Minister, Leader of The Parliamentary SPD, and Party Leader
In December 1972 Chancellor Willy Brandt made Vogel Minister for Regional Planning, Building, and Urban Development; Brandt's successor, Helmut Schmidt, made him Minister of Justice in 1974.
After the elections of 1983 Vogel was one of the Berlin MPs in the German parliament. Herbert Wehner, the previous Leader of the Parliamentary SPD, nominated him as his successor, and he held that office until 1991.
Under his leadership the Parliamentary SPD turned against atomic energy after the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
From 1987 to 1991 Vogel was also the Leader of the Social Democratic Party.
He was an MP in the Bundestag until 1994. "I've never pushed myself into the foreground", he said of himself.
After 1994 Vogel withdrew from active politics. But he has continued to be a member of the project "Against forgetting, in favour of democracy", which tries to spread basic democratic values, as a contrast to the dictatorships of the Nazis and of the SED. Vogel was one of its founders in 1993 and its first chairman.
He received the Galinsky Prize for promoting a better understanding between the Jewish community and its social surroundings (1998) and the highest prize of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany, the Leo Baeck Prize (2001).
From 2001 to 2005 Vogel belonged to the National Ethics Council on the ethical aspects of the questions of biotechnology and its consequences for individuals and society.
Read more about this topic: Hans-Jochen Vogel
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