Under National Socialism Still aged only 17, Willi Birkelbach joined the
Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD) in 1930. On 10 October 1938, Birkelbach was arrested by the
Gestapo. He spent those thirty months in prisons in
Butzbach and
Münster.
After 1945 National Parliament In August 1949, the newly launched
West German Republic held the
first democratic general election in which Germans had participated since
1932. Birkelbach was elected an
SPD member of it, representing the
Frankfurt south-east electoral district, gaining slightly less than 40% of the constituency vote and comfortably out-polling his CDU and FPD rival candidates. He remained a Bundestag member till retiring from the chamber on 30 September 1964. Due to the national election results during those fifteen years he was always in opposition, however.
European parliament Between 1952 and 1964, he was also a member - and from 1959 to 1964 chairman - of the Socialist group in the
European Parliament. Following the report Spain made a formal request for talks, Birkelbach became the first European Parliamentarian to pose an oral question to the commission, questioning the commission's position regarding the accession of non-democratic countries. A few months later the report was used to support the rejection of
Francoist Spain as a membership candidate. By 1958 Birkelbach was finding himself increasingly at odds with the party leadership over the
Godesberg process, and that year he did not seek re-election to the SPD national party executive. He nevertheless remained actively engaged with the
party. In 2005, now more than ninety years old, he was still appearing as a speaker in Frankfurt during the
General Election campaign.
Other public offices From 1964 to 1969, Birkelbach was employed as a secretary of state and, in effect, the head of the
State Chancelry of the
State of Hessen. During this time he employed
Christel Guillaume as a senior typist-secretary, with a desk directly outside his own office. It later emerged that Christel Guillaume was working for
East German intelligence, and in 1974 she was sentenced to an eight-year prison term for espionage. She was sent back to East Germany where she was feted as a
peace-scout ("Kundschafterin des Friedens") in 1981 as part of a wider "spy-swap". Simitis was installed as Birkelbach's deputy and there was a widespread perception that Simitis was the real moving force in the new department, but Simitis, despite having been educated in
West Germany, was Greek. (
Greece was not yet a member of the
European Community.) In 1975 Spiros Simitis belatedly obtained West German citizenship and took over as
Chief Data Protection Officer for the
State of Hessen. Birkelbach retired. But it was Birkelbach who enjoyed the distinction of being the first Data Protection Commissioner anywhere in the
German Federal Republic. ==Awards and honours (selection)==