Hacker, Gustav

Minister of Agriculture

Born: 20.09.1900 in Lubau (Bohemia)

died: 03.06.1979 in Wiesbaden

Hacker attended the Höhere Landwirtschaftliche Landesschule in Kaaden/Bohemia, became a farmer and was involved in professional and political organizations of the German population group in Bohemia and Moravia, the so-called Sudeten Germans. In 1928, he was co-founder and chairman of the Federation of German Rural Youth in Czechoslovakia. In 1936, Hacker took over the chairmanship of the "Association of Farmers". In March 1938, he transformed his party into the Sudeten German Party (SdP), which advocated far-reaching autonomy rights for the German minority in Czechoslovakia as a political lobby of National Socialism.

After the Sudeten territories were incorporated into the German Reich in October 1938, the SdP was absorbed into the NSDAP and Hacker joined it. Hacker experienced the end of the war as an employee in the Ministry of Agriculture in occupied Prague. There, in 1945, he was sentenced to four years in prison by a "people's court" as a war criminal - the exact reasons for the sentence are still unclear. After his release from prison, Hacker moved to West Germany and continued his career in Hesse. Whether and to what extent Hacker remained committed to National Socialist ideas has not yet been researched. What is known, however, is that he was a member of the "Witikobund", an ethnic nationalist Sudeten German association founded in 1950 and based in Munich, which was classified as right-wing extremist. As an employee of the state administration, Hacker held important positions in the state support for refugees and expellees from 1950 onwards and quickly became politically active again. He joined the right-wing Gesamtdeutscher Block/Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten (GB/BHE) and was elected to the Hessian state parliament for his party. He was an intermittent member of this parliament between 1954 and 1964.

Hacker reached the pinnacle of his political career when he was appointed Hessian State Minister for Agriculture and Forestry in the Zinn II cabinet. During his 12-year term of office, he made a lasting contribution to the implementation of the Great Hesse Plan in agriculture and as the initiator of the "Our village should become more beautiful" campaign. After leaving the state government, Hacker served as President of the Farmers' Association of Expellees in Bonn. In 1965, he was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with Star and Shoulder Ribbon for his political services to the Federal Republic and in 1970 the Freiherr-vom-Stein Plaque.