Peter Struck (politician)
Peter Struck (24 January 1943 – 19 December 2012) was the German Minister of Defence under chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 2002 to 2005. A lawyer, Struck was a member of the Social Democratic Party.
For the professor of classical studies, see Peter Struck (classicist).
Peter Struck
Wilhelm Schmidt
Klaus-Jürgen Hedrich
24 January 1943
Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany
19 December 2012 (aged 69)
Berlin, Germany
Struck studied law at the universities of Göttingen and Hamburg. In 1971 he graduated to Dr. iur. (Doctor of Laws).
Death[edit]
Struck suffered from poor health in the last several years of his career and died of a heart attack in the Charité hospital in Berlin on 19 December 2012.[16] Funeral guests included the President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, former chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder, the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia Hannelore Kraft, SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel, former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, and the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Volker Kauder. Thomas de Maizière, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and General Wolfgang Schneiderhan gave eulogies.[17]
Controversies[edit]
When an elderly man was severely beaten up in Munich by two immigrant youths, Struck claimed that his political opponent, Roland Koch, was probably happy for the beating because now Koch could start a supposedly polemic discussion about problems with young violent immigrants. When Koch demanded an apology, Struck replied "Bite me!". In a Parliament debate some days later, Jürgen Gehb, CDU Speaker for law politics, said that "we will try to continue working with you, but with minimal contact to your backside".[18][19]
At a 2002 meeting of NATO defense ministers in Warsaw, United States Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld refused to meet Struck after Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had won narrow re-election in part by opposing the American-led Iraq War.[20]
Peter Struck is famous for two quotes: