It must be unique that a day-long, high-calibre symposium with numerous prominent guests of honor is held on the first anniversary of the death of a politician. Especially when he – from a formalistic point of view – did not get beyond a mandate in the Bundestag and was always highly controversial in his party. All of this is the case with Josef Göppel. To commemorate the CSU politician, who died on April 13, 2022, the “Environmental Policy Josef Göppel Symposium” will take place on Friday in Nymphenburg Palace in Munich. Patron is the former state parliament president and CSU politician Alois Glück. The forums of the symposium deal with Göppel’s heart topics: the energy turnaround, sustainable nature conservation in rural areas and an ecologically and socially just development policy for the countries of the Global South.
Josef Göppel was a unique politician. He was a green CSUer. And a real one, not one who pretends to be. That’s why the forester from Herrieden in Middle Franconia (Ansbach district) quickly had a reputation far beyond the political scene. Göppel’s principle was: live and work in harmony with nature. He opposed nuclear power and was in favor of a speed limit on the Autobahn. He was against genetic engineering in agriculture and supported the referendum against scavenging and for the preservation of biodiversity. And he was not afraid to state his beliefs publicly. In speeches as well as in interviews that he also gave to this newspaper. But above all in the votes in the Bundestag. He voted against proposed Union legislation 27 times in Berlin’s parliament because they ran counter to his convictions. Since Göppel’s death, the CSU has had a gap in environmental policy.
That brought Göppel a lot of trouble and few friends in his CSU. His exclusion from the party is said to have been repeated. Göppel himself has often been asked why he remains in the CSU. His answer: because of the C in the name of the party. Göppel was a devout Catholic. It was the Christian idea of creation that made him join the CSU in 1970. And it was precisely this idea of creation from which he drew the strength for his commitment throughout his life – as a city councilor in his hometown of Herrieden as well as later as a member of the state parliament, but also in the 15 years that he was a member of the Bundestag in Berlin.
Göppel was also the founder of the first landscape conservation association in Bavaria, in which he brought together farmers and conservationists. And he was the founding chairman of the German Association for Landscape Maintenance, the nationwide network of associations that soon established themselves based on the Middle Franconian model.
At the symposium, politicians of all persuasions, but also experts and high-ranking nature conservationists, pay their respects to Göppel. The Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann (CSU) and the honorary chairman of the Federal Nature Conservation Union, Hubert Weiger, who had been closely associated with Göppel since the 1970s, spoke at the beginning. The economist and head of the Energy, Transport and Environment department at the German Institute for Economic Research, Claudia Kempfert, will give a keynote speech. Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens), former Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU), now working for the United Nations, and Development Secretary Jochen Flasbarth (SPD) send video messages. What would Josef Göppel say about the symposium?