Annemarie Mevissen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Annemarie Mevissen , née Schmidt (born October 24, 1914 in Bremen ; † July 13, 2006 there ) was a German politician ( SPD ). She was senator from 1951 to 1975 and from 1967 to 1975 mayor and deputy head of government of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen .

biography

Education, work and family

Mevissen was born in the Werderland district of Bremen-Burglesum . In 1934 she moved to Oberneuland . She came from a family with a social democratic tradition. Her father Wilhelm Schmidt was one of the most famous social politicians in Bremen during the Weimar Republic . As early as 1933 he was removed from the public service by the Nazis and later spent several years in a labor camp . In the post-war years, her father played a key role in the rebuilding of the Bremen administration and is one of the authors of the Bremen state constitution , which came into force in 1947.

Mevissen attended high school and graduated from high school in 1934. In the Third Reich , Mevissen was refused training as a teacher on the grounds that she was “politically unreliable” because she was involved in the socialist youth workers . Instead, she initially worked as a bookseller in Leipzig , Marburg and Göttingen . In 1943 she married Werner Mevissen , who after the war headed the Bremen City Library as library director for over thirty years . At the turn of the year 1944/1945 Mevissen returned to Bremen heavily pregnant, while her father was still imprisoned in the Farge labor education camp .

After the war ended in 1945, Mevissen initially worked with refugee children and organized tent camps.

politics

Through her father, who had survived imprisonment in the labor camp, she quickly found her way into politics: She experienced his involvement in the creation of the state constitution. In 1946 she ran for the constituent assembly of Bremen. The fact that, as a social democrat in the more rural, bourgeois Oberneuland, she was defeated by only 36 votes against the long-time local mayor Friedrich Behrens, she has always considered a success.

As early as 1947, Mevissen, who at that time was already the mother of a two-year-old daughter, was elected as the youngest member of the Bremen Parliament for the SPD . In 1951, three years after the birth of her second child, she was appointed senator for youth affairs by Mayor Wilhelm Kaisen . In 1959, the welfare department and, at times, sports funding were added to her area of ​​responsibility. In 1967 Mevissen was elected mayor and thus Deputy Mayor and President of the Senate Hans Koschnick . She was the first woman to hold the office of deputy head of government in a federal state of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was so unusual at the time that until she was passed out of the Senate in 1975 she was always given the title of “Mayor” at her request.

It became known nationwide during the Bremen tram riots in 1968 . When in January 1968 the school and student demonstrations threatened to escalate around the BSAG's planned tariff increases , she climbed onto a sandbox and found the right words to steer the dangerous situation back towards dialogue. At that time she was often referred to as the "only man in the Bremen Senate". When she left politics at her own request in February 1975 at the age of 60, with 23 years of service she was the longest-serving state minister in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Painter and writer

After leaving politics, Mevissen gained recognition as a painter. Her pictures with Bremen motifs were repeatedly exhibited in the House of the Bremen Citizenship. She also wrote various books about Bremen.

Honors

Works

  • On the outskirts of the city of Bremen: Oberneuland . Hauschild, 1979
  • In the heart of the city of Bremen: the Bürgerpark . House sign 1980
  • Narrated pictures from Provence . Hauschild, 1982
  • Experiences from politics . Hauschild, 1984.
  • The Bremen ramparts . Hauschild, 1988.
  • Behind the dykes: the Wümmeniederung . House sign 1989
  • The Weser - accompanied by sagas, fairy tales and legends . Hauschild, 1990
  • Old parks on the outskirts of the city of Bremen . Hauschild, 1992
  • At the gates of the city of Bremen - the Oldenburger Land . Hauschild, 1993
  • Traveling in Europe with a brush and pencil . Hauschild, 1994

See also

literature

  • Renate Meyer-Braun: Ms. Mayor Mevissen. A biography . Hauschild, Bremen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89757-413-7 .
  • Verena Behrens, Gisela Menger (Ed.): Strong women: radically social and democratic; a dialogue with 150 years of Bremen history . Ed. Falkenberg, Bremen 2014, ISBN 978-3-95494-069-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Experiences from the politics of Annemarie Mevissen, Verlag HM Hauschild GmbH, Bremen 1984, on page 10
personal data
SURNAME Mevissen, Annemarie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 2006
Place of death Bremen