Karl Carstens

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Karl Carstens
9th President of Germany
In office July 1, 1979 – June 30, 1984
Preceded by	Walter Scheel
Succeeded by	Richard von Weizsäcker

Born	December 14, 1914 Bremen, Germany
Died	May 30, 1992 Meckenheim, Germany
Political party	CDU (since 1955); NSDAP (1940-1945)
Spouse	Veronica Carstens

Karl Carstens (December 14, 1914 - May 30, 1992) was a German politician. He served as the fifth Federal President of West Germany.

Born in Bremen, Carstens studied law and political science at the universities of Frankfurt, Dijon, Munich, Königsberg, and Hamburg from 1933 to 1936. In 1949 he received a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from Yale Law School.

Carstens joined the NSDAP in 1940, reportedly to further his career in the legal profession. Carstens had, however, joined the SA, the Nazi paramilitary organisation, in 1933 already.

In 1955 he entered the CDU.

In July 1960 Carstens entered government service as a secretary of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the Grand coalition government (1966-1969), he first served as secretary of state in the Ministry of Defence, and after 1968 as Director of the Chancellor's Office.

In 1972 Carstens was first elected into the Bundestag, of which he was a member until 1979. From May 1973 until October 1976 he was the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. During that time he was an outspoken critic of left-wing tendencies in German society and particular accused the governing SPD of being to soft on left-wing extremists. He also famously denounced the author Heinrich Böll as a supporter of left-wing terrorism (specifically, the Baader-Meinhof Gang).

On 14 December 1976, after the general elections had made the CDU/CSU the largest group in parliament, Carstens was elected president of the Bundestag.

On May 23, 1979 Carstens was elected as the fifth President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Carstens is well known for hiking Germany during his term in order to decrease the gulf between politics and the people.

In 1983, the recently elected Chancellor Helmut Kohl deliberately lost a motion of confidence in order to obtain a clearer majority in new general elections. This was widely criticized as a "manipulation of the constitution", but on July 1, President Carstens nonetheless dissolved the Bundestag and called for new elections.

In 1984 he decided not to seek a second term on account of his age and left office on 30 June 1984.