Carlo Hemmerling

Carlo Hemmerling was a musician, composer and choirmaster from Vaud.

Carlo Hemmerling studied music at the Lausanne Conservatory with Alexandre Denéréaz and R. Gayrhos, then at the École Normale de Paris , where he worked with Paul Dukas .

An excellent organist and improviser, Hemmerling first made a name for himself as a choirmaster. He was quickly recognized and appointed head of the Union chorale de Vevey , an ensemble with which he created a large part of his works, and presented many concerts with an orchestra of high artistic quality. Director of the Choir of Bienne then conductor of the Union chorale de Lausanne, he also conducts the Ladies' Choir of the Lausanne Conservatory and the University Choir. In 1957, he took over the direction of the Lausanne Conservatory and, from 1960, presided over the destinies of SUISA ( Swiss Societyfor the rights of authors of musical works). He also chairs the Cantonal Society of Vaudois Singers, and is a very active and appreciated member of the music commission of the Federal Singing Society as well as of the Council of the Lausanne Conservatory.

A prolific composer, he notably left a symphony, a suite for violin and orchestra, a Culliéranne suite for string orchestra, two string quartets, a sonata for violin and piano, six variations on the Vivat as well as many film scores ( Santorini , Wealth of the Earth , A Work , A People , Manouche , The Three Bells ) and stage ( The Veil of Fire , Polyphemus , We must swear to nothing , The Galant Bluebeard , Via Mala). But it is above all in the choral domain that Carlo Hemmerling excels. Among the a cappella choirs , let us mention the very famous O petit pays on a text by Gonzague de Reynold, then again Don Quixote and Sancho Panza , for four mixed voices a cappella , imposed at the Montreux competition in 1950, Une maison , Mie guillerette , Marching in step , The Hunt is on and The Good Syndic . Let us also mention three great occasional works, conceived for soloists, choir and orchestra: Rives bleues (Nyon, 1947), Le Chant des Noces (Lausanne, 1953) andThe Winegrowers' Festival (Vevey, 1955). The libretto and the poems of these three solid choral frescoes, dedicated to the Vaud region and its winegrowing and rural traditions, were all three written by Géo-Henri Blanc, also from Veveysan.

Carlo Hemmerling dies onOctober 3, 1967, in his home in Cully.

Léon Werth

Léon Werth was a French writer and art critic.

Léon Werth wrote critically and with great precision on French society through World War I, colonization, and on French "collaboration" during World War II.

Werth was born in 1878 in the Remiremont, Vosges, in an assimilated Jewish family. His father, Albert, was a draper and his mother, Sophia, was the sister of the philosopher Frédéric Rauh.

He was a brilliant student, a Grand Prize winner in France's Concours général and a literary and humanities CPGE philosophy student at Lycée Henri-IV. However, he abandoned his studies to become a columnist in various magazines. Leading a bohemian life, he devoted himself to writing and art criticism.

Werth was a protégé and friend of Octave Mirbeau, the author of The Diary of a Chambermaid, completing Mirabeau's final novel, Dingo, for him when the author's health failed. He manifested his anti-clericalism as an independently minded anti-bourgeois anarchist. His first significant novel, La Maison blanche, which Mirabeau prefaced, was a Prix Goncourt finalist in 1913.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Werth, 34, having earlier completed his active-duty and reserve service, was mobilized into the territorial army and, as such, assigned to the rear. Despite opposing the war, he volunteered for combat duty first as a rifleman then as a radio operator, spending time in one of the worst sectors of the war before being invalided out by a lung infection after 15 months' service. Shortly after, he completed Clavel, soldat, a pessimistic and virulently anti-war work that caused a scandal when it was released in 1919 but which was later cited as among the most faithful depictions of trench warfare in Jean Norton Cru's monumental 1929 survey of French World War I literature.

Werth was an unclassifiable writer with an acid prose, who wrote of the inter-war period as well as advocating against colonialism (Cochinchine, 1928). He also wrote against the colonial period splendor of the French empire, and against Stalinism which he denounced as a leftist deception. He also criticized the mounting Nazi movement.

In 1931 when he met Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, it was the beginning of a very close friendship. Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) would be dedicated to Werth.

After the Fall of France, during its occupation, the Werths remained in France despite offers by the Centre americain de secours in Marseille to help them emigrate. In July 1941 Werth was required to register as Jewish, his travel was restricted and his works banned from publication. His wife, Suzanne, was active in the Resistance, crossing the demarcation line clandestinely more than a dozen times and establishing their Paris apartment as a safe house for fugitive Jewish women, downed British and Canadian pilots, secret resistance meetings and storage of false identity papers and illegal radio transmitters. Their son, Claude, continued his studies first in the Jura and then in Paris, later becoming a doctor. Werth lived poorly in the Jura Mountain region, alone, cold and often hungry. Déposition, his diary, was published in 1946, delivering a damning indictment of Vichy France. He became a Gaullist under the Nazi occupation and after the war contributed to the Liberté de l'Esprit intellectual magazine run by Claude Mauriac.

