 1993 and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany between 1991 and 1993....

 with the aim of bringing an anonymous charge against Engholm because of suspicions of tax evasion. Pfeiffer also claimed that he was given orders to install a bugging device in Barschel's phone and accuse the SPD of being the perpetrators.

Following these events the CDU lost votes at the election and the SPD became the strongest party in Schleswig-Holstein. However, the CDU managed to start negotiations for a coalition with the FDP
Free Democratic Party (Germany)
The Free Democratic Party , abbreviated to FDP, is a centre-right classical liberal political party in Germany. It is led by Philipp Rösler and currently serves as the junior coalition partner to the Union in the German federal government...

.

On September 18, five days after the elections, Barschel denied all accusations and made the following statement to the press: „Ich gebe Ihnen mein Ehrenwort, ich wiederhole: mein Ehrenwort, dass die gegen mich erhobenen Vorwürfe haltlos sind“ ("I give you my word of honour, I repeat: my word of honour, that the charges brought against me are unfounded.").

Even so Barschel resigned as minister-president on 2 October. In 1987, a first investigation committee yielded no significant results; a second, in 1995, came to the conclusion that Barschel's guilt could not be proven.

Death

On 11 October 1987, Barschel was found dead by two journalists working for the German magazine Stern
Stern (magazine)
Stern is a weekly news magazine published in Germany. It was founded in 1948 by Henri Nannen, and is currently published by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. In the first quarter of 2006, its print run was 1.019 million copies and it reached 7.84 million readers according to...

. His body was fully dressed and lying in a bathtub filled with water in his room, no. 317 at the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. As of 2010, the cause of his death remains unproven and highly controversial. Among others, the drug Lorazepam
Lorazepam
Lorazepam is a high-potency short-to-intermediate-acting 3-hydroxy benzodiazepine drug that has all five intrinsic benzodiazepine effects: anxiolytic, amnesic, sedative/hypnotic, anticonvulsant, antiemetic and muscle relaxant...

 was found in his system.

In his book Geheimakte Mossad, former Mossad
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....

 agent Victor Ostrovsky
Victor Ostrovsky
Victor John Ostrovsky is an author, artist and former katsa for the Israeli Mossad . He authored two non-fiction books about his service with the Mossad: By Way of Deception, a New York Times No. 1 bestseller in 1990, and The Other Side of Deception several years later...

 nourishes suspicions that Barschel was killed by an Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i killer commando, claiming Barschel had too much inside knowledge about an Israeli-Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

ian arms deal. In the 1994 book, The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s Secret Agenda, Ostrovsky claimed that a team of Israeli assassins had murdered Barschel.

Ostrovsky described how Barschel was lured to Geneva’s Beau Rivage Hotel by a telephone call received in October 1987 in the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

 from a person called Robert Oleff. According to Ostrovsky, Barschel was then ambushed at the hotel by a team of Mossad assassins, who killed him and then forced barbiturates down his throat through a tube.

Ostrovsky’s grim account was confirmed in a January 1995 Washington Post article based on German, Spanish and Swiss police investigations of the murder, and the possible motives for it.

The Post article reported that the Barschel case had been reopened as a murder investigation because of evidence of third-party involvement. Investigators found that the overdose of sedatives found in Barschel’s stomach had been forced down his throat through a tube after he had died.

“Just who the third party who went to such lengths to make a murder look like a suicide might be, is unclear,” Andrew I. Killgore, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine, published nine times per year in Washington, D.C., focuses on "news and analysis from and about the Middle East and U.S...

, wrote in 1995. Although the Israeli government issued a “formal denial” that it was involved, such a denial, according to Killgore, especially if it is “formal,” is widely accepted in the region as confirmation that the opposite is true.

According to Ostrovsky, Barschel was murdered because he refused to allow Israeli arms for Iran to be shipped from Schleswig-Holstein ports. During the Iran-Iraq war, Israel and the United States secretly armed Iran; the US had interest in doing so both to create an "autonomous" source of unmonitored revenue with which to finance contras
Contras
The contras is a label given to the various rebel groups opposing Nicaragua's FSLN Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government following the July 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's dictatorship...

 and other death squad-type organizations in Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...

 without hindrances from Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 and to obtain bargaining chips with Hezbollah which at the time had several US hostages in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

. Israel had interest in arming Iran to keep Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

 busy; Iran had inherited a vast arsenal of US weapons from Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...

. Israel with its large collection of US weapons was in a prime position to sell HAWK SAMs, M-60 Tank spare parts, F-4 Phantom parts and air-to-air missiles to Teheran.

In addition, the police investigation found indications that another person had been in Barschel's room at the time of his death. The official autopsy found some traces of force having been applied.

Barschel left behind a wife and four children who are convinced that Barschel was killed.

2011 Barschel Case Review

On June 12, 2011, the Public Persecution Department of Lübeck
Lübeck
The Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, and one of the major ports of Germany. It was for several centuries the "capital" of the Hanseatic League and, because of its Brick Gothic architectural heritage, is listed by UNESCO as a World...

 announced that the Barschel case will be re-opened and re-examined, with more sophisticated techniques such as DNA profiling being employed to find out the actual circumstances of the politician's demise.
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