The dragon slayer from Hambach Castle: A personal obituary for Klaus Töpfer

Janpeter Schilling

In the numerous obituaries for Klaus Töpfer, he is described as "the CDU's bad green conscience" (Spiegel), "who didn't warm to the Saarlanders" (Rheinpfalz) or as the "mischievous CDU man with a kiss on the hand and a beer" (Die Zeit). Attributions such as "pioneer", "thought leader", "admonisher" and "authority" are repeated. His swimming across the Rhine in 1988 as Federal Environment Minister rarely goes unmentioned. Everyone seems to agree that he stood up for "the environment and posterity" (taz) like hardly any other politician, and did so with a great deal of humor.

I got to know Klaus Töpfer in December 2016. As part of the inaugural lecture of my Klaus Töpfer Endowed Junior Professorship for Land Use Conflicts at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Töpfer gave a speech on sustainability in the Anthropocene. The event took place at Hambach Castle near Neustadt an der Weinstraße. To reach the castle, the guests had to fight their way up the mountain through thick fog. "The only thing missing was that you had to kill a dragon," commented Töpfer on the setting. There is no doubt that Töpfer was a humorous man and a gifted speaker. However, he was not only committed to environmental protection and sustainability, but also to peaceful coexistence and social cohesion. It was particularly important to him to think about the health of the environment and people together. Today, we know that a pure fixation on ever more growth is detrimental to the planet and thus to the basis of our existence. Töpfer already knew this decades ago. He has campaigned for sustainable future prospects like no other. This last became clear to me in November 2023, when Töpfer expressed great concern about the state of the world at an event to mark his 85th birthday and also voiced clear criticism of his own party - at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Academy, mind you.

Since his speech at Hambach Castle, we have remained in constant contact and discussed current developments. I greatly appreciated his differentiated and analytical perspective. I would particularly like to thank Klaus Töpfer for his support of the Rhineland-Palatinate Peace Academy and also - very personally - for his support of my career. In Klaus Töpfer, we are losing a personality who worked passionately and at the same time empathetically and humorously for a more sustainable world. Töpfer was also concerned about the increasing popularity of anti-democratic forces. Klaus Töpfer died on June 8, 2024, the next day the AfD won the second most votes in the European elections.