Werth had regularly contributed to magazines, particularly Marianne (magazine: 1932-40).

Saint-Exupéry met Werth in 1931. Werth soon became Saint-Exupéry's closest friend outside of the flying group of his Aeropostale associates. Werth did not have much in common with Saint-Exupéry; he was an anarchist, his father was a Jew, and a leftist Bolshevik supporter. Being twenty-two years older than Saint-Exupéry, with a surrealistic writing style as well as the author of twelve volumes and many magazine pieces, he was Saint-Exupéry's very opposite. But the younger author admired Werth's writing for having "never deceived," and wrote that Werth's essence was "his search for truth, his observation and the simple utility of his prose." Saint-Exupéry's Letter to a Hostage includes a celebration of Werth's journalism, and in her note on the text, Françoise Gerbod, professor emeritus of French literature at the University of Paris, credits Werth with having been Saint-Exupéry's literary mentor.

Saint-Exupéry dedicated two books to him, (Letter to a Hostage and The Little Prince), and referred to Werth in three more of his works. At the beginning of the Second World War, while writing The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry lived in his downtown New York City apartment, thinking about his native France and his friends. Léon Werth spent the war unobtrusively in Saint-Amour, his village in the Jura, a mountainous region near Switzerland where he "was alone, cold and hungry", and which had few nice words for French refugees. Saint-Exupéry returned to the conflict by joining the Free French Air Force in early 1943, rationalizing, "I cannot bear to be far from those who are hungry... I am leaving in order to suffer and thereby be united with those who are dear to me."

At the end of the Second World War, which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry didn't live to see, Léon Werth said: "Peace, without Tonio [Saint-Exupéry], isn't entirely peace." Leon Werth did not see the text for which he was so responsible until five months after his friend's death, when Saint-Exupéry's French publisher, Gallimard, sent him a special edition.

Werth died in Paris on 13 December 1955.

Thierry Barrigue

Thierry Jean Marie de Barrigue de Montvallon dit Barrigue is a French cartoonist.

He is the son of the French cartoonist Piem.

His first drawing appeared in 1971 in the rock magazine Extra. Cartoonist - journalist since 1972, he collaborated for seven years with a dozen magazines, including Rock&folk, L'Unité, Télérama, Le Point, France-Soir, Le Matin de Paris, Christian testimony and Nouvelle République du Centre-Ouest. In 1975, he founded the Parisian press agency APEI.

Barrigue then moved to French-speaking Switzerland. Settled in the canton of Vaud since 1979, he became famous for his caricatures in the daily newspaper Le Matin and also collaborated with Télévision Suisse Romande in the program Le Fond de la Corbeille. He creates with Burki , the Éditions du Fou du Roi.

In 2008, Barrigue's collaboration with the daily Le Matin ceased. He immediately created the satirical magazine Vigousse, the little satirical Romand with Laurent Flutsch and Patrick Nordmann.

He has published several collections of his drawings.

Albert Dubout

Albert Dubout was a French cartoonist, illustrator, painter, and sculptor.

Albert Dubout was born on May 15, 1905, in Marseille. After attending school at Nîmes (where he met Jean Paulhan) he studied at the fine arts school in Montpellier where he met his first wife, Renée Altier, and where his first drawings were published in the student journal L'écho des étudiants in 1923.

After moving to Paris, literary director Philippe Soupault was the first to hire him to illustrate a book, Les Embarras de Paris by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux. Dubout continued on to illustrate numerous editions of books by Boileau, Beaumarchais, Mérimée, Rabelais, Villon, Cervantes, Balzac, Racine, Voltaire, Rostand, Poe, and Courteline.

He collaborated on numerous magazines and journals such as Le Rire, Marianne, Eclats de Rire, L'os à Moëlle, Paris-Soir, and Ici-Paris.

He also created movie and theatre posters as well as theatrical sets. He worked in advertising, painted oil canvases (over 70 in total) and illustrated many book covers and record sleeves.

Albert Dubout also illustrated Gargantua and Pantagruel, oeuvres of the famous French satirist Rabelais. One of his favorite and perhaps unwilling models were an obese tobacconist and the small and scrawny tax collector who lived in the forties and fifties in Agde, Herault, France.

In 1953, French president Vincent Auriol awarded him the Legion of Honour. His name also appeared that year in the Petit Larousse dictionary.

In 1965, he illustrated the San-Antonio book series, at the request of author Frédéric Dard.

