August Wegmann

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August Wegmann
August Wegmann on a CDU poster for the 1959 state election

August Wegmann (born October 21, 1888 in Dinklage ; † June 6, 1976 in Oldenburg ) was a German lawyer and politician ( center , CDU ).

Life

Early career

Wegmann came from a family of craftsmen from the Catholic Oldenburger Münsterland and was the son of foreman Gerhard Clemens Wegmann (1853–1931) and his wife Friederike Gertrud nee. Hilgefort (1862-1933). He attended the Antonianum Vechta high school and the Quakenbrück secondary school , where he graduated from high school in 1910.

After graduating from high school, Wegmann studied law in Freiburg im Breisgau , Berlin , Munich and Münster from 1910 to 1913 and began training as a trainee lawyer at the Vechta District Court and the Oldenburg District Court in 1913 .

At the time of the Weimar Republic

He took part in the First World War until 1918 as a first lieutenant and company commander of a machine gun company . He finished his studies in 1920 with the second state examination and in the same year became a government assessor in the Oldenburg State Ministry. Since 1921 a member of the government, from 1922 to 1923 he worked as a lawyer at the Regional Court of Oldenburg and in 1923 returned as a ministerial advisor to the Oldenburg Ministry of Finance, where he took over the management of the budget department on May 1, 1923.

As a member of the Center Party, Wegmann was a member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1933 . There he was from 1926 managing director and spokesman for the faction of his party and was a member of the legal committee and the budget committee of parliament. Wegmann supported the controversial deflationary course to reorganize the public finances of Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning . Wegmann evidently did this because he felt connected to the Reich Chancellor through shared fundamental financial policy convictions but also through the shared experience at the front. Brüning, for his part, described Wegmann as "the most loyal of the loyal".

During the Nazi dictatorship

After the National Socialists came to power , Wegmann was dismissed from civil service on August 1, 1933 and then worked as a freelance lawyer again. In connection with the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , he was arrested in August 1944 as part of the Grid Action and taken to the Gestapo prison in Easter castle. He escaped internment in a concentration camp only because of diphtheria . After recovering in the spring of 1945, he did not follow an invitation to face the Gestapo and stayed in hiding with friends until the end of the war.

In the Federal Republic

After the Second World War, he was appointed provisional district administrator of the Oldenburg district on May 11, 1945, and on May 22, he also took over the management of the Department of Interior, Administration and Police in the Oldenburg State Ministry as Ministerial Director. In January 1946 he was appointed Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Oldenburg under Prime Minister Theodor Tantzen and held these offices until the State of Lower Saxony was founded in December 1946. His hope of being able to maintain Oldenburg's independence was not fulfilled. Wegmann was, however, from December 19, 1946, initially provisional, then from January 1, 1950, the final administrative president in Oldenburg . This office, which he led like a Prime Minister of Oldenburg, he held until October 31, 1953. He tried to defend the rights of the former state of Oldenburg against Hanover, for example, he prevented the adaptation of the Oldenburg school system to the Lower Saxony school law.

On May 26, 1955, Wegmann was appointed as Lower Saxony's Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister in the Lower Saxony state government led by Minister-President Heinrich Hellwege . On November 19, 1957, after the formation of the grand coalition, he moved to the head of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Finance . As a minister, Wegmann continued to strive intensively for the independence of the Oldenburg state, for example through his proposal to create a local authority for the state. However, the draft of an Oldenburg law submitted by the state government was no longer dealt with by the state parliament and was not re-introduced later. Wegmann left the government on May 12, 1959. He retained his mandate in the Lower Saxony state parliament until 1967. After the death of Hermann Ehlers , from 1954 to 1965 he was also chairman of the CDU regional association in Oldenburg. He ended his political career at the age of almost 79.

After his resignation as minister, Wegmann was chairman of the administrative board of the Staatliche Kreditanstalt Oldenburg-Bremen and chairman of the supervisory board of the Oldenburgische Landesbank .

additional

In 1953 he was appointed Knight of the Order of Knights of the Holy Sepulcher by Cardinal Grand Master Nicola Cardinal Canali and invested in Cologne Cathedral on December 8, 1953 by Lorenz Jaeger , Grand Prior of the German Lieutenancy . Most recently he was a Grand Officer and Grand Cross Knight al merito .

He was a member of the Catholic student associations KStV Osning Münster, KStV Askania Berlin, KStV Brisgovia Freiburg, KStV Görres Bonn and KStV Winfridia Göttingen.

family

Wegmann married on August 3, 1927 Anna, born in Wildeshausen . Leffers (1905–1990), the daughter of the businessman Friedrich Leffers (1867–1939). The couple had two sons and three daughters.

literature

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wegmann, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (CDU), MdR, MdL
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Dinklage
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1976
Place of death Oldenburg