Hans-Dietrich Genscher (; 21 March 1927 – 31 March 2016) was a German statesman and a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 1969 to 1974, and as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1992 (except for a two-week break in 1982, after the FDP had left the Third Schmidt cabinet), making him the longest-serving occupant of either post and the only person to have held one of these positions under two different Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1991 he was chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

A proponent of Realpolitik, Genscher has been called "a master of diplomacy".A master of diplomacy , Deutsche Welle. He is widely regarded as having been a principal "architect of German reunification". In 1991, he played a pivotal role in international diplomacy surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia by successfully pushing for international recognition of Croatia, Slovenia and other republics declaring independence, in an effort to halt "a trend towards a Greater Serbia".Recognizing Slovenia, Croatia brought peace, Genscher says , Deutsche Welle. After leaving office, he worked as a lawyer and international consultant. He was President of the German Council on Foreign Relations and was involved with several international organisations, and with former Czech President Václav Havel, he called for a Cold War museum to be built in Berlin.

Biography Early life Genscher was born on 21 March 1927 in Reideburg (Province of Saxony Anhalt), now a part of Halle, in what later became East Germany. He was the son of Hilda Kreime and Kurt Genscher. His father, a lawyer, died when Genscher was nine years old. In 1943, he was drafted to serve as a member of the Air Force Support Personnel (Luftwaffenhelfer) at the age of 16. At age 17, close to the end of the war, he and his fellow soldiers became members of the Nazi Party due to a collective application (Sammelantrag) by his Wehrmacht unit. He later said he was unaware of it at the time.Zeitgeschichte: Von Grass bis Genscher – Wer noch in der NSDAP war . Die Welt, 1 July 2007.

Late in the war, Genscher was deployed as a soldier in General Walther Wenck's 12th Army, which ostensibly was directed to relieve the siege of Berlin. After the German surrender he was an American and British prisoner of war, but was released after two months.Ulrich Herbert, Universität Freiburg, Darmstädter Echo, Samstag, 13 June 2015, p. 5. Following World War II, he studied law and economics at the universities of Halle and Leipzig (1946–1949) and joined the East German Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD) in 1946.

Political career In 1952, Genscher fled to West Germany, where he joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He passed his second state examination in law in Hamburg in 1954 and became a solicitor in Bremen. During these early years after the war, Genscher continuously struggled with illness. From 1956 to 1959 he was a research assistant of the FDP parliamentary group in Bonn. From 1959 to 1965 he was the FDP group managing director, while from 1962 to 1964 he was National Secretary of the FDP.

In 1965 Genscher was elected on the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP list to the West German parliament and remained a member of parliament until his retirement in 1998. He was elected deputy national chairman in 1968. From 1969 he served as minister of the interior in the SPD-FDP coalition government led by Chancellor Willy Brandt.

In 1974 he became foreign minister and vice chancellor, both posts he would hold for 18 years. From 1 October 1974 to 23 February 1985 he was Chairman of the FDP. It was during his tenure as party chairman that the FDP switched from being the junior member of social-liberal coalition to being the junior member of the 1982 coalition with the CDU/CSU. In 1985 he gave up the post of national chairman. After his resignation as Foreign Minister, Genscher was appointed honorary chairman of the FDP in 1992.

Federal Minister of the Interior After the federal election of 1969 Genscher was instrumental in the formation of the social-liberal coalition of chancellor Willy Brandt and was on 22 October 1969 appointed as federal minister of the interior. In 1972, while minister for the interior, Genscher rejected Israel's offer to send an Israeli special forces unit to Germany to deal with the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. He offered himself as a hostage under the condition that the Israeli athletes would be released, but the leader of the terror group rejected that offer. A flawed rescue attempt by German police forces at Fürstenfeldbruck air base resulted in a bloody shootout, which left all eleven hostages, five terrorists, and one German policeman dead. Genscher then offered to resign as Minister of the Interior to chancellor Brandt, but Brandt rejected the offer. Genscher's popularity with Israel declined further when he endorsed the release of the three captured attackers following the hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft on 29 October 1972.

In the SPD–FDP coalition, Genscher helped shape Brandt's policy of deescalation with the communist East, commonly known as Ostpolitik, which was continued under chancellor Helmut Schmidt after Brandt's resignation in 1974. He would later be a driving factor in continuing this policy in the new conservative-liberal coalition under Helmut Kohl.

Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister In the negotiations on a coalition government of SPD and FDP following the 1976 elections, it took Genscher 73 days to reach agreement with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.Quentin Peel (22 September 2013), Coalition uncertainty hangs over Angela Merkel victory Financial Times.

As Foreign Minister, Genscher stood for a policy of compromise between East and West, and developed strategies for an active policy of détente and the continuation of the East–West dialogue with the USSR. He was widely regarded a strong advocate of negotiated settlements to international problems.Stephen Kinzer (22 March 1991), Genscher At Eye of Policy Debate The New York Times. As a popular story on Genscher's preferred method of shuttle diplomacy has it, "two Lufthansa jets crossed over the Atlantic, and Genscher was on both".William Tuohy (11 June 1989), Bonn's Genscher Views Gorbachev Reforms as 'Historic Opportunity' Los Angeles Times.

Genscher was a major player in the negotiations on the text of the Helsinki Accords. In December 1976, the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City accepted Genscher's proposal of an anti-terrorism convention in New York,Drafting of an international convention against taking hostages which was set among other things, to respond to demands from hostage-takers under any circumstances.

Genscher was one of the FDP's driving forces when, in 1982, the party switched sides from its coalition with the SPD to support the CDU/CSU in their Constructive vote of no confidence to have incumbent Helmut Schmidt replaced with opposition leader Helmut Kohl as Chancellor. The reason for this was the increase in the differences between the coalition partners, particularly in economic and social policy. The switch was controversial, not least in his own party.

At several points in his tenure, he irritated the governments of the United States and other allies of Germany by appearing not to support Western initiatives fully. "During the Cold War, his penchant to seek the middle ground at times exasperated United States policy-makers who wanted a more decisive, less equivocal Germany", according to Tyler Marshall.Tyler Marshall (28 April 1992), Genscher Quits as Germany's Foreign Minister Los Angeles Times. Genscher's perceived quasi-neutralism was dubbed Genscherism. "Fundamental to Genscherism was said to be the belief that Germany could play a role as a bridge between East and West without losing its status as a reliable NATO ally." In the 1980s, Genscher opposed the deployment of new short-range NATO missiles in Germany. At the time, the Reagan Administration questioned whether Germany was straying from the Western alliance and following a program of its own.Stephen Kinzer (28 April 1992), Genscher, Bonn's Foreign Minister 18 Years, Resigns The New York Times.

In 1984, Genscher became the first Western foreign minister to visit Tehran since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In 1988, he appointed Jürgen Hellner as West Germany's new ambassador to Libya, a post that had been vacant since the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, a tragedy which U.S. officials blamed on the government of Muammar Gaddafi.Bonn Names Libya Envoy Los Angeles Times, 1 October 1988.

Genscher's proposals frequently set the tone and direction of foreign affairs among Western Europe's democracies. He was also an active participant in the further development of the European Union, taking an active part in the Single European Act Treaty negotiations in the mid-1980s, as well as the joint publication of the Genscher-Colombo plan with Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Emilio Colombo which advocated further integration and deepening of relations in the European Union towards a more federal Europe. He later was among the politicians who pushed hard for monetary union alongside Edouard Balladur, France's finance minister, and Giuliano Amato,Tony Barber (16 December 2012), The blueprint for lopsided monetary union Financial Times. circulating a memorandum to that effect.Hans-Dietrich Genscher (26 February 1988), Memorandum für die Schaffung eines europäischen Währungsraumes und einer Europäischen Zentralbank .

Genscher retained his posts as foreign minister and vice chancellor through German reunification and until 1992 when he stepped down for health reasons.

Reunification efforts

Genscher is most respected for his efforts that helped spell the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s when Communist eastern European governments toppled, and which led to German reunification. During his time in office, he focused on maintaining stability and balance between the West and the Soviet bloc. From the beginning, he argued that the West should seek cooperation with Communist governments rather than treat them as implacably hostile; this policy was embraced by many Germans and other Europeans.

Genscher had great interest in European integration and the success of German reunification. He soon pushed for effective support of political reform processes in Poland and Hungary. For this purpose, he visited Poland to meet the chairman of Solidarity Lech Wałęsa as early as January 1980. Especially from 1987 he campaigned for an "active relaxation" policy response by the West to the Soviet efforts. In the years before German reunification, he made a point of maintaining strong ties with his birthplace Halle, which was regarded as significant by admirers and critics alike.William Tuohy (11 June 1989), Bonn's Genscher Views Gorbachev Reforms as 'Historic Opportunity' Los Angeles Times.