Hermann Scheer

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German politician

title: "Hermann Scheer" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1944-births", "2010-deaths", "members-of-the-bundestag-for-baden-württemberg", "non-fiction-environmental-writers", "people-associated-with-renewable-energy", "people-associated-with-solar-power", "politicians-from-hesse-nassau", "recipients-of-the-cross-of-the-order-of-merit-of-the-federal-republic-of-germany", "renewable-energy-economics", "members-of-the-bundestag-2009–2013", "members-of-the-bundestag-2005–2009", "members-of-the-bundestag-2002–2005", "members-of-the-bundestag-1998–2002", "members-of-the-bundestag-1994–1998", "members-of-the-bundestag-for-the-social-democratic-party-of-germany"] description: "German politician" topic_path: "economics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Scheer" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary German politician ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]

FieldValue
nameHermann Scheer
imageHermann Scheer 02.jpg
image_size200px
captionHermann Scheer (2008)
constituency_MPSocial Democrat member of the German Bundestag (parliament)
birth_date
awardsRight Livelihood Award
birth_placeWehrheim, Germany
death_date
death_placeBerlin, Germany
nationalityGerman
occupationSocial Democrat member of the German Bundestag (parliament)
President of Eurosolar (European Association for Renewable Energy)
partySocial Democrat
::

| name = Hermann Scheer | image = Hermann Scheer 02.jpg | image_size = 200px | caption = Hermann Scheer (2008) | constituency_MP = Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag (parliament) | parliament = | term_start = | term_end = | birth_date = |awards = Right Livelihood Award | birth_place = Wehrheim, Germany | death_date = | death_place = Berlin, Germany | nationality = German | occupation = Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag (parliament) President of Eurosolar (European Association for Renewable Energy) | party = Social Democrat

Hermann Scheer (29 April 1944 – 14 October 2010) was a Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag (parliament), President of Eurosolar (European Association for Renewable Energy) and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. In 1999, Scheer was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his "indefatigable work for the promotion of solar energy worldwide".

Scheer believed that the continuation of current patterns of energy supply and use would be environmentally, socially, economically, and politically damaging, with renewable energy being the only realistic alternative. Scheer had concluded that it is technically and environmentally feasible to harness enough solar radiation to achieve a total replacement of the foclear (fossil/nuclear) energy system by a global renewable energy economy. The main obstacle to such a change is seen to be political, not technical or economic.

Life

Scheer was born in Wehrheim, and was an excellent swimmer and member of the national youth pentathlon team. He became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1965 during his military service as an officer in the Bundeswehr. From 1967 to 1972, Scheer studied law, politics, social sciences and economics at the Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg and the Free University of Berlin, graduating with a degree in political science and public law. In 1979, he received his Dr. rer. pol. degree from the Free University of Berlin.

As a student, he was involved in the re-establishment of the Social Democratic University Association in Heidelberg. In 1973, he became state chairman of the Baden-Württemberg Young Socialists and in 1974 their deputy federal chairman. Scheer supported the new, emphatically socialist course of the SPD youth organization, which was influenced by the student movement.

He worked as postgrade scientist at Universität Stuttgart and as a scientist (1976 till 1980) at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (a large nuclear and basic research center). He became a member of the Bundestag in 1980, representing Baden-Württemberg; in 1993, he also became a member of the federal steering committee (Bundesvorstand) of the Social Democratic Party. Scheer had a solid track record as an anti-establishment figure within his own party.

In 1988, he was one of the co-founders of the non-profit association for renewable energies Eurosolar. Scheer had been its honorary president ever since, and his wife was its full-time managing director. Since June 2001, Scheer had been co-founder and honorary president of the newly founded World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE).