In 1967 he married his second wife, Suzanne Ballivet, who was also a painter. He divided his time in this period between Mézy-sur-Seine, near Paris, and Palavas-les-Flots, on the south coast, until his death in 1976.

Philippe Dussart

Philippe Dussart is a French production manager, film producer and television producer 

He is particularly known for having accompanied several New Wave directors (Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda ...). He then produced many feature films, directed by Alain Resnais, Michel Deville, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, André Delvaux, Bertrand Blier, such as Mon oncle d'Amérique, Le Dossier 51, All fire, all flame, L Black work or Evening dress. He has also produced series and films for television.

Dussart was born on April 9, 1929, at Le Mans. Philippe Dussart was first administrator of the FLECC (Federation leisure and cinematographic culture), in charge of film clubs and the review Téléciné, from 1948 to 1950. He then became administrator of the ADIC (Agence de documentation et d 'information cinematographic), from 1950 to 1953. These experiences led him to manage the production of Productions du Parvis and Films Roger Leenhardt from 1953 to 1961, then to become independent production manager from 1961. He created the Cinematographic studies and management office in 1965 (which became Les Productions Philippe Dussart in 1974).

Specialized advisor to the CNRS from 1978 to 1983, he was also an expert at the Versailles Court of Appeal from 1979 to 1996. In 1987, he was appointed chairman of Télé-Hachette, a position he held until in 1990. 

He died on March 25, 2013.

Henri Frankfort

Henri "Hans" Frankfort was a Dutch Egyptologist, archaeologist and orientalist.

Born in Amsterdam, into a "liberal Jewish" family, Frankfort studied history at the University of Amsterdam and then moved to London, where in 1924, he took an MA under Sir Flinders Petrie at the University College. In 1927 he gained a Ph.D. from the University of Leiden.

Between 1925 and 1929 Frankfort was the director of the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) of London at El-Amarna, Abydos and Armant. In 1929 he was invited by Henry Breasted to become field director of the Oriental Institute (OI) of Chicago expedition to Iraq.

In 1931 he became correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, he resigned in late 1944. He became foreign member in 1950.

In 1937 Frankfort and Emil Kraeling identified a woman on the Burney Relief (c 1700BCE) as Lilith of later Jewish mythology, though this identification is now generally rejected.

In 1939 he published what Gary Beckman considers to be perhaps his most influential scholarly achievement Cylinder Seals: A Documentary Essay on the Art and Religion of the Ancient Near East. In a collaborative work with Henriette Groenewegen-Frankfort, John A. Wilson, and Thorkild Jacobsen he published The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man in 1946, an influential work on the nature of myth and reality. Frankfort published Kingship and the Gods in 1948, "a classic work" in the opinion of John Baines. In 1948 he became director of the Warburg Institute in London. Along with EA Wallis Budge, he was revolutionary for his time for suggesting that Egyptian civilization, culturally, religiously, and ethnically arose from an African, instead of an Asian base. He wrote 15 books and monographs and about 73 articles for journals about ancient Egypt, archaeology and cultural anthropology, especially on the religious systems of the Ancient Near East.

Erik Hornung in his influential work Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many acknowledged his debt to previous work done by Henri Frankfort.

He died in London.

Jacques Stephen Alexis

Jacques Stephen Alexis was a Haitian communist novelist, poet, and activist. He is best known for his novel Compère Général Soleil (1955).

Alexis was born in Gonaïves, the son of journalist, historian and diplomat Stephen Alexis and Lydia Nonez, descendant of one of Haiti's founding fathers, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Alexis grew up in a family in which literary and political discussions were the norm. At the age of 18, he made what was regarded as remarkable literary debut with an essay about the Haitian poet, Hamilton Garoute. He collaborated on a number of literary reviews, before founding La Ruche, a group dedicated to creating a literary and social spring in Haiti in the early 1940s. After completing medical school in Paris, he traveled throughout Europe and lived for a few years in Cuba.

In 1955, his novel Compère Général Soleil, was published by Gallimard in Paris. The novel has been translated into English as General Sun, My Brother. He followed up with Les Arbres musiciens (1957), L'Espace d'un cillement (1959), and Romancero aux étoiles (1960).

More than just an intellectual, Jacques Stephen Alexis was also an active participant in the social and political debates of his time. In 1959, he formed the People's Consensus Party (Parti pour l'Entente Nationale-PEP), a left-wing political party, but he was forced into exile by the Duvalier dictatorship. In August 1960, he attended a Moscow meeting of representatives of 81 communist parties from all over the world, and signed a common accord document called "The Declaration of the 81" in the name of Haitian communists.

