Otto Graf Lambsdorff

Otto Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von der Wenge Graf Lambsdorff, known as Otto Graf Lambsdorff, (20 December 1926 – 5 December 2009) was a German politician of the Free Democratic Party. Lambsdorff was born in Aachen (Rhineland) to Herbert Graf Lambsdorff and Eva, née von Schmidt. He attended school in Berlin and Brandenburg an der Havel and became an officer cadet in the Wehrmacht in 1944. In April 1945 he was severely wounded in an Allied strafe attack and lost his lower left leg. Lambsdorff was a prisoner of war until 1946. After World War II he passed his Abitur and studied law at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne where he obtained a PhD. In 1951 he became member of the liberal FDP, and from 1972 to 1998 he represented this party in the Federal Diet, the Bundestag. He was also chairman of the FDP from 1988 until 1993. Within and outside his party he was known as a representative of the market liberals; a mocking name was der Marktgraf ("the market count", a play on Markgraf, ...