Short answers, pulled from the story.
Theodor Blank was a German CDU politician who lived from the 19th of September 1905 to the 14th of May 1972. He is best known as the head of the Amt Blank from 1950 to 1955, the covert agency Chancellor Konrad Adenauer charged with secretly preparing the re-establishment of the German armed forces, and as the first postwar Defence Minister of Germany.
The Amt Blank was the office of the Special Representative of the Chancellor, officially described as responsible for affairs relating to the Allied occupying troops. In reality, it served as the covert body tasked by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer with secretly preparing the re-establishment of West German armed forces between 1950 and 1955.
Theodor Blank served as the first postwar Defence Minister of Germany from 1955 to 1956. He followed this with a longer tenure as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 1957 to 1965.
In 1954, opponents of German rearmament disrupted public assemblies where Blank was scheduled to speak, shouting him down to prevent him from addressing crowds. In at least one incident, he was lightly wounded during the disruptions.
Blank was born into a large Catholic carpenter's family in Elz an der Lahn and trained as a carpenter himself before becoming a trade union secretary in the Northern and Northwestern Ruhr Area from 1930 to 1933. He was dismissed after the Enabling Act of 1933 banned free trade unions. He later studied mathematics at the University of Munster, worked for Junkers in Dessau, and studied engineering sciences at Leibniz University Hannover before being conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1939.
Theodor Blank was one of the founders of the CDU in 1945, the same year Germany's postwar political reorganisation began. He went on to serve as a member of the German Bundestag continuously from 1949 to 1972.