Peter Glotz

Peter Glotz (6 March 1939 – 25 August 2005) was a German social democratic politician and social scientist. Peter Glotz was born in Cheb, Czechoslovakia, to a German father and a Czech mother. His father, an insurance clerk joined the Nazi Party and administered a small "Aryanized" Jewish factory in Prague. His family was expelled from Czechoslovakia in September 1945 and settled in Franconia. He studied Journalism, Philosophy, Germanistics, and Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Vienna, and became a doctor of philosophy in 1968.

Glotz became director of Ludwig Maximilian University in 1969 and a member of the Landtag of Bavaria in 1970. He was a member of the German parliament from 1972 to 1977 and a parliamentary state secretary of the Federal Minister for Education and Research from 1974 until 1977.

From 1977 to 1981 Glotz was a senator for science and research in the state of Berlin, and became a member of the parliament again in 1983, resigning in 1996. He was secretary general of the SPD from 1981 to 1987. Glotz then became founding director of the University of Erfurt (1996–1999) and professor of communication sciences.

From January 2000 until he died in Zürich, Glotz was a Professor of media and society at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. In 2002, he was a representative of the German Chancellor to the European Convention. With Erika Steinbach, he was chairman of the Centre Against Expulsions Foundation.