Eduard Verhülsdonk

Eduard Verhülsdonk

Eduard Verhülsdonk (born April 16, 1884 in Krefeld , † November 2, 1934 in Neuwied ) was a German journalist and politician ( center ).

Live and act

Verhülsdonk came from a Catholic family in Westphalia. His father Engelbert Verhülsdonk was an accountant, his mother Helene, b. Idel, came from a family of lawyers in Krefeld. He attended the humanistic grammar school in Krefeld . As a young man he began to work as a journalist for Catholic daily newspapers related to the Center Party - the collecting basin of German political Catholicism between 1871 and 1933 . He was also a member of the Windthorstbund , the center's youth formation. In 1906 Verhülsdonk was solely responsible editor of the Bensberger Volkszeitung and took over in 1911 the same task as well as the publishing director in Neuwied appearing Rhine and Wied-Zeitung , which he was to remain until the 1933rd

As early as 1917, Verhülsdonk was a city councilor for the Center Party in Neuwied and later also moved into the district council. He was also a member of the district committee. In 1928 he was elected to the Prussian state parliament and in 1930 to the Reichstag . He belonged to the former until 1932, to the latter until 1933. In the Reichstag, Verhülsdonk represented constituency 21 (Koblenz-Trier). Due to his ability to assert himself, Verhülsdonk was considered by his group colleagues in parliament as "the strong Edward". As a local politician, Verhülsdonk made outstanding contributions to the construction of the protective dike in Neuwied , which was completed in 1931, and to the planning and financing of the Rhine bridge in his hometown, which was completed in 1935.

With the global economic crisis in 1929 the Rhein und Wied-Zeitung got into financial difficulties, so that Verhülsdonk and his wife Maria, who had been married since 1911 and had been the parents of twins since 1914, repeatedly had to take out loans.

In March 1933, Verhülsdonk voted in favor of the Enabling Act , which gave the Hitler government the right to pass laws in future independently of the Reichstag. H. endowed the executive with the powers of the legislature in addition to its actual powers.

On April 8, 1933, Verhülsdonk was briefly taken into protective custody. At the same time, he was systematically defamed by National Socialist newspapers, in particular by the Koblenz national newspaper, which resulted in exhausting lawsuits. In January he was indicted before the Foreign Chamber of the Koblenz Regional Court together with the District Savings Bank Director Muth and the District Administrator Großmann for "infidelity" in favor of the Center Party and in February 1934 acquitted without reservation. As a result of the exertions of 1933/34, Verhülsdonk was in severe health problems. On October 16, 1934, he suffered a physical collapse from which he could not recover. Eduard Verhülsdonk died on November 2, 1934.

His son Eduard (1914–1995) was a publicist and in 1949 married Roswitha Verhülsdonk , born in the Bundestag, who later became a member of the Bundestag . Woll (* 1927).

Honor

A street near the Neuwied train station is named after Eduard Verhülsdonk.

literature

• Joachim Hennig: His motto in life "Semper fidelis" ("Always Treu") , in: Rhein-Zeitung (Koblenz edition) of November 7, 2001
• Karl Sabel: Looking back on a life as a politician in the Rhineland. The Reich and Landtag member Eduard Verhülsdonk 1884–1934 , in: Yearbook for West German State History 10 (1984), pp. 155–178.
• Wolfram Sauerbrei: Deichstadt Neuwied. Flood and flood protection. (= Series of publications on the history of the city of Neuwied. 2). Verlag Peter Kehrein, Neuwied, 2003. ISBN 978-3-934125-03-2

Web links

• Eduard Verhülsdonk in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Entry on Eduard Verhülsdonk in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database

Individual proof

1. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Zum Neuwieder Deichbau, with brief vita