lit a candle 11h agoMy father always said Klaus Hänsch was one of the few who actually believed what he was saying about Europe. He'll be missed.
Their story
Klaus Hänsch was born on 15 December 1938 in Sprottau in Lower Silesia, then part of Germany and today Szprotawa in Poland. In 1945 his family fled west and settled in Flensburg, where he finished secondary school with the Abitur in 1959. After basic military service (1959-1960) he studied political…
Klaus Hänsch was born on 15 December 1938 in Sprottau in Lower Silesia, then part of Germany and today Szprotawa in Poland. In 1945 his family fled west and settled in Flensburg, where he finished secondary school with the Abitur in 1959. After basic military service (1959-1960) he studied political science, history and sociology in Cologne, Paris and at the Free University of Berlin, completing a Diplom in political science in 1965. In Cologne he joined the student corps Silingia Breslau. He worked as an assistant at Berlin's Otto-Suhr-Institut, earned a doctorate in 1969 under Gilbert Ziebura, and in 1968-1969 edited the Franco-German political journal Dokumente.
From 1969 to 1970 he served as a referent on cultural affairs under the Elysee Treaty for North Rhine-Westphalia Minister-President Heinz Kuhn. From 1970 to 1979 he worked as press and specialist adviser to NRW science minister Johannes Rau. Parallel teaching at the University of Duisburg led to an honorary professorship in 1984. He joined the SPD in 1964, chaired the Jungsozialisten in Kreis Mettmann from 1970, and led the SPD Unterbezirk Mettmann from 1972 to 1986 while making Erkrath his lasting local political home.
In 1979 he was elected to the first directly elected European Parliament and remained an MEP until 13 July 2009, sitting with the Party of European Socialists. He served for long stretches on the Foreign Affairs committee, as a substitute on Constitutional Affairs, as chair of the EP delegation for relations with the United States (1987-1989), and as PES group vice-chairman from 1989 to 2009 except during his presidency. On 19 July 1994 he became President of the European Parliament, succeeding Egon Klepsch, and served until 14 January 1997, when Jose Maria Gil-Robles succeeded him. German accounts credit his presidency with internal parliamentary reforms and, above all, with establishing public hearings of designated European Commissioners before the Parliament's vote of confidence in the Commission as a whole. He addressed European Councils including Essen (December 1994) and Madrid (December 1995), pressing governments on monetary union, eastern enlargement, majority voting and codecision.
In 2002-2003 he represented the European Parliament on the praesidium of the Convention on the Future of Europe and was the only German member deeply involved in drafting the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, then representing the Parliament in the subsequent intergovernmental conference. After leaving the EP he remained an active speaker and local party member; in 2019 he unveiled Erkrath's Europaplatz street sign in Hochdahl, and in 2024 he marked sixty years of SPD membership. He held the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with Star and Sash (1996), the Wilhelm-Leuschner-Medaille of Hesse (2000), the Merite Europeen (2006), honorary doctorates from Loughborough and the Poznan University of Economics, and honorary citizenship of his birth town Sprottau/Szprotawa. He wrote books and essays on France, European democracy and German responsibility in European unification, and maintained a personal website collecting speeches, interviews and photographs.
Hänsch died in Erkrath on 4 August 2026, aged 87. The funeral service was held on 14 August 2026 at the chapel of Erkrath cemetery, followed by burial; the family (led in the notice by Ilse Hänsch) asked for UNICEF Germany donations instead of flowers. Cause of death was not made public in the open sources used for this memorial. This page is for the German SPD politician and European Parliament President from Erkrath and Sprottau only, not Klaus-Heiner Lehne, Klaus Törnudd, or Klaus-Michael Kühne.
Biography adapted from EN/DE Wikipedia; RP Online 2026-08-05; NRWSPD; FAZ Traueranzeige; IEP; klaus-haensch.de; EP archives.
In their own words
“Do not expect me now to present a list of demands from the European Parliament. Do not expect complaints about the European Parliament's inadequate rights.”
Speech as EP President to the Essen European Council, 9-10 December 1994. europarl.europa.eu/summits/ess4_en.htm
“I am grateful for the opportunity which you have given me to set out for you the majority positions of the Union institution which can be sure, as you yourselves can, of democratic legitimacy through elections.”
Essen European Council speech, 9-10 December 1994. EP summit archive.
“This European Council is unlike any of the others. For the first time it is actually confronted with the consequences of two historic decisions taken by the Union in the past: the creation of monetary union and enlargement to the east and south.”
Madrid European Council speech, 15-16 December 1995. europarl.europa.eu/summits/mad5_en.htm
“The very existence of the Union depends on reconciling these objectives.”
Madrid European Council, 1995, on monetary union versus enlargement flexibility. EP summit archive.
“More and more people associate the European Union with social breakdown and the destruction of jobs. We must link it again with the creation of jobs and social progress.”
Madrid European Council speech, 15-16 December 1995. EP summit archive.
“Klaus Hänsch hat gezeigt, dass politische Verwurzelung vor Ort und Verantwortung fur Europa zusammengehoren.”
SPD Kreisvorsitzender Pat Fassbender-Kress after Hänsch's death, quoted in RP Online, 5 August 2026. About him, not by him.
Photos
2Official European Parliament President portrait of Klaus Hänsch (1994).
by People Forever