In April 1961, he returned to Haiti, but soon after landing at Môle-Saint-Nicolas he was arrested. He was arrested under a fake name, although he later revealed his true identity. He had a sum of roughly $20,000 on him and it is believe by his daughter Florence that he was killed by those who arrested him because of the money. He was not taken to the town's main square and was tortured. Jacques never made it to Port-au-Prince.

He died on April 22, 1961 at the age of 39.

Jean Lebrun

Jean Lebrun is a French journalist. A professor agrégé of history, he soon preferred journalism to the Éducation nationale. After he collaborated with Combat, La Croix and Esprit, he became a producer for the radio stations France Culture then France Inter.

Born of a gardener father and a caretaker mother, Jean Lebrun grew up in the Parisian suburbs and studied in the Catholic college Notre-Dame de la Providence at Enghien-les-Bains. He pursued his higher studies at the Sorbonne, then immersed in the May 1968 events in France. He devoted a master's thesis to the history of the La Trappe Abbey, at Rancé. An agrégé of history, he abandoned teaching to engage in journalism. He collaborated at Combat, the TV program Le Jour du Seigneur in the 1970s, the magazine Esprit, whose editorial board he was a member, and La Croix, whose cultural service he co-directed.

At France Culture, where Jean Lebrun has spent most of his career, he produced and hosted the programs Culture Matin (from 1992 to 1999) and Pot-au-feu before animating Travaux Public, a program broadcast from Monday to Friday from 6.30 pm to 7.30 pm which he periodically recorded in a "Deep France Culture" ambiance from Blumeray (Haute-Marne). The program was live from the Argentinian café El Sur on Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and in various French cities on Thursdays and Fridays. The recording sometimes took place at festivals or abroad. In June 2008, Jean Lebrun stopped producing the program Travaux publics. He then worked until February 2011 as program advisor to the director of the France Culture channel.

Lebrun replaced Patrice Gélinet, producer of Deux mille ans d'Histoire on France Inter, with La Marche de l'Histoire on 28 February 2011.

He is the author of Journaliste en campagne (October 2006) and Le Journalisme en chantier : chronique d'un artisan (October 2008), both published by the publishing house Bleu autour.

In 2014, he was awarded the prix Goncourt de la Biographie for Notre Chanel, published by Bleu autour, A biographical work on the fashion designer undertaken years earlier with his companion Bernard Costa.

He joined the editorial board of La Quinzaine littéraire in 2015.

Jean Lebrun was awarded the Prix Richelieu in1997.

Alexandre Astruc

Alexandre Astruc was a French film critic and film director.

Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion of the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen" and the idea that directors should wield their cameras like writers use their pens.

In 1994 he was awarded the René Clair Award for his whole body of film work.

He died on May 19, 2016.

Jean Kaspar

Jean Kaspar is a French trade unionist .

The eldest of a family of six children, he began his professional life as an apprentice at the age of 14 by going down to the bottom of the mine at the Mines de Potasses d'Alsace.

In March 7 , 1977, he made himself known publicly by directing the occupation of the Schlumpf automobile museum in Mulhouse during the Schlumpf affair. Its rise is then rapid. At the head of the CFDT of Alsace, he succeeded Edmond Maire as general secretary of the CFDT in 1988 before giving way to Nicole Notat in 1992. He is the initiator of the "strategy of convergences" intended to bring together the reformist trade union organizations in France. In this perspective, it promotes convergence between the CFDT and the FEN.

He was then social counselor at the French Embassy in Washington from 1993 to 1996 5 . In 1997, he was beaten as DVG with 2.65% of the votes in the 6th constituency  of Haut-Rhin. He has been a consultant in social strategies and manager of “JK consultant” in Paris for 10 years .

He is also vice-president of the Observatoire social international and linked to Entreprise&Personnel , an HR club bringing together several large French companies, through a partnership contract. He is involved in various courses at the CNAM , Sciences Po Paris in the master's degree in human resources management, the IAE of Paris , the University of Haute-Alsace (UHA) and the University of Marne-La- Valley . He was coordinator for the ENA of a seminar on social dialogue (promotion Romain Gary 2003-2004). He is an adviser to theFoundation for Political Innovation.

He was a member of the Commission for the Liberation of French Growth, known as the “Attali Commission.”

In 2012, he was appointed Chairman of La Poste's Grand Dialogue Commission by Jean-Paul Bailly.

First opposition municipal councilor in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne (Yonne), he is now the first Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor in charge of economic development and sustainable development since July 5, 2020.

Pompeu Fabra

Pompeu Fabra i Poch was a Spanish engineer and grammarian. He was the main author of the normative reform of contemporary Catalan language.

Pompeu Fabra was born in Gràcia, which at that time was still separate from Barcelona, in 1868. He was the last of twelve children born to Josep Fabra i Roca and his wife Carolina Poch i Martí. When Pompeu was six, the family moved to Barcelona.

