Karl Bechert - Community and Politics

Community and Politics

Bechert was raised in the Lutheran Church. He had refused to join the Nazi Party, and in promoting his Jewish colleagues at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Mainz, he angered the Party. He also protected local citizens from the Nazis by hiding them in the surrounding forest.

In 1945, the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories appointed Bechert mayor of Donsbach, Westerwald and the Oberschulrat in Dillingen, where, on behalf of the Allied Military Government, he built a secondary school/high school.

While at the University of Mainz, he was a member of the Senate Commission for Atomic Questions. Since the 1950s, he was a member of the Kuratorium of the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (DFG) - the German Peace Society. In 1951, Bechert joined Victor Paschkis in founding the Society for Social Responsibility in Science. In 1955, he became a member the Church and Politics working group of the Evangelist Church in Hesse-Nassau. The next year, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany – the SPD. From 1957 to 1972, he was an SPD delegate in the German Bundestag. From 1962 to 1965, he was also chairman of the Committee for Atomic Energy and Water Management. In the beginning of his political career he fought against nuclear armament. Later he opposed also the so-called "peaceful use of nuclear energy" ("friedliche Nutzung der Kernenergie") which was the official political aim of the SPD (and the other political parties at that time). He argued that the development and use of nuclear plants never could be safe and the problems with nuclear waste were impossible to solve. He became the "father of the german anti-nuclear movement" as the Manchester Guardian called him in 1981 and one of the precursors of the German Green Party. Bechert was also part of the Pugwash movement and member of the World Union for Protection of Life.