Our guest on 01.01.2012 Otto Schily, Lawyer, Politician and Former German Interior Minister

Few politicians in German post-war history have had such a surprising and varied career as 79 year old Otto Schily. In the 1970s he served as a defence lawyer for key members of the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction, in the 1980s he helped found the Green party and in the late 1990s he back German Interior Minister with the SPD party.

Otto Georg Schily was born on July 20th, 1932, in the western German town of Bochum. His father was the director of a steel company. His parents were both followers of Rudolph Steiner - which prompted the National Socialists to search their family home in 1941 and confiscate a number of books. That experience had a lasting impact on the young Schily, influencing his later political course. In the 1960s, he studied law and politics, openly sympathizing with the left-wing student movement. He opened his own legal practice in Berlin and soon served as a defense lawyer for Horst Mahler and later Gudrun Ensslin, both leading members of the terrorist Red Army Faction. A short while later, he became actively involved in politics. In 1980, he helped found the Green party in Germany. But as the years passed, he felt increasingly alienated from the party, and finally moved to the Social Democrat Party instead. The high point of his career came in 1998, when he became Interior Minister in Germany's first SPD-Green coalition government at the federal level. He quickly emerged as one of the most conservative members of Gerhard Schröder's cabinet, moving to tighten up Germany's immigration laws, increasing police powers and relaxing data protection laws. In 2009 he retired from politics. Since then he has had more time for his country estate in Tuscany and his hobbies - which include playing the piano, chess and skat. Otto Schily is now married to his second wife; he has two grown up daughters from his first marriage.

(First broadcast 23 January 2011)