Ellwang district
The Ellwanger Kreis was a discussion