From 1993 to 2009, he was a member of the SPD's federal executive committee. He had a significant influence on the SPD's environmental and energy policy. In the 2008 state election for the Landtag of Hesse, Scheer was originally pegged as minister for development, environment and economics in the shadow cabinet of Andrea Ypsilanti, candidate for Minister-President of Hesse in the election. He announced ambitious energy policy plans, which failed to gain favour with his own party and possible coalition partners. Leading SPD figures such as Jürgen Walter and Wolfgang Clement, a former Minister President of North Rhine Westphalia from the right wing of the party, who later left the party, were rather critical. Scheer however believed Ypsilanti's strategies would result in a big triumph of his party at the federal elections 2009. The election result saw the christian-liberal governing parties CDU and FDP lose the majority they had held since 1999 in the traditionally social democratic state. Yet, the result was very difficult because a left majority was not possible without the party The Left (which had been a merger of the ex-communist PDS and left SPD and labour union members, disappointed by the politics of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder). Although Ypsilanti had promised not to work with The Left, a party to which the SPD still had a controversial relationship but also had already worked with many years ago in other states, she refused to govern in a grand coalition under the CDU and did not want to give away the chance to form a new left government. So she successfully negotiated a minority coalition with the Greens, which would be tolerated by The Left. The final list for the proposed government put Scheer as secretary of a downsized ministry of economics still including the task to lead the transition to renewable energies. Ypsilanti's attempt to officially form her government was set to fail when four SPD representatives declined to elect a government with the support of The Left. This led to a disastrous result for the SPD in the following snap election in 2009, in which Scheer did not take part anymore, with CDU and FDP returned to a government majority. He did not stand for re-election to the federal executive committee in 2009, explaining in a letter that it had become "all too common" to "engage in political power games, produce sham solutions, and take personnel considerations into account that have nothing to do with the issues at hand," and that he did not want to be involved in this.

Scheer was chairman of the International Parliamentary Forum for Renewable Energy. He had been promoting the founding of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) for a long time, and IRENA was founded on 26 January 2009 in Bonn.

He was one of the co-founders and curator of the Institut Solidarische Moderne (ISM), which was founded in January 2010. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the Energiewerk Foundation and a member of the World Future Council.

His book Energy Autonomy was instrumental in the making of the film Die 4. Revolution – Energy Autonomy. Scheer advocated for the municipal ownership of utility companies, and was a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations.

In 2010, Scheer died from heart failure in a hospital in Berlin after an unspecified short and severe illness. His wife (since 1970), Irm Pontenagel, managed the solar lobby association Eurosolar for decades. His daughter Nina Scheer managed an eco management consulting company and is herself a member of the Bundestag.

Member of the Parliament

Scheer had been a member of the German Bundestag since 1980. From 1982 to 1990, he was the SPD parliamentary group spokesman for disarmament and arms control, and then became chairman of the German Bundestag's subcommittee on Disarmament and Arms Control. He had been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 1983. From 1994 to 1997, he was chairman of the Committee on Agriculture. In the German Bundestag, he was one of the initiators of many laws promoting renewable energies, including the Feed-in Tariff Act for Renewable Energies (1990), the amendment to the Federal Building Act to give priority to renewable energies (1996), the 100,000 Roofs Programme (1999), the Renewable Energy Sources Act (2000) Act on Tax Exemption for Biofuels.

Alongside Michaele Hustedt, Hans-Josef Fell (both Alliance 90/The Greens) and Dietmar Schütz (SPD), Scheer is considered one of the founders of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, which included, for example, a cost-covering feed-in tariff for renewable energies such as solar power and became a model for 47 countries around the world.

Scheer was the SPD's direct candidate in the Waiblingen constituency, but was always elected to the Bundestag via the SPD's state list for Baden-Württemberg.

After his death, SPD politician Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter took over his mandate via the German list system.

Political positions

Since the late 1980s, Scheer had been campaigning at national and international level for the general replacement of nuclear and fossil fuels.

In the 1990s, Scheer was among the politicians who warned against the NATO eastward expansion. In his essay 'NATO Eastward Expansion – A Historically Wrong Course' published in 1996, he described the reasoning behind it as 'flimsy and contradictory' and its consequences as 'risky and dangerous'. It would transform NATO from a defensive alliance into a 'hegemonic alliance', further humiliate Russia in its weak phase and further erode Gorbachev’s and, initially, Yeltsin's visible willingness to disarm. Domestically, it would weaken Russia's democratisation process. It would also keep European countries in a state of 'security policy immaturity' or under US 'tutelage'. Scheer advocated a European security architecture independent of the United States within the framework of the OSCE and the WEU. In 1999, he distanced himself from the Bundeswehr's NATO mission during the Kosovo conflict, calling the intervention a war crime, which led to clashes with fellow SPD members.

Scheer's patron, former development aid minister and SPD politician Erhard Eppler, said of Hermann Scheer's achievements in raising awareness of the value of renewable energies:

Scheer criticised the privatisation of Deutsche Bahn AG and was involved in the 'Bürgerbahn statt Börsenbahn' (Citizens' Railway Instead of Stock Exchange Railway) initiative. In 2007, he accused the SPD leadership of pushing ahead with privatisation without democratic discussion, but gave in to the compromise proposal for partial privatisation of the railways during subsequent negotiations in 2008.

