When I cycle through the south of Göttingen, I often pick a route along the Wendebachstausee – an artificial lake that is a beloved recreation zone. Getting there also means passing a memorial stone with a wide view over the water that remembers my former political companion Klaus Peter Bruns. It was set-up on his 100th birthday which he unfortunately missed by three years. He came there daily to swim but he also spent years as a politician defending the Wendebachstausee for the people of the region.
Klaus Peter Bruns was a Lower Saxon farmer and Social Democrat who became one of the defining regional politicians around Göttingen in the second half of the twentieth century. After working in agriculture both before and immediately after the Second World War, he took over the Domäne Reinhausen at Gleichen as tenant in 1960 and built his reputation as a pragmatic, hands-on landowner who understood rural life from the ground up. His involvement in founding the Agrarsoziale Gesellschaft in 1947 showed how strongly he cared about social questions in the countryside, and he remained tied to that organisation for decades, later serving as its chair and then as honorary board member. Even in old age, he followed agricultural and rural policy with a keen, almost undiminished interest.
Politically, Klaus Peter devoted himself to local government before anything else, spending half a century in the council of Reinhausen and later Gleichen, as well as in the district council of Göttingen from the mid‑1950s. He served as mayor of Reinhausen and then Gleichen from 1954 to 1981, and twice as Landrat (district chief executive) of the Landkreis Göttingen, which made him a central figure for the whole region. On top of that came his long service in the Niedersächsischer Landtag from 1963 through multiple elections, where he eventually acted as Alterspräsident, the senior member who opens parliamentary sessions, between 1986 and 1990. The Bundesrepublik recognised his contribution with high decorations, including the Großes Verdienstkreuz and later the Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern, as well as the Lower Saxony State Medal.
His time as Lower Saxony’s Minister for Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten, appointed in 1970 under Ministerpräsident Alfred Kubel, pushed him from regional to state‑wide prominence. In that role he was closely involved with modernising rural infrastructure and helped to introduce the first waste disposal act at state level in Germany, which was quite forward‑looking for its time. Even after he left the cabinet in 1976, he remained an authoritative voice on agricultural and environmental matters, and younger politicians from the SPD and beyond continued to seek his advice. Well into his nineties he was still present in local debates, and he died in 2011 at the age of ninety‑seven in Göttingen‑Weende, having shaped regional politics for more than five decades.
The Wendebachstausee between Gleichen and Friedland became one of the places most closely associated with Klaus Peter, both politically and personally. He had backed the development of the Wendebachstausee as a local recreation and nature area from early on, and later, as chairman of the Zweckverband Wendebachstausee, he fought for its preservation when the state considered removing the dam. In these conflicts he stood shoulder to shoulder with local officials and experts, arguing that the lake was vital for leisure, landscape and regional identity in an otherwise structurally weak rural area.
Klaus Peter Bruns-Gedenkstein
Wendebachstausee
Friedland
Germany
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