Christof Botzenhart summarizes the biographies of the prime ministers in a book. The work will be presented in the State Chancellery.
Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen – Hans Ehard (CSU) deserves more attention, thinks Christof Botzenhart. “He was important for the development of Bavaria and federalism. He should be remembered more.” From 1946 to 1954 and again from 1960 to 1962, Ehard steered the fortunes of the Free State as Bavarian Prime Minister. Botzenhart is now ensuring that he gets more attention with a new book. The work, which has just been published by Pustet-Verlag, is dedicated to the portraits of the Bavarian Prime Ministers from 1918 to 2018.
It took two years from the idea to the printed book
Botzenhart acts as editor together with Rainald Becker. Both also wrote the introduction. The third mayor of Tölz also contributed a contribution about the official residences of the prime ministers. A kind of home game for Botzenhart. The civil servant in the Bavarian ministerial administration works in the state chancellery. “But it is not a State Chancellery project. I did that privately,” emphasizes Botzenhart. Nevertheless, the book will be presented at the State Chancellery on April 18th.
How did the book come about? “I noticed that up until now there had been no complete work on the democratic prime ministers - about individual ones, of course, but nothing in general,” says Botzenhart. He tackled the project together with his old friend Rainald Becker - who, among other things, is a professor of Bavarian history at the University of Augsburg. It took two years from the idea to the printed book.
The book is aimed at the general public interested in history
The authors got all the candidates they wanted, says Botzenhart. All of them are proven experts on the Prime Minister they are writing about. The mix is colorful. The oldest author, Hermann Rumschöttel, is over 80. With Matthias Bischel and Daniel Rittenauer, they have also “engaged two young historians” who have written their doctoral thesis on “their” prime ministers. Bischel wrote the article about Gustav Ritter von Kahr, whose term of office covered the years 1920/21. Rittenauer deals with the office of Prime Minister during the Nazi era.
The 54-year-old, who sits on the Tölzer city council for the CSU, emphasizes that it was important for all contributions to achieve the “balancing act between being scientifically sound and written in an easy-to-read manner.” The book is aimed at the general public interested in history. “Many prime ministers were very distinctive personalities. “Bayern was lucky there,” says Botzenhart.
Criticism of the book in the Bayerische Staatszeitung
The contributions are garnished with photographs. “It was important to us not to take rigid portrait photos, but to show the Prime Minister in the exercise of his office or together with important personalities,” says Botzenhart. For example, there is a picture of Franz Josef Strauss that shows him in the White House in 1988 with then US President Ronald Reagan.
It was important to us not to take rigid portrait photos, but to show the Prime Minister in the exercise of his office or together with important personalities
Christof Botzenhart
Criticism of the book depends precisely on the article about Strauss, but also the one about Max Streibl. “The result is a book like a smoothly polished and beautifully decorated ancestral gallery to give to future guests of the State Chancellery as a gift,” writes Thomas Schuler in his book review in the Bayerische Staatszeitung. “The chronological list of life dates and political successes dominates, with office as the highlight. Obstacles and scandals are downplayed, although not completely ignored.”
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The work includes 16 biographical portraits - from Kurt Eisner to Horst Seehofer. The two about Günther Beckstein and Horst Seehofer were actually not planned at all, says Botzenhart. “We actually wanted to stop with Stoiber.” But at the publisher’s request, the 100 years were completed.
By the way, the incumbent Prime Minister Markus Söder also got a place in the book. He wrote the foreword.
(va)