From a fairly young age Fabra dedicated himself to the study of the Catalan language. Through the journal and publishing house Tipografia de L'Avenç, he participated in a campaign to reform Catalan orthography between 1890–92. He published Tractat d'ortografia catalana with the writer and publisher Jaume Massó i Torrents and Joaquim Casas i Carbó, a notable lawyer and writer, in 1904.

Despite his personal interest in linguistics, Fabra studied industrial engineering in Barcelona and in 1902 accepted a chair of chemistry position at the School of Engineering in Bilbao. During his tenure in Bilbao, Fabra participated actively in the First International Congress of the Catalan Language held in 1906. This event gave him a certain prestige in the field of Catalan linguistics. In 1911, he returned to Barcelona to become a professor (catedràtic) of Catalan — a position created by the diputació (local government) of Barcelona — and a member of the department of philology at the newly created Institut d'Estudis Catalans, of which he would later become president. In 1912 he published his Gramática de la lengua catalana (in Spanish).

The Institute published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913, the Diccionari ortogràfic in 1917, and its official Gramàtica catalana in 1918. That same year, Fabra also edited the textbook Curs mitjà de gramàtica catalana, published by l'Associació Protectora de l'Ensenyança Catalana. His "Converses filològiques," first published in the newspaper "La Publicitat," were later collected as "Popular Barcino." Probably his most famous work was the Diccionari General de la Llengua Catalana (1932), the first edition of which later became the Institute's official dictionary.

In 1932, owing to his scientific prestige, he was unanimously named a professor (catedràtic) of the Republican Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (not to be confused with the later Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona created in the 1960s during the Francoist régime). The following year he was named President of the University's governing council, which resulted in his imprisonment in 1934 following the "events of 6 October" when troops of the Second Spanish Republic put down a Catalan government uprising led by Lluis Companys.

Fabra was reinstated to his faculty position after the elections of February 1936, but the Spanish Civil War began in July of that year, and he had to flee his country when Barcelona was being invaded by the Francoist army. By 1939 he was in exile in France where he endured many hardships. He lived in Paris and Montpellier, where he presided over the Jocs Florals literary competition in 1946. He eventually moved to Prada de Conflent in the Catalan-speaking area of France, where he died on 25 December 1948.

Achille Occhetto

Achille Leone Occhetto is an Italian political figure. He served as the last secretary-general of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) between 1988 and 1991, and the first leader of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), the parliamentary socialist successor of the PCI, from 1991 to 1994.

Occhetto was born in Turin. He is married to the activist and former actress Elisa Kadigia Bove. They have two sons, Malcolm and Massimiliano, both of whom were born in Sicily.

He served as secretary of the Italian Communist Youth Federation (to which he had belonged starting from 1953) from 1963 to 1966 and, subsequently, as regional secretary of the Italian Communist Party in Sicily, distinguishing himself for his war against any kind of mafia.

He was appointed in 1986 as national coordinator of the PCI and became its secretary in 1988, succeeding Alessandro Natta. Under his leadership, the party witnessed the collapse of both the Berlin wall and the communist regime in the Soviet Union. He responded by declaring the communist experience over, and persuaded the PCI to dissolve and refound itself as a democratic socialist party, the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS).

This political shift (known in Italian politics as the Svolta della Bolognina) was accepted by approximately 70% of the members at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party (8 February 1991).

In 1994, he challenged and was defeated by Silvio Berlusconi in the 1994 election, leading the Alliance of Progressives; because of this loss he resigned as party secretary.

He returned to politics in the 2004 European elections, being elected to the European Parliament on a joint ticket with anti-corruption campaigner Antonio Di Pietro, but he immediately resigned and was replaced by Giulietto Chiesa. After the 2006 General election, he returned to the European Parliament by taking up one of the seats vacated by an elected Deputy, and sits as an Independent member of the Party of European Socialists group.

In 2009, he joined the new left-wing formation Left Ecology Freedom.

Jürgen Rüttgers

Jürgen Rüttgers is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as the 9th Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2005 to 2010.[1]

Rüttgers was a Member of the German Bundestag from 1987 until 2000. In 1991 he succeeded Friedrich Bohl as First Secretary of the parliamentary group, in this position assisting the parliamentary group's chairman Wolfgang Schäuble.

Rüttgers served as Federal Minister for Education, Science, Research and Technology in Chancellor Helmut Kohl's fifth cabinet from 1994 to 1998. During his time as minister, he was – together with Luigi Berlinguer (Italy), Claude Allegre (France), and Baroness Tessa Blackstone (United Kingdom) – one of the heads of the "Sorbonne declaration", the joint declaration on harmonisation of the architecture of the European higher education system, on 25 May 1998. That was the starting point of the so-called "Bologna process". He also successfully introduced a law under which online providers can be prosecuted for offering a venue for content illegal in Germany – such as child pornography or Nazi propaganda – if they do so knowingly and it is "technically possible and reasonable" to prevent it. Also, the law made Germany the first country to set rules for so-called digital signatures and give them the status of a legal document.[3]

Between 1998 and 2000, Rüttgers served as deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, again under Schäuble's leadership.