Scheer's speeches were featured in the documentary film Let's Make Money (2008) on various aspects of the development of the global financial system. He also played a central role in the film The 4th Revolution – Energy Autonomy (released in March 2010, a few months before Scheer's death), in which he advocated the global use of renewable energies.

Hermann Scheer was a critic of the Desertec desert power project, seeing the project as a reinforcement of the monopoly of energy companies and considering the transport and investment costs to be too high. In the context of the discussion and protests surrounding the Stuttgart 21 construction project, Scheer spoke out in favour of a more direct democracy and saw 'an alienation between citizens and elected representatives'.

Instead of the term renewable energy, Scheer often used the term permanent energy, which is Danish.

Awards

  • 1990 Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

  • 1997 Honorary Doctorate from the Technical University of Varna, Bulgaria

  • 1998 World Prize for Solar Energy

  • 1999 Right Livelihood Award

  • 2000 World Prize for Bioenergy

  • 2001 Wilhelm Dröscher Prize

  • 2001 Book Prize from the German Environmental Foundation for the book Climate Change, written together with Carl Amery

  • 2002 Hero for the Green Century – Honoured by the American TIME magazine

  • 2004 World Prize for Wind Energy

  • 2004 Gold Medal of the Federal Association of Hydropower Plants

  • 2004 Global Renewable Energy Leadership Award

  • 2005 Solar World Einstein Award

  • 2007 Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lüneburg

  • 2008 European Clean Tech Pioneer Award

  • 2008 Honorary Professorship at Tongji University in Shanghai, PR China

  • 2009 Karl Böer Medal of Merit for Solar Energy

  • 2011 Honorary President of Eurosolar, posthumously

Honours

Hermann Scheer is the namesake for two institutions, the Hermann Scheer School in Berlin-Oberschöneweide (upper secondary school with a focus on economics) and the Centre for Renewable Energies in Elberswalde, as well as streets in Kassel and Lichtenau.

Hermann Scheer Foundation

A few weeks after Hermann Scheer's death, the Hermann Scheer Foundation (German: Hermann-Scheer-Stiftung) was established in Berlin as a non-profit legal entity under civil law. The Hermann Scheer Foundation has an executive board and a foundation council. At the time of its establishment, the foundation had assets of €125,000.

The foundation was established to continue Hermann Scheer's life's work and to contribute to the transition to the age of renewable energies. Among other things, the Hermann Scheer Foundation organises symposia and matinees, operates the information platform Energieallee A 7 in cooperation with Eurosolar and publishes various publications.

