Karl Walter Claus Carstens
(14 December 1914 - 29 May 1992) was a
German
politician. He served as the fifth
Federal President
of
West Germany
.
Born in
Bremen
, Carstens studied law and political science at the universities of
Frankfurt am Main
,
Dijon
,
Munich
,
Konigsberg
, and
Hamburg
from 1933 to 1936. In 1949 he received a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from
Yale Law School
.
Carstens joined the
Nazi Party
in 1940. This was when he was a law clerk. He said he had to join the party or he would not be treated fairly. But this does not explain why Carstens had joined the
SA
, another Nazi party group, in 1933.
In 1955 he joined the
CDU
.
In July 1960 Carstens started to work for the government. He was a secretary of state in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
. In the same year he was also appointed as professor for public and international law at
Cologne
University
. During the Grand coalition government (1966-1969), he was in the
Ministry of Defence
, and in 1968 he became Director of the
Chancellor's Office
.
In 1972 Carstens was elected into the
Bundestag
. He stayed a member until 1979. He often spoke against the
left-wing
ideas in German society and accused the governing
SPD
of being to soft on left-wing extremists. He also famously denounced the author
Heinrich Boll
as a supporter of the
Baader-Meinhof Gang
.
On
14 December
1976
, the CDU/CSU became the largest group in parliament, and Carstens was elected president of the Bundestag.
On 23 May 1979 Carstens was elected as President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Carstens was well known for
hiking
around Germany during his term in order to decrease the gulf between politics and the people.
In December 1982, the recently elected Chancellor
Helmut Kohl
deliberately lost a
motion of confidence
in order to hold new general elections. On 7 January 1983, President Carstens dissolved the Bundestag and called for new elections. In February 1983 the
Federal Constitutional Court
said that deliberately losing the vote was allowed, so the general elections could take place.
In 1984 he decided not to seek a second term on account of his age and left office on 30 June 1984.