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THomas Oppermann was a trusted companion to his friends and a staunch politician for the cause of democracy. As chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Oppermann has long been one of the republic’s prominent parliamentarians. In the plenary he delivered pointed speeches, in the committees and organs Oppermann was a consummate member, always ready to fight for the cause, but also willing to compromise and cordial in dealing. Since he was first elected to the Bundestag in 2005, he had seen it as an almost daily task to oppose the decline of the SPD, campaigning and fighting. Primarily engaged in everyday life, Oppermann also had a pronounced and slightly melancholic sense of the ancient greats and the former greatness of his party. Ultimately today he was driven by constant confidence that he could improve living conditions, in his constituency, at home, in Europe.
When the law graduate came to the Bundestag in 2005, he was initially a loser among the losers: in Lower Saxony, Gabriel’s government, in which Oppermann was minister of education, had been ousted from office and the SPD had lost its chancery in the federal government. Oppermann quickly made a name for himself in the Bundestag. In particular, in a committee of inquiry into the activities of the secret services in Iraq and elsewhere and the involvement of the SPD in the case of Murat Kurnaz, who was kidnapped by the US services at Guantanamo, Oppermann appeared as a committed defender of the old government policy. His subsequent ascent began quickly. As Parliamentary Managing Director, Oppermann quickly belonged to the organizers of the first grand coalition under Angela Merkel, and then from 2009 of the SPD parliamentary opposition group. For the most part, he also took over the strike department in public. When the rather discreet Frank-Walter Steinmeier returned to the Foreign Office, Oppermann became the leader of the parliamentary group in 2013, a position he held until the last federal elections. Although he is one of the most energetic watchmakers as the leader of the Social Democrats, the affair surrounding former MP Sebastian Edathy remained politically charged for him, in which Oppermann had never played a fully enlightened role. Unlike CSU politician Hans-Peter Friedrich, Oppermann did not have to resign over the matter.
Oppermann, who was born in Münsterland, had a career that was not as simple as it might seem in hindsight. He sat in school, his first degree, German and English, turned out to be unsatisfactory. Oppermann, a person of uncompromising curiosity, did his alternative military service with a union in the United States. After his return, he returned to study, this time law in Göttingen. Excellent qualifications qualified him for the position of judge, which he held at the Hannover Administrative Court until 1990. At the age of 36 he was drawn to politics, first in Lower Saxony and then in Berlin.
Also because Oppermann had been one of the SPD’s best-known, widely recognized and respected politicians there for years, it seemed promising that he would assume a ministerial post for the foreseeable future. In the previous election campaign, Oppermann made no secret of the fact that he would have liked to become interior minister, a task for which the seasoned lawyer and expert in domestic and legal politics was ideally qualified. But things turned out differently: in 2017 certain party policies, not suitability for this position, the formation of a government in the new grand coalition. Oppermann was then one of many whom an increasingly wandering SPD believed could be dismissed without making a sound.
In the short era of Andrea Nahles and Olaf Scholz, Oppermann, like Sigmar Gabriel and Martin Schulz, was sidelined or deported. In recognition of his services, Oppermann was appointed Vice President of the Bundestag. It was certainly not in the wrong place in a parliament that increasingly has to defend itself against the democratic impositions of the right and the left, but it was a cautious end to its ambitions.
In the second row: Unlike Martin Schulz (front) and Sigmar Gabriel, Oppermann never became a federal minister.
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Image: dpa
Oppermann was a member of parliament elected directly from Göttingen, where voters elected him four times in a row as their representative in parliament. In the summer of that year, he had declared that now, at 66, active politics would soon be enough. The father of four wanted more time for his own thoughts and plans. But on Sunday night Thomas Oppermann surprisingly died in Göttingen after a collapse.
