Hansjoachim Walther

Hansjoachim Walther (16 December 1939 – 17 January 2005) was a German politician and mathematician.

He was leader of the German Social Union, a right-wing party modelled after the Bavarian CSU, during the Wende, serving as their parliamentary leader in the Volkskammer. After German reunification, he was co-opted to the Bundestag and appointed as Minister for Special Affairs.

Personal life and death Walther was born in 1939 in Bütow, Farther Pomerania, now Bytów, Poland to Joachim Walther and Erika Dobat, two civil servants. His family fled to Zeitz in 1945. In East Germany, he first completed an apprenticeship as Spitzendreher, a metalworking profession, before studying mathematics at the Dresden University of Technology. Walther achieved a doctorate in 1966. Thereafter until his death, he followed a career as an academic at the Ilmenau University of Technology.

Walther, who is the namesake of the Walther graph, died in 2005 of a heart attack during a soccer game.

Political career East Germany

During the Peaceful Revolution, Walther first cofounded the German Forum Party in 1989, before cofounding the newly established German Social Union in 1990. The DSU was a right-wing party modelled after the Bavarian CSU, which financially supported it in hopes of establishing a presence outside of Bavaria.

Walther (second row, left of center) in April 1990 at the signing of the coalition agreement. In the 1990 Volkskammer election, Walther was the lead candidate of his party. He was elected to the Volkskammer for Suhl. The German Social Union, as part of the victorious Alliance for Germany, entered government, Walther playing a role as leader of the DSU parliamentary group. In the Volkskammer, the DSU under his leadership advocated for an immediate German reunification, even as early as August. His ascension to the leadership meant a further right-wing drift of the party, causing some, most notably former leader and Minister for Economic Cooperation Hans-Wilhelm Ebeling as well as Deputy Minister-President of East Germany Peter-Michael Diestel, to leave the party in protest. was disorganized, both in terms of the internal organisation, most notably membership records,

The internal turmoil of the party also stoked conflict; ministers Ebeling and Diestel had left the DSU (both joining the CDU shortly thereafter), but stayed on as ministers. Walther called for their removal, The DSU, already fearing it would miss the five percent threshold nationwide, had originally advocated for the five percent threshold being separate for former East Germany.

The party also failed to make inroads in the 1990 state elections in former East Germany and after the CSU dropped its immense financial support, the party quickly faded into irrelevancy. Walther himself joined the Christian Democratic Union in 1993, for which he was elected to the Ilm-Kreis district council.