In the course of his 89-year life, Gerhart Rudolf Baum has gained a lot of experience in dealing with crises, conflicts and catastrophes. Not only as Federal Minister of the Interior of the FDP in the years 1978 to 1982, which were shaped by the fight against RAF terrorism, but also as a lawyer. After retiring from the Bundestag after 22 years as a member of parliament in 1992, he represented Russian forced laborers in the fight for German compensation for the injustice suffered in the Nazi state. Also relatives and victims of the air show accident in Ramstein in 1988 and the crash of the supersonic plane concorde in 2000 were already among the clients of the lawyer Baum. Just like those affected by the Love Parade catastrophe in 2010. At the beginning of the week he managed to resolve a conflict that would otherwise have led to a German-Israeli scandal on the open world stage. As a representative of the families of the victims of the 1972 Olympics attack in Munich, he was instrumental in resolving the compensation dispute.
Gerhart Baum dismisses the wording that he and the German government – on behalf of the relatives of the eleven Olympic athletes who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists – had negotiated a compromise. It wasn’t traded in the traditional way, he says. Instead, it was about “reconciling the ideas of the two sides” and “getting both sides down from their extreme positions”. The result is a very complex agreement, and reducing it to financial compensation falls far short of the mark, says Baum. “A lot more was agreed.” According to reports, the Federal Republic is paying a total of 28 million euros in “recognition payments”, as it is officially called, to the bereaved. In addition, it was agreed that a German-Israeli commission of historians should carry out a fundamental scientific analysis of what happened. And for the first time in 50 years, the Federal Republic of Germany has explicitly acknowledged its share of responsibility for the omissions and mishaps of the overwhelmed, unprepared German security organs.
Baum only took over the mandate three weeks ago
Baum does not want to comment on the details of the agreement; legal confidentiality. Hardly anyone was aware of his work on the matter until shortly before the agreement was reached. At first it was a law firm from Amsterdam specializing in international law, which represented the bereaved, apparently quite unsuccessfully. Talks were deadlocked; the tone on the part of the Israelis became more unforgiving, their trust in fair treatment by the federal government was broken, not for the first time since 1972. Three weeks ago, all of the Israeli victims’ families gave Gerhart Baum the mandate. In the federal government, it was the task of Interior Secretary Juliane Seifert to bundle the very different ideas of the four departments involved and the Bavarian state government. “In the end, it was no longer a matter of legal issues, but a political decision had to be made,” says Gerhart Baum.
He himself was not only driven by the task of representing the interests of his clients, as it is the job of lawyers. In his own words, Baum was impressed by the pain that many relatives still feel after 50 years. The politician in him was also concerned about the special German-Israeli relations. Without a doubt, they would have been harmed if the relatives and thus also the Israeli President Isaac Herzog had boycotted the commemoration ceremony next Monday in Fürstenfeldbruck. Which would have been the case without prior agreement in the compensation dispute. Baum prevented that, not a bad performance for someone who will be 90 in just under two months.