At 87 years old
Former ZdK President Meyer is dead
Hans Joachim Meyer is dead. The former ZdK president died at the age of 87. photo
© Jörg Carstensen/dpa
He led the lay German Catholics for more than ten years. Previously, he was a minister in the GDR’s only freely elected government under de Maizière. Hans Joachim Meyer died on Friday.
The former president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) is dead. According to the ZdK, Hans Joachim Meyer died at the age of 87. Meyer was at the head of the lay representation of Catholics in Germany from 1997 to 2009. The CDU politician was previously Saxon State Minister for Science and Art. After the fall of the Wall, Meyer was Minister for Education and Science in the only freely elected government in the GDR under Lothar de Maizière from April to October 1990. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” previously reported.
“Hans Joachim Meyer, as president with an East German background, was a stroke of luck for the ZdK,” said the acting president Irme Stetter-Karp according to the announcement. “He had a significant influence on the growing together of Catholics in East and West, knew how to bring different worlds together and promote mutual understanding with brilliant analyzes of German-German reality.”
Meyer had a significant influence on lay Catholicism at the beginning of the new millennium and at a turning point in German history, said Stetter-Karp. “He lived and acted out of a close connection between his political convictions and his faith. Through his straightforwardness and his unerring sense of respect and respect for the dignity of every human being, which he acquired during the GDR era, he stood out in all political, social and… Church forces in Germany have earned the highest respect,” said the Berlin-based ZdK.