Bruno Wiefel

Bruno Wiefel (born December 2, 1924 in Kirchen near Betzdorf ; † September 23, 2001 in Leverkusen ) was a German politician ( SPD ).

Life and work

After attending elementary school, Wiefel moved with his parents to Opladen , where they went to the Hindenburg School (now the Herzogstraße primary school). From 1939 to 1943 he attended the aviation preschool in Berlin-Rudow , then took part as a soldier in the Second World War and was most recently taken prisoner by the British.

After his return from prisoner-of-war captivity, Wiefel worked at the Federal Railway Repair Shop in Opladen from 1947. In addition, he was a union member and was the first representative of the railway workers' union in Opladen from 1951 to 1956 . In 1953/54 he graduated from the Dortmund Social Academy and in 1956 received a scholarship from Harvard University in the United States . He worked as parliamentary liaison secretary in Bonn until 1962 and then became a managing board member of the non-profit building association in Opladen.

Bruno Wiefel was actively involved in the town twinning with the English town of Bracknell and as honorary chairman of the Opladener Geschichtsverein von 1979 eV Leverkusen.

Political party

Wiefel joined the SPD in 1948. He was elected chairman of the SPD Opladen in 1958 and was chairman of the SPD sub-district Rhein-Wupper from 1959 to 1970.

MP

Wiefel was a member of the council of the city of Opladen from 1952 to 1974 and was elected chairman of the SPD parliamentary group there in 1956. After the regional reform , he was a council member of the city of Leverkusen from 1975 to 1989. On October 4, 1961, he replaced Heinrich Stephan in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament, to which he was a member until 1962.

Wiefel was a member of the German Bundestag from 1965 to 1987. In parliament he represented the constituency of Leverkusen - Opladen .

Public offices

Wiefel served as deputy mayor in 1955/56 and as mayor of the city of Opladen from 1958 to 1974.

Bruno Wiefel Prize

In his long political life, Bruno Wiefel was always shaped by his efforts to be close to the people and by pragmatism. What mattered to him was human encounter. He paid particular attention to promoting civic engagement. This is also evident in his personal commitment to the clubs in his city.

The town partnership with Bracknell arose from his initiative in 1973. From the beginning he was concerned with a partnership of the citizens, not the official shakehands ". Personal encounters and experiences should be the focus of this partnership. His friendship with the British counterpart Betty Lindop set an example for the citizens of both cities. Even after the local reorganization From 1975, when the city partnership passed to Leverkusen, Bruno Wiefel actively and critically accompanied the partnership and always gave it new impulses.

As a founding member of two associations, the English-German Club Opladen eV (1973) and the Freundeskreis Bracknell-Leverkusen eV (2001), Bruno Wiefel has made a contribution to stimulating and deepening German-British relations.

The Opladener Geschichtsverein von 1979 eV Leverkusen (from 2001 to 2014 in cooperation with the Freundeskreis Bracknell-Leverkusen eV) promotes and preserves the civic spirit in which Bruno Wiefel built and maintained the friendship between Bracknell and Leverkusen. For this reason, citizens and organizations who have made special contributions to maintaining twinning in the spirit of European unification are awarded the Bruno Wiefel Prize.

Honors

• Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon , 1973
• Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class, 1976
• Large Federal Cross of Merit, 1985
• Ring of Honor of the City of Leverkusen, 1999

Since 2003, the Bracknell-Leverkusen Circle of Friends has awarded the Bruno Wiefel Prize named after him .

The meeting place of the non-profit building association Opladen eG at Kölner Straße 100 is called Bruno-Wiefel-Haus.

The new space in front of the Opladen train station at the end of Bahnhofstrasse will in future be called Bruno-Wiefel-Platz.

literature

• Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 2: N-Z. Attachment. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , pp. 950-951.

Web links

• Bruno Wiefel at the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia
• Biography at the Leverkusen Who is Who