Otto Georg Schily (SPD; born July 20, 1932) was Federal Minister of the Interior of Germany from 1998-2005, in the cabinet of former Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder.
Born in Bochum as the son of a mining plant director, he grew up in a family of anthroposophists. In 1962, he passed his second state exam after having studied law and politics in Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin; a year later, he opened his own law practice.
In the 1970s, he became a public figure as a trial lawyer, defending several terrorists of the left-wing Red Army Faction. In 1971, he represented his then-friend Horst Mahler (who would later become an advocate of the right-wing NPD); during the Stammheim trial (1975-1977), he was the only remaining attorney of Gudrun Ensslin. His principled actions were popular and earned him wide respect; though at the time, some accused him of supporting the radicals' goals.
In 1980, he joined the Green Party and was elected into the Bundestag from 1983. Due to the party's then-policy of rotating its representatives, he had to leave parliament in 1986, but he was re-elected in 1987. Increasingly estranged from the fundamentalist wing of the Greens, particularly regarding alliances with larger parties, he left the party in 1989, resigned from his seat in parliament, and joined the Social Democrats (SPD) instead – which he represented in the new Bundestag in 1990. In the following years, he was active on affairs of former East Germany and coordinating various legal policies of the SPD.
After Gerhard Schröder became Bundeskanzler in 1998, he appointed Schily Minister of the Interior. He was frequently criticized for relatively conservative policies, for example, in pushing through German anti-terrorist legislation after the September 11 terrorist attacks, which many saw as contradictory to his earlier beliefs. On the other hand, political analysts viewed him as an indispensable member of the cabinet, in order not to leave Schröder susceptible to conservative criticism on issues of crime and immigration.
With more than 70 years of age, he was the most senior member of the cabinet.
Schily is married for the second time and has two daughters from his first marriage, Jenny, born 1967 (an actress), and Anne, born 1981.
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