His father, who was a trade unionist and official of the Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts-Opposition, was arrested on the evening of 1 May 1933, the day before the Nazis stormed union offices all over Germany.

He was charged with high treason for having organized a May Day rally and made a speech and was sent to a zuchthaus and then Sachsenhausen concentration camp, before being released "on leave" in 1938.

She refused to join the German Labour Front (DAF) and "learn" the Hitler greeting, causing her to frequently lose her job until she finally secured a position as a sugared goods sales clerk and was relatively removed from DAF spot checks.

From 1983 to 1985, he was also a representative of the Federal Republic of Germany for cultural affairs within the framework of the Franco-German cooperation agreement.

At that time, Koschnick pushed Ostpolitik forward and signed the first West German-Polish town twinning with Gdańsk on 12 April 1976.

In 1994, Croatian nationalists attacked Koschnick with grenades, destroying his hotel room in Mostar but leaving him unharmed.

In 1996, he declared his resignation from the EU Council of Foreign Ministers in Brussels a month after the 2nd assassination attempt after an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers decided to make concessions to the Croat leadership responsible for the attack rather than support Koschnick's position.