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Alois Mertes

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Person.png Alois Mertes   Amazon WikidataRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
diplomat,  politician,  deep state operative)
Alois Mertes.jpg
Born29 October 1921
 Gerolstein,  Germany
Died16 June 1985 (Age 63)
 Bonn,  Germany
Cause of death
 stroke
Nationality German
Alma mater •  University of Bonn
•  Sorbonne
•  Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Religion Catholic
Children • Michael Mertes.jpg Michael Mertes
•  Klaus Mertes
Member ofLe Cercle, Stauffenberg Service
Victim ofPremature death.jpg premature death?
Interests Opus Dei
PartyCDU

Alois Mertes was a German diplomat, bureaucrat and politician who was one of the leading figures in West Germany's foreign and East German policy of the 1970s and early 1980s.[1] In the early 1980s he attended both Le Cercle and the Bilderberg. It is suspected that he was also a member of Opus Dei.[2][3] His son, Michael Mertes, spoke alongside Maarten Brands and some other Bilderberg members in Boston in 2009.[4] He died in office as State Secretary at the German Federal Foreign Office.

Education

After graduating from high school in 1940, Mertes took part in the Second World War as a soldier. After being released from British captivity, Mertes studied law, history and Romance studies at the universities of Bonn and Paris. In 1948 he completed his studies with the state Examination in History and French and in 1951 he received his doctorate at the University of Bonn with the work France's statement on the German Revolutions of 1848.

Career

In 1952, Mertes joined the Foreign Service of the West Germany, for which he worked at the Consulate General in Marseille and at the embassies in Paris (1958-1963) and Moscow (1963-1966). In 1966 he was expelled as persona non grata as a reply to a Soviet diplomat who had previously been expelled from Bonn on suspicion of espionage.[1]

n 1968/69, he completed an official study stay at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, headed by Henry Kissinger, with the study Reflections on Détente: Russia, Germany, and the West[5]. After his return to Bonn, he took over as head of the European Security and Regional Disarmament Unit at the Federal Foreign Office.

From 1969 to 1971 he was chairman of the Catholic Bundes Neudeutschland.[6]

From 1969 to 1972 he held a teaching position for political science at the University of Cologne.

From 1972 until his death, he was a member of the German Bundestag. Here he was chairman of the foreign policy working group of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 1980 to 1982.

On 4 October 1982, he was appointed Minister of State at the Foreign Office in the federal government led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl.[7]

Nuclear weapons

In his study Harvard Center for International Affairs in April 1969 under Kissinger, "Mertes analyzed how, in his view, Moscow's rise to the status of a nuclear superpower progressively reduced the options for a European settlement that would include German unification; how this fundamental shift in the international power equation made the United States more and more willing to accommodate Soviet interests in Europe; and how, as a result of both these developments, the West German public became more and more willing to postpone ad infinitum, or even to abandon, the goal of German unity..Thus Mertes, along with most German conservatives at the time, expected that the Non-Proliferation Treaty would in no way contribute to detente. Instead it would foreclose any option of further European integration, because, in his eyes, European integration could only progress if security policy became a key element in it[8]

In 1983, Mertes, Minister of State at the West German Foreign Office, said that "both the SS-20 and the proposed counterforce, NATO's Pershing cruise missiles, are essentially political weapons. Mertes maintained that the Soviet Union would avoid war, especially in Europe, because "the Federal Republic of Germany is a good fat cow; they will not slaughter it. They will draw it very slowly from the Western area to the Eastern area. That means that besides the risk of nuclear war, there is the risk of creeping Soviet influence in the Federal Republic."[9]

In 1982, he co-wrote an article advocating against a proposal for the US to renounce the first use of nuclear weapons in Europe[10].

Religion

He was a Catholic.[11] He was a personal advisor to Julius Cardinal Döpfner (1913-1976) and Joseph Cardinal Höffner (1906-1987)[1]

Death

The New York Times reported that he died of a stroke, aged 63.[12]

 

Events Participated in

EventStartEndLocation(s)Description
Bilderberg/198115 May 198117 May 1981Switzerland
Palace Hotel
Bürgenstock
The 29th Bilderberg
Bilderberg/198313 May 198315 May 1983Canada
Quebec
Château Montebello
The 31st Bilderberg, held in Canada
Bilderberg/198510 May 198512 May 1985New York
US
Arrowwood of Westchester
Rye Brook
The 33rd Bilderberg, held in Canada
Le Cercle/1983 (Bonn)30 June 19833 July 1983Germany
Bonn
The June 1983 Cercle meeting was held in Bonn, West Germany
Le Cercle/1984 (Bonn)5 July 19847 July 1984Germany
Bonn
Held in Bonn, West Germany, the list of the 36 visitors was published online in 2011.
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References

  1. Jump up to: a b c https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/dbo103581.html#dbocontent
  2. https://isgp-studies.com/Le_Cercle_membership_list
  3. https://opusfrei.org/show.php?id=177
  4. http://www.bu.edu/european/tag/maarten-brands/
  5. Available in: Günter Buchstab: Alois Mertes – Der Primat des Politischen, Düsseldorf 1994, S. 1–61.
  6. Rudolf Vierhaus (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der Mitglieder des Deutschen Bundestages 1949–2002. K. G. Saur Verlag, München 2002, S. 558.
  7. Jenninger, Phillipp (1986). Alois Mertes zur Erinnerung Ansprachen u. Nachrufe. Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon & Bercker. ISBN 3-7666-9498-7.
  8. https://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/serien/p/ghi-dc/op14.pdf
  9. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,923603-4,00.html
  10. Karl Kaiser, Georg Leber, Alois Mertes, Franz-Josef Schulze, Nuclear Weapons and the Preservation of Peace: A Response to an American Proposal for Renouncing the First Use of Nuclear Weapons
  11. http://www.crisismagazine.com/1983/a-letter-from-germany-to-u-s-bishops
  12. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/18/world/alois-mertes-is-dead-at-63-bonn-foreign-ministry-aide.html