Albrecht entered politics in his native Germany when he was elected to the
Lower Saxon Landtag (parliament) in 1970, and moved to Hanover with his family the following year. From 1971 to 1976, he was member of the management board of
Bahlsen. When
Alfred Kubel resigned from the office of
State Premier in 1976, Albrecht was unexpectedly elected as his successor. Since he received three more votes than his party had representatives in the Legislative Assembly, some members of the governing coalition
SPD and
FDP must have secretly voted for him. He was re-elected in state parliament elections in 1978, 1982 and 1986. In 1976, Albrecht made Hans Puvogel his minister of justice. During his tenure, Puvogel was particularly active in combatting notions of more liberal penal and rehabilitation systems. He had already set out justification for his stance in a 1935-1936 doctoral thesis. There, he wrote of the “inheritance of criminal tendencies”, of “constitutionally predisposed criminals” and “inferior people”, who would have to be “eliminated from the community”. “Only a person of value to the race” would have “a right to exist within the national community”. The state government under Ernst Albrecht used every opportunity to court former Nazis. In a 1978 speech, Deputy Premier Wilfried Hasselmann (CDU) greeted the Association of Knight's Cross Recipients, a league of former Wehrmacht (Hitler's army) officers and SS men, certifying that they had “shown courage and given an example to others”. Hasselmann declared he was “deeply impressed by the solidarity of your order. You have fulfilled your duty as soldiers in an exemplary manner. This will continue to be evident to a younger generation”. Albrecht is known for the decision to make the County of
Lüchow-Dannenberg the state's "nuclear district" where the radioactive waste dump at
Gorleben was realized. During his tenure Albrecht was embroiled in an unusually large number of political scandals; most famously, the
false flag operation ″
Celle Hole″ by the
federal intelligence agency and the special forces
GSG 9 to lay blame on the militant left-wing
Red Army Faction. In 1980, Albrecht launched a campaign for election as
Chancellor, but he lost out to fellow conservative
Franz-Josef Strauß. Albrecht did not contest the
1990 state elections. Instead, then-
President of the Bundestag and
Göttingen Member of the German Bundestag Rita Süssmuth was lead candidate. They had an agreement whereby, if re-elected, Albrecht would continue as Minister-President until 1992, then Süssmuth would take over. Süssmuth lost the 1990 state elections to
Gerhard Schröder, who later became Chancellor. ==Personal life==