Personal Characteristics
Originally on the right wing of the SPD, Hans-Jochen Vogel became more and more liberal in his views, for instance, with regard to the legislation about asylum-seekers, referenda, or the protection of personal data from the state. A fact-finding mission to twelve successor states of the former Soviet Union in 1992, when he met numerous presidents, ministers, but also leaders of the opposition, of the Orthodox Church, and of Islam, broadened his outlook, too.
As far as his party was concerned, Vogel was a mediator between the various wings and a centre of integration. But his loyalty and devotion to the SPD did not prevent him from seeking co-operation with the other parties. As the chairman of his party's delegates in a parliamentary commission for reviewing the constitution, he achieved the inclusion of the principles of the protection of the environment and of the promotion of women in society as political aims in the Basic Law. Nevertheless, as he said in his final speech in parliament, he would have liked to see a better representation of East German values in the German constitution after unification.
Hans-Jochen Vogel himself summed up his political attitude best in the following statement: "I am a Social Democrat who would like to reconcile something of a vision with the rather stringent and inexorable knowledge that politics cannot be conducted with clouds of words, but with solid work and craftsmanship."
Vogel is the older brother of CDU politician Bernhard Vogel.
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