Frank Oberle Sr.
Canadian politician
Frank Oberle Sr. (March 24, 1932 – September 12, 2024) was a Canadian businessman and politician.
Life and career
Born in Forchheim near Karlsruhe, Germany, Oberle moved with his family to German-occupied Poland in 1941. There he was placed in a Hitler Youth indoctrination program. Later, he fled the Red Army advance, surviving on grass and stolen eggs while walking 800 kilometres to his home village in the Black Forest. Rejected by his relatives, he immigrated to Canada at the age of 19 and became a logger and then a gold miner.
Oberle entered municipal politics, becoming mayor of Chetwynd. He entered federal politics and was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in the 1972 general election as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament for Prince George—Peace River, British Columbia. He subsequently won re-election five times.
In 1985, Oberle became the first German-born federal Canadian cabinet minister when he became Minister of State for Science and Technology in Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's government.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Frank Oberle Sr.” as canadian politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as canadian politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5488785. VIAF identifies the subject as 48632685. The Library of Congress control number is n2005029867. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 2024, 1941 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Oberle Sr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.