Books

References

References

  1. [http://www.dea.org.au/node/144 Book Review: Energy Autonomy. The economic, social and technological case for renewable energy] {{webarchive. link. (29 August 2007)
  2. [http://www.rightlivelihood.org/scheer.html Right Livelihood Award] {{webarchive. link. (11 October 2007)
  3. Connolly, Kate. (2010-10-18). "Hermann Scheer obituary". The Guardian.
  4. (2010-10-15). "Sie nannten ihn "Sonnengott"".
  5. "Im Gedenken an Hermann Scheer".
  6. "Hermann Scheer".
  7. Administrator. "Hermann Scheer - Biographisches über Hermann Scheer".
  8. (1975-11-30). "Kampf ums Überleben". Der Spiegel.
  9. "Prominente Alumnae und Alumni {{!}} Für Alumnae und Alumni {{!}} Universität Stuttgart".
  10. (2010-10-15). "Träger des Alternativen Nobelpreises: SPD-Politiker Hermann Scheer ist tot". Der Spiegel.
  11. "Essay: Der Windmacher - WELT".
  12. "". link
  13. "Committee of Chairpersons".
  14. [[Die Welt]]: ''[https://www.welt.de/politik/article1571459/Clement_warnt_vor_Wahl_von_Andrea_Ypsilanti.html Clement warnt vor Wahl von Andrea Ypsilanti],'' 19. Januar 2008
  15. [[Spiegel Online]] 03. November 2008, 09:25, Hermann Scheer Ypsilantis Windmacher (Scheer- Ypsilantis Windmaker). Carsten Volkery
  16. [http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl-2009-scheer-prophezeit-spd-triumph_aid_344358.html] 29 October 2008 [[Focus (German magazine)]]
  17. deutschlandfunk.de. (2009-01-20). ""Hier ist eine mediale Treibjagd gelaufen"".
  18. (2009-10-24). "Auch Scheer schmeißt die Brocken hin".
  19. "The Long Road to IRENA".
  20. "Gründungsmitglieder".
  21. "Wählermobilisierung: Ypsilanti meldet sich mit linker "Denkfabrik" zurück - Deutschland - Politik - Handelsblatt".
  22. ENERGIEN, ERNEUERBARE. (2010-10-15). "Vordenker - Eurosolar-Präsident Hermann Scheer ist gestorben".
  23. [https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/0,1518,684054,00.html Der Spiegel] (german) "2006 Idea"
  24. "Supporters". Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly.
  25. [https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,723373,00.html Der Spiegel]
  26. [http://www.stern.de/politik/spd-umweltexperte-hermann-scheer-gestorben-1614032.html Der Stern] {{webarchive. link. (18 October 2010)
  27. "Nina Scheer bei UnternehmensGrün e.V.".
  28. (2024-10-21). "Neue Quellen für die Forschung: Nachlass Hermann Scheer im AdsD".
  29. "Scheer to receive 2009 Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Award".
  30. "Aufstand gegen Biosprit-Pläne - WELT".
  31. Weiland, Severin. (2006-05-18). "Biokraftstoffe: Steinbrück muss weiter zittern". Der Spiegel.
  32. Brackel, Benjamin von. "EEG - Auf in die letzte Schlacht". Der Freitag.
  33. Grefe, Christiane. (2010-10-15). "Hermann Scheer, praktischer Visionär und Urdemokrat". Die Zeit.
  34. Zeitung, Stuttgarter. "SPD-Nominierung im Bundestagswahlkreis Waiblingen: Wahlkreis Waiblingen fest in CDU-Hand".
  35. (2019-01-24). "Scheers Nachfolgerin".
  36. (2010-10-15). "Trauer um Hermann Scheer".
  37. (1996). "NATO-Osterweiterung: Eine historisch falsche Weichenstellung on JSTOR". Sicherheit und Frieden (S+F) / Security and Peace.
  38. Zumach, Andreas. (1999-04-06). "Zweifel über die wirklichen Ziele". Die Tageszeitung: taz.
  39. Erhard Eppler und Niko Paech: Was Sie da vorhaben, wäre ja eine Revolution… Ein Streitgespräch über Wachstum, Politik und eine Ethik des Genug. oekom, München 2016, ISBN 978-3-96006-166-3 (Zitat aus Kap. 4 Seite 148).
  40. (2009-09-02). "Beck und Basis beißen sich".
  41. (2007-10-11). "Demokratie in der SPD - Kritiker der Bahn-Privatisierung ruhig gestellt".
  42. (2008-04-17). "Der letzte basistreue Sozialdemokrat".
  43. "DIE 4. REVOLUTION – ENERGY AUTONOMY – Offizielle Filmwebsite – Ab 18. März im Kino".
  44. magazin, Matthias Kaufmann, manager. (2009-07-13). "Wüstenstrom: "Die Kalkulation von Desertec ist absurd"".
  45. Nachrichten, Stuttgarter. "Stuttgart 21: Den Konflikt entschärfen".
  46. (2020-01-10). "Power to the people - Hermann Scheer". ee mag.
  47. Scheer, Hermann. (2012-11-15). "Der energethische Imperativ". Antje Kunstmann.
  48. (15 November 2012). "Der energethische Imperativ". Antje Kunstmann.
  49. "Hermann-Scheer-Schule".
  50. "Eberswalder Zentrum für Erneuerbare Energien erhält Namen des EUROSOLAR-Ehrenpräsidenten Hermann Scheer {{!}} Hermann Scheer Stiftung".
  51. "E.I.C.H.E. e.V. - willkommen {{!}} powitanie {{!}} welcome".
  52. (2011-02-17). "Scheer-Straße kommt im Spätsommer".
  53. "Hermann Scheer weist in Lichtenau den Weg {{!}} windmesse.de".
  54. Archiv. (2011-01-05). "Hermann-Scheer-Stiftung anerkannt. Ziel: 100 % erneuerbare Energien".
  55. "Hermann-Scheer-Stiftung anerkannt". klimaretter.info.
  56. "Über die Stiftung {{!}} Hermann Scheer Stiftung".
  57. "Satzung der Hermann-Scheer-Stiftung".
  58. "Hermann-Scheer-Stiftung anerkannt - Stiftungsrat infomiert über Ziele und Ausrichtung der Stiftung".
  59. "Aktivitäten {{!}} Hermann Scheer Stiftung".
  60. "Symposium im Gedenken an Hermann Scheer".
  61. "Stromnetze und Speichertechnologien für die Energiewende – Eine Analyse mit Bezug zur Diskussion des EEG 2016".

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