Career in state politics

In 2000, Rüttgers succeeded Norbert Blüm as chairman of the CDU in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. As head of the party in Germany's most populous state, he commanded considerable influence, especially with its grassroots.[4] He also became the party's group leader in the state parliament. In this capacity, he notably opposed the takeover of Mannesmann by the British telecommunications company Vodafone in 2000, one of the largest-ever company takeovers worldwide.[5]

Amid the revelations of the CDU donations scandal in early 2000, Rüttgers – who ran as the party's candidate in a crucial state election in North Rhine-Wesphalia that year – was one of the few leading figures who remained loyal to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl even after prosecutors began a criminal investigation into Kohl's financial dealings.[6] By January 2000, daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung claimed that Kohl, angered by party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble's efforts to distance himself from the scandal surrounding secret payments to the party, was encouraging Rüttgers to make a bid for the leadership at the CDU's annual conference; instead, Angela Merkel was elected as Schäuble's successor[7] and Rüttgers became one of her four deputies, alongside Volker Rühe, Annette Schavan and Christian Wulff.[8]

In his role as chairman of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, Rüttgers later publicly endorsed Merkel as the party's candidate to challenge incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the 2002 federal elections; instead, Edmund Stoiber ended up being the joint candidate of CDU and CSU.[9][10]

Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia

In the 2005 state elections, Rüttgers was the opposition Christian Democratic Union's front-runner for the second time. After both CDU and FDP won a majority of seats in the elections, they formed a coalition to take over government from the former SPD and Green party coalition led by Peer Steinbrück. Rüttgers was elected Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia on 22 June. In his cabinet, he notably included representatives of the Christian Democrats’ more liberal wing, such as Armin Laschet (as State Minister for Generations, Family, Women and Integration) and Karl-Josef Laumann (as State Minister of Labor, Health and Social Affairs).

On the national level, Rüttgers was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement following the 2005 federal elections,[11] which paved the way to the formation of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first government. Under the leadership of Merkel as party chairwoman, he was re-elected vice-chairman of the CDU in November 2006, this time alongside Roland Koch, Annette Schavan and Christian Wulff.[12]

During his time in office, Rüttgers came under severe criticism for failing to mend the state's public finances. One of the reasons was the crisis at the state-owned lender WestLB, which led his government to set aside 1.5 billion in 2008.[13] Rüttgers long wanted the bank to stay independent[14] and categorically ruled out a merger with LBBW.[15] However, by 2007, he and Roland Koch, his counterpart from the state of Hesse, agreed on approving a merger of their respective state-owned banks, WestLB and Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba).[16] WestLB was eventually broken up in 2012 after years of losses and controversy.

Also in 2007, Rüttgers helped negotiate an agreement on closing Germany's last anthracite mines and clearing the way for the stock market flotation of the mines' owner, RAG AG, at the time the largest German coal producer and an international chemicals, energy and real estate conglomerate.[17]

Between 2007 and 2009, Rüttgers was one of 32 members of the Second Commission on the modernization of the federal state, which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany.

Shortly before the 2010 state elections, Rüttgers's public image was damaged by a party fund-raising scandal,[18] and local issues like education and the troubles of municipalities with heavy debt burdens were central to the campaign.[19] He led his party to an electoral defeat; the steep drop of 10 percentage points compared with the previous election, in 2005, was even larger than most analysts had predicted and gave the Christian Democrats their worst postwar showing in that state.[20] The loss also meant Chancellor Angela Merkel could no longer count on a majority for her governing coalition in the Bundesrat, composed of delegations from all 16 states. In July 2010, Rüttgers stepped down as caretaker premier and also gave up his position as state party chairman.[21]

Life after politics

Rüttgers joined the Düsseldorf office of German law firm Beiten Burkhardt as Of Counsel in March 2011. In this capacity, he is a member of the firm's Assets, Succession, Foundations practice group and also advises international companies on investments in Germany and German companies on international investments.[22]

In May 2011, Deutsche Bahn nominated Rüttgers as executive director of the Brussels-based Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER);[23] instead, Libor Lochman was eventually appointed to the position.[24][25]

Rüttgers was a CDU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2017[26][27] and 2022.[28]

References:

