Party offices Geißler was a life-long member of the
Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Together with Franz Sauter,
Erwin Teufel, and Josef Rebhan, Geißler founded the
Rottweil district group of the
Young Union (JU), the CDU's youth wing. He was JU chairman of Baden-Württemberg from 1961 to 1965. In 1977, he succeeded
Kurt Biedenkopf as general secretary of the federal CDU. As such, he managed the party in three federal elections (
1980,
1983, and
1987). To this day, he is the longest-serving general secretary of the CDU and the only one to concurrently serve as a government minister. During this period, he was responsible for the new basic program of the party and was decisively involved in formulating the CDU's new positions in foreign policy, which were developed on the youth party congress in
Hamburg and were considered a precondition for the coalition with the
Free Democratic Party (FDP) that later became a reality. Geißler was also responsible for the modernisation of the party's position on women's rights, put forth at the 1985 CDU party congress in
Essen. When, during the
Flick affair, party chairman
Helmut Kohl was questioned as to whether he had accepted bribes for the CDU, Geißler defended him in a 1986 television show by proposing that Kohl may have had a "
blackout". After that point, relations between both soured. After reports appeared that Geißler was to be replaced after the CDU lost elections in
West Berlin and
Frankfurt am Main in 1989, and achieved only 37.6% of the vote in the
European election of that year, a drop of 8.2% from the
1984 European election, Geißler was not re-nominated for the position of general secretary by chairman Kohl. Previously, differences on policy had created a rift between chairman and general secretary. Together with Lothar Späth and Rita Süssmuth, Geißler attempted to overthrow Kohl on the 1989 CDU party congress held in Bremen, but was unsuccessful, leading to his resignation as general secretary. Until 1998, he belonged to the party presidium and, until 2002, to the
federal board. Geißler remained critical of Kohl following his loss of power. In 1995, he called the party, referring to Kohl's role, as a "party with a
cult of personality" ("führerkultische Partei"). At the 1990 CDU party congress, he apologised for using the word
Führerkult, stating: "The term was wrong, the issue remains." During the
CDU donations scandal, he admitted to
slush funds being upkept during Kohl's tenure as chairman. He attracted considerable controversy in 1977 after publishing a brochure which accused several leftist and liberal artists and politicians in
West Germany of being "sympathisers of terror", referring to the attacks of the
Red Army Faction (RAF). Mentioned in the pamphlet were, among others,
Helmut Gollwitzer,
Heinrich Albertz,
Günter Wallraff,
Herbert Marcuse, and Federal Minister for the Interior
Werner Maihofer. In 1983, Geißler called the
Social Democratic Party (SPD) a "
fifth column of the other side", referring to the
Eastern Bloc, during the debate concerning the stationing of American
MGM-31 Pershing missiles in Europe. During the electoral campaign for the
1983 federal election, Geißler also attracted controversy by calling the
pension policy of the SPD the "pension lie", elaborating: "He who does not know the truth is merely an idiot, but he who knows it andd calls it a lie, is a criminal!", originating in
Bertolt Brecht's play
Life of Galileo. In 1985, after several mayors of cities bombed by the
Luftwaffe were invited by the SPD to
Nuremberg under the slogan "Never again war from German soil!", Geißler rhetorically asked why the Social Democrats had also invited the mayors of
Dresden and
Leipzig (both then part of
communist East Germany) and cited the slogan of
Kurt Schumacher "Never another dictatorship on German soil!", contrasting it with the SPD slogan. Due to Geißler's persistent attacks against the SPD, then-chairman
Willy Brandt accused him of being "the worst demagogue in this country since
Goebbels".
Bundestag deputy Geißler first entered the
Bundestag following the
1965 federal election as a directly elected candidate for the electoral district of
Reutlingen. From 1971 to 1979, he belonged to the
Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate. From 1980 to 2002, he again served as deputy, this time as a directly elected deputy for the electoral district of
Südpfalz. Following the
first German election after
reunification in 1990, he served as deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, from January 1991 to October 1998. During a debate in the Bundestag concerning the
NATO Double-Track Decision and the stationing of Pershing II missiles by the United States of America in European countries, Geißler responded to a
Der Spiegel interview given by the deputies
Otto Schily and
Joschka Fischer (both
Greens), in which they had compared the potential
nuclear war following the stationing of the missiles with the
Holocaust, stating: While this statement was defended by advocates of the missile's stationing, several deputies accused Geißler of spreading revisionist narratives. The left-liberal FDP deputy
Hildegard Hamm-Brücher asked in this context: "What did pacifism have to do with
antisemitism in Germany?" He himself later stated in an interview with the
NDR that he was referring to pacifist movements in France and the United Kingdom, whose policy of
Appeasement had encouraged
Hitler to "attack other countries and to carry out his racist policies until they became mass murder".
State and federal minister On 18 May 1967, Geißler entered the cabinet of
Peter Altmeier, then minister-president of the state of
Rhineland-Palatinate, as Minister for Social Affairs, which he kept after Helmut Kohl replaced Altmeier in 1969. He retained the position, renamed to Minister for Social Affairs, Health and Sports, under Kohl's successor
Bernhard Vogel until 23 June 1977. During his tenure, he introduced the first kindergarten law in the history of West Germany. He also was the first to introduce a general reform of hospitals and the first law to financially support physical exercise programs. He was also the intiator and founder of the first state-run nursing services and thus considered one of the founders of the German nursing infrastructure. On the federal level, he served from 4 October 1982 to 26 September 1985 as
Federal Minister for Youth, Family and Health in the
Kohl I and
Kohl II governments. He renewed the legislation on
conscientious objection, increased parental financial assistance and parental leave, reformed the education of new physicians, and founded the Bundesstiftung Mutter und Kind. During his tenure, he decided against introducing a compulsory registration for anyone who had contracted the newly discovered
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). == Political activities after 1997 ==