Gerhart Baum, a member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) since 1954, served as the German Federal Minister of the Interior under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt from 1978 to 1982. Until 1994, he sat in the German Bundestag in Bonn, starting in 1972. In 2023, he received the “Grand Cross with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany” from Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Now, at the age of 92, he has passed away in Cologne, according to his wife.
Born on October 28, 1932, in Dresden, Baum was a parliamentary state secretary for the FDP’s interior ministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Werner Maihofer from 1972 to 1978. As the FDP politician, he then became the responsible interior minister, attempting, as the ARD-Tagesschau report notes, to “balance the protection from terror and the protection of civil rights” until 1982. Baum was lastly concerned about the AfD’s rise to power, according to the article.
Besides his political career, Baum was a lawyer. From 2005, he was the chairman of the Cultural Council of North Rhine-Westphalia and a deputy member of the WDR Broadcasting Council.
According to the Bild-Zeitung, the recipient of the Verdienstkreuz-Träger emphasized the importance of the majority of people believing in democracy and human rights, standing together, rising up and fighting against antidemocratic tendencies.
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation of the FDP informed on October 28, 2022, Baum’s 90th birthday, that he, along with Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, had filed a complaint against Russian President Putin for war crimes.
In a first reaction, FDP Vice and Bundestag President Wolfgang Kubicki told Bild-Zeitung, “Gerhart Rudolf Baum’s death goes close to me personally. We knew each other for over 50 years. He was a contentious, not always comfortable liberal – but are liberals ever? We lose a mender, who constantly reminded us that the task of liberals is to preserve and defend civil and fundamental rights. That was his life’s essence. A strong voice of freedom is now silent forever, but it will surely resound for a long time.”
FDP leader Christian Lindner reacted to the politician’s death via X-Posting, saying, “He will be remembered for his fight as Federal Interior Minister for our liberal democratic order during the RAF’s terror. Gerhart Baum has taken responsibility for the liberal cause for decades and shaped our party – for instance, as a member of the FDP’s federal executive board from 1966 to 1998 and as deputy federal chairman from 1982 to 1991.”
Last year, Baum said in a Spiegel interview, “Our democracy is stable, but freedom is threatened like never before – not only by the AfD. In the middle of the population, the contempt for our democratic system is growing.”
Gerhart Baum received the Theodor Heuss Prize in 2008, the Erich Fromm Prize in 2009 and the Giesberts Lewin Prize of the Kölnische Gesellschaft für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit in 2010.