1.  Neukirch, Ralf; Markus Feldenkirchen (10 December 2009). "CDU Governor Jürgen Rüttgers: 'We Cannot Have Massive Cuts' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International". Der Spiegel. Archived from the original on 27 February 2010. Retrieved 29 July 2010.
2.  "Vita JR — Institut für Politische Wissenschaft und Soziologie". politik-soziologie.uni-bonn.de. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
3.  Germany Passes Internet Law Limiting Content Los Angeles Times, 5 July 1997.
4.  Bertrand Benoit (24 April 2008), Merkel's CDU split by pensions strategy Financial Times.
5.  David Teather (22 November 1999), Bid for Mannesmann sparks political outcry The Guardian.
6.  Denis Staunton (9 January 2000), Kohl crony set to launch party coup The Guardian.
7.  Denis Staunton (9 January 2000), Kohl crony set to launch party coup The Guardian.
8.  Hans-Jürgen Leersch (11 April 2000), CDU-Parteitag krönt Angela Merkel Die Welt.
9.  Mitgliederstärkster Landesverband stützt Merkel Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 January 2002.
10.  Jürgen Fischer and Martin Noé (13 January 2002), Stoiber bindet CDU-Größen ein Handelsblatt.
11.  Am Montag soll auch Merkels Liste stehen Hamburger Abendblatt, 14 October 2005.
12.  CDU-Stellvertreter: Merkels bunte Truppe n-tv, 27 November 2006.
13.  Rachel Morarjee (12 February 2008), WestLB faces up to its next hurdle Financial Times.
14.  Meike Schreiber and Steffen Klusmann (26 November 2007), WestLB may acquire IKB Financial Times.
15.  Beat Balzli, Wolfgang Reuter and Steffen Winter (20 November 2007), Trouble Ahead For State-Owned Banks in Germany Bloomberg News.
16.  Beat Balzli, Wolfgang Reuter and Steffen Winter (20 November 2007), Trouble Ahead For State-Owned Banks in Germany Bloomberg News.
17.  Carter Dougherty (14 June 2007), Germany finds solution to its withering coal mines International Herald Tribune’'.
18.  Judy Dempsey (1 March 2010), Fund-Raising Scandals Pose Risk to Merkel's Party in Two State Elections International Herald Tribune.
19.  Nicholas Kulish (9 May 2010), Conservatives in Germany Suffer Defeat at Polls New York Times.
20.  Nicholas Kulish (9 May 2010), Conservatives in Germany Suffer Defeat at Polls New York Times.
21.  Judy Dempsey (18 July 2010), Merkel Loses Ally as Standing Slides International Herald Tribune.
22.  Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rüttgers Archived 20 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine Beiten Burkhardt.
23.  Pan-European ticketing systems, please European Voice, 11 May 2011.
24.  Trainspotting European Voice, 14 September 2011.
25.  Rüttgers zieht Kandidatur als Bahn-Chef-Lobbyist zurück Spiegel Online, 6 September 2011.
26.  Prominente wählen neuen Präsidenten mit Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 December 2016.
27.  Wahl der Mitglieder für die 16. Bundesversammlung Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, decision of 14 December 2016.
28.  Drucksache 17/16063: Ergebnis der Wahl der Mitglieder zur 17. Bundesversammlung State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Theodor Waigel

Theodor Waigel (born 22 April 1939) is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). He represented Neu-Ulm in the Bundestag from 1976 to 2002.

Waigel is a lawyer, and earned a doctorate in 1967. He was a member of the Bundestag from 1972 to 2002. He served as Federal Minister of Finance of Germany in the Cabinet of Chancellor Helmut Kohl from 1989 to 1998, and as Chairman of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria from 1988 to 1999. He is known as the father of the Euro, the European currency. He played a vital role in its introduction as German Minister of Finance. He also managed to impose an austerity program on West Germans and overcome the massive deficits of German unification to meet the strict fiscal benchmarks mandated by Europe's single currency. In 2009, he was appointed Honorary Chairman of the CSU.

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder was a German manager and politician, as member of the Social Democratic Party. He was named president of the Treuhandanstalt, responsible for the privatization of state-owned property in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), in September 1990, and served until his assassination in April 1991. He had also served as CEO of steel manufacturer Hoesch AG since 1980.

L.Q. Jones

Justus Ellis McQueen Jr., known professionally as L.Q. Jones, was an American actor and director. He appeared in Sam Peckinpah's films Ride the High Country (1962), Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). His later film roles include Casino (1995), The Patriot, The Mask of Zorro (both 1998), and A Prairie Home Companion (2006).

His other roles included Western television series such as Cheyenne, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Laramie, Wagon Train, and The Virginian. He was the writer and director of the 1975 science fiction film A Boy and His Dog, based on Harlan Ellison's novella of the same name.

