Former Economics Minister Martin Bangemann (FDP) is dead. The incumbent party leader Christian Linder said on Twitter on Wednesday. “He was a passionate liberal, a fighter for the social market economy and above all a great European,” says Lindner. Bangemann was 87 years old.
Bangemann was Federal Minister of Economics from 1984 to 1988 under the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and from 1989 to 1999 EU Commissioner, first for the internal market, then for industrial policy, information technology and telecommunications. From 1985 to 1988 he was also Federal Chairman of the FDP.