Theodor Blank

Theodor Anton Blank (19 September 1905 – 14 May 1972) was a German politician of the CDU. He was one of the founders of the CDU in 1945.

Early life Blank was born on 19 September 1905 in Elz an der Lahn. He was the third of ten children of a carpenter and Margarete Blank (née Eufinger). His family was Roman Catholic. In 1913, the family moved to Dahlhausen, and after elementary and technical school, he received an apprenticeship as a carpenter. During the beginning of his internship, he joined the Christian trade unions, influenced by his father.

From 1930 to 1933, he worked as a trade union secretary at the Association of Christian Transport and Factory Employees of the Northern and Northwestern Ruhr Area. Blank passed his Abitur in 1936 and studied mathematics at the University of Münster. In 1939 he was conscripted to the Wehrmacht and became a first lieutenant at the end of World War II. He won one battlefield commission for bravery when he was deployed as part of the French Campaign in 1940, but was later deployed to the Soviet Union and then fought during the Battle of the Bulge. At the end of the war, in 1945, he was captured north of Dachau by the U.S. 7th Army, and was briefly held as a prisoner of war.

Political career From 1949 to 1972 he was a member of the German Bundestag, in which he served from 1965 to 1969 as deputy chief of CDU/CSU-Bundestagsfraktion.

From 1950 to 1955 he served as Special Representative of the Chancellor, leading the "Amt Blank" (Blank Agency), officially responsible for affairs relating to the Allied occupying troops, but in reality mainly charged by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer with covertly preparing the re-establishment of the German armed forces. In 1954, opponents of the rearmament prevented him from speaking to public assemblies by yelling and shouting, and lightly wounded him in one instance. After the rearmament was official, he served as the first postwar Defence Minister of Germany from 1955 to 1956 and as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 1957 to 1965.

Blank died in Bonn.