Jones was born August 19, 1927, in Beaumont, in southeastern Texas, the son of Jessie Paralee (née Stephens) and Justus Ellis McQueen Sr., a railroad worker. At an early age he lost his mother when she died following a car accident. He completed his school education from Port Neches–Groves High School in 1945. After serving in the United States Navy from 1945 to 1946, Jones attended Lamar Junior College and Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas, and then studied law, business and journalism at the University of Texas at Austin from 1950 to 1951. He worked as a stand-up comic, briefly played professional baseball and American football, and tried ranching in Nicaragua, then turned to acting after corresponding with Fess Parker, his former college roommate.

Jones made his film debut in 1955 in Battle Cry, credited under his birth name Justus McQueen. His character's name in that film, however, was "L.Q. Jones", a name he liked and decided to adopt as his stage name for all of his future roles as an actor. In 1955, he was cast as "Smitty Smith" in three episodes of Clint Walker's ABC/Warner Brothers western series Cheyenne, the first hour-long western on network television.

Jones appeared in numerous films in the 1960s and 1970s. He became a member of Sam Peckinpah's stock company of actors, appearing in his Klondike series (1960–1961), Ride the High Country (1962), Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973).

Jones was frequently cast alongside his close friend Strother Martin, most memorably as the posse member and bounty hunter "T. C." in The Wild Bunch. Jones also appeared as recurring characters on such western series as Cheyenne (1955), Gunsmoke (1955), Laramie, Two Faces West (1960–1961), and as ranch hand Andy Belden in The Virginian (1962). That same year (1962) Jones appeared as Ollie Earnshaw, a rich rancher looking for a bride, on Lawman, in the episode titled "The Bride".

He was cast in the military drama series Men of Annapolis, on the CBS western Johnny Ringo, and on the NBC western Jefferson Drum. He made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, including the role of con artist and murder victim Charles B. Barnaby in "The Case of the Lonely Heiress" (1958) and as Edward Lewis in "The Case of the Badgered Brother" (1963). He appeared in Hawaii Five-O, season 1, episode 15, in January, 1969. He also appeared in an episode of The A-Team titled "Cowboy George" and two episodes of The Fall Guy as Sheriff Dwight Leclerc. In 1971, Jones appeared as Belden in The Men From Shiloh (the final season rebranding of The Virginian) episode titled "The Town Killer".

Jones' other films include Men in War (1957), The Naked and the Dead (1958), Flaming Star (1960), Cimarron (1960), Hell Is for Heroes (1962), Hang 'Em High (1968), Stay Away, Joe (1968), The Brotherhood of Satan (1971), which he co-produced and wrote, Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan (1975), White Line Fever 1976 Lone Wolf McQuade (1983), Casino (1995), "Tornado!" (1996), The Edge (1997), The Mask of Zorro (1998), and A Prairie Home Companion (2006).

Jones directed, produced, and wrote the screenplay for A Boy and His Dog.

Jones was a practicing Methodist and a registered Republican. On July 9, 2022, Jones died from natural causes at his Hollywood Hills home in Los Angeles at the age of 94.

George Shultz

George Pratt Shultz was an American economist, businessman, diplomat and statesman. He served in various positions under three different Republican presidents and is one of the only two persons to have held four different Cabinet-level posts, the other being Elliot Richardson. Shultz had played a major role in shaping the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. From 1974 to 1982, he was an executive of the Bechtel Group, an engineering and services company.

Born in New York City, he graduated from Princeton University before serving in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. After the war, Shultz earned a PhD in industrial economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He taught at MIT from 1948 to 1957, taking a leave of absence in 1955 to take a position on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers. After serving as dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, he accepted President Richard Nixon's appointment as United States Secretary of Labor. In that position, he imposed the Philadelphia Plan on construction contractors who refused to accept black members, marking the first use of racial quotas by the federal government. In 1970, he became the first director of the Office of Management and Budget, and he served in that position until his appointment as United States Secretary of the Treasury in 1972. In that role, Shultz supported the Nixon shock, which sought to revive the ailing economy in part by abolishing the gold standard, and presided over the end of the Bretton Woods system.

Shultz left the Nixon administration in 1974 to become an executive at Bechtel. After becoming president and director of that company, he accepted President Ronald Reagan's offer to serve as United States Secretary of State. He held that office from 1982 to 1989. Shultz pushed for Reagan to establish relations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which led to a thaw between the United States and the Soviet Union. He opposed the U.S. aid to Contras trying to overthrow the Sandinistas by using funds from an illegal sale of weapons to Iran. This aid led to the Iran–Contra affair.

Shultz retired from public office in 1989 but remained active in business and politics. He served as an informal adviser to George W. Bush and helped formulate the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war. He served on the Global Commission on Drug Policy, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Economic Recovery Council, and on the boards of Bechtel and the Charles Schwab Corporation.