Gerhart Baum was born to a German father and a Russian mother. His paternal ancestors, whose roots lay in Plauen in the SaxonVogtland, originally worked as craftsmen before later generations were able to pursue academic professions. His mother was born in Moscow; her own mother was from Łódź and of Polish ethnicity and her Ukrainian-born father was originally from Kharkiv.[1] In 1917, her family had fled from Russia to Germany as a result of the October Revolution.[2] In his childhood Baum was a forced member of the Hitler Youth. After the bombing of Dresden, his mother left the city in February 1945 and fled with her three children to Lake Tegernsee in Bavaria. His father, who had fought on the Eastern Front during the war, was captured by the Soviets and later died in captivity. In 1950, Baum's family moved to Cologne.
After graduating from school in 1953, Baum studied law at the University of Cologne and subsequently worked as a lawyer.
From 1978 until 1982, Baum served as Federal Minister of the Interior in the government of ChancellorHelmut Schmidt. During his time in office, he liberalized routine loyalty investigations of candidates for public‐service jobs, a controversial practice intended to control radical activity that had led to a profound and disruptive debate about the extent of democracy in West Germany.[4] In 1981, with the backing of economics minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff, he asked the German car industry to agree on goals to tighten emissions standards and cut fuel consumption on a voluntary basis.[5]
Between 2000 and 2001, Baum and two other lawyers together represented about three-quarters of the Air France Flight 4590 crash victims' families. In May 2001, they reached a monetary settlement for compensation from Air France.[6] According to people familiar with terms of the settlement, it was between $100 million and $125 million (114.1 million euros and 142.6 million euros), an extraordinarily high sum for a plane-crash settlement in Europe at the time.[7]
In 2009, Germany's national railway company Deutsche Bahn commissioned Baum and former justice minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin with investigating allegations according to which the company had, in violation of privacy laws and corporate guidelines repeatedly and on a large scale compared personal data of its employees with those of suppliers, in a bid to uncover possible corruption.[11]
In 2016, Baum joined members of the Green Party, lawyers, a journalist and a doctor in bringing suits against Germany's 2009 antiterrorism law before the Federal Constitutional Court, arguing that covert surveillance, particularly in private homes and in the intimacy of bedrooms or bathrooms, could entangle innocent third parties. In a 6-to-2 vote, the court ruled that the antiterrorism laws were partly unconstitutional and demanded tighter control over surveillance.[12]
In 2022, shortly before the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre, Dutch lawyers Carry and Alexander Knoops asked Baum to intervene in the negotiations between the victims’ families and the government of ChancellorOlaf Scholz, which eventually resulted in a compensation offer totalling 28 million euros ($28 million).[13][14]
Die Finanzkrise und ihre Folgen für die Bevölkerung. Anforderungen an einen verbesserten Verbraucherschutz, in: Hecht, Janina; Robertson-von Trotha, Caroline Y., eds. (2011). Herausforderung Demokratie. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co KG. doi:10.5771/9783845232539. ISBN978-3-8452-3253-9.
Die Grundrechte im Spannungsverhältnis von Sicherheit und Freiheit, in: Robertson-von Trotha, Caroline Y., ed. (2009). 60 Jahre Grundgesetz. Nomos. doi:10.5771/9783845220345. ISBN978-3-8452-2034-5.
^"Die Stiftung – Stiftung Menschenrechte". Stiftung Menschenrechte – Wir unterstützen couragierte Frauen und Männer, die sich mit beispielhaftem Engagement für die Menschenrechte einsetzen und Gefährdete in Schutz nehmen – vor politischer Willkür und staatlichen Repressalien. (in German). 2 June 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
Speaker: Marieluise Beck-Oberdorf, Petra Kelly, Otto Schily until 3 April 1984; Annemarie Borgmann, Waltraud Schoppe, Antje Vollmer until 30./31. January 1985;
Sabine Bard, Hannegret Hönes, Christian Schmidt until 1 February 1986; Annemarie Borgmann, Hannegret Hönes, Ludger Volmer until 18 July 1986); Willi Hoss (8 September 1986)