Alfred Dregger

Who was Alfred Dregger?

Alfred Dregger was a German politician and a leader of the Christian Democratic Union.

Dregger was born in Münster. After graduating from a school in Werl, he entered the German Wehrmacht in 1939. He was wounded four times and served until the end of the war, when he commanded a battalion on the Eastern Front at the rank of Captain. In 1946 he began studying law and government at the Universities of Marburg and Tübingen, earning his doctorate in 1950.

Dregger served from 1956 to 1970 as Oberbürgermeister or mayor of Fulda; when first elected, he was the youngest mayor in West Germany. He also served from 1962 to 1972 as a member of the Landtag of Hesse. He was for a time leader of the CDU in that body, and in 1967 became state party chairman, an office which he held until 1982. In 1969 he was also elected as a member of the national board of the party. From 1972 to 1998 he was a representative in the German Bundestag; from 1982 to 1991 he was Chairman of the CDU/CSU group there.

Dregger was known as a staunch conservative and was a prominent member of the so-called Stahlhelm-Fraktion, a National-Conservative wing of the CDU.