The SOG's Presidents

Wilhelm Gülich, born in 1895 in Hesse, was an SPD politician and the first president of the Southeast European Association (SOG). After earning his doctorate in economics, he established the Library of the Institute for World Economy in Kiel in the 1920s, and remained its director even during the “Third Reich.” He also oversaw the library of the German Institute for Foreign Studies located there. After World War II, he joined the SPD, for which he served in the state parliament in Kiel and the federal parliament in Bonn. Gülich became the first president of the SOG in 1954 and remained in that position until his death in 1960.

Rudolf Vogel was born in Silesia in 1906 and worked as a journalist and politician in the CDU. He studied, among other subjects, economic geography and journalism, and worked for various newspapers. During World War II, Vogel was stationed in Thessaloniki, Greece, and served as head of a propaganda unit under German occupation. After the war, he joined the CDU and served as a member of the Bundestag from 1949 to 1964. Among other roles, he served as chairman of the Committee on Press, Broadcasting, and Film. He was Germany’s permanent representative to the OECD and briefly held the position of state secretary. From 1960 to 1965, Vogel served as the second president of the SOG. In his honor, the SOG established the “Rudolf Vogel Medal” after his death in 1991. It was renamed the “Southeast Europe Association Journalism Award” in 2013 after the award recipient of that year, Andreas Ernst, refused to accept it under Vogel’s name and thereby sparkey a debate about the former president’s pre-war past.

Walter Althammer, born in Augsburg in 1928, was a lawyer by profession and served as a politician in the CSU. After finishing school, Althammer was briefly drafted as an infantry soldier in 1945 and was taken prisoner of war. Back in Germany, he began studying law in Munich, graduating in 1956. He worked as a lawyer and administrative official, including at the Bavarian Ministry of Culture. Althammer had been a member of the CSU since 1952 and was first elected to the Bundestag in 1961. He served on numerous Bundestag committees, as well as deputy chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and deputy chair of the CDU/CSU regional group. From 1978 to 1986, he served as chairman of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, which is affiliated with the CSU. In 1965, he became president of the SOG and remained in that position until 2000. He was elected its honorary chairman. Walter Althammer died in 2025. You can find the official obituary for Dr. Althammer from the Südosteuropa Mitteilungen here.

SPD politician Gernot Erler, born in 1944, studied history, Slavic studies, and political science in Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau. He first worked as a publishing editor and then, until 1979, as a research assistant at the Department of Eastern European History at the University of Freiburg. Erler joined the SPD in 1970 and was initially active in local politics. In 1987, he was elected to the Bundestag and served as deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group from 1998 to 2005. As a prominent foreign policy expert, Erler was appointed in 2005 to the federal government under Angela Merkel (CDU) as Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry, a position he held until 2009. From 2014 to 2018, he served as coordinator for civil society cooperation with Russia and Central Asia. Erler was active in several civic organizations and served as the fourth president of the SOG from 2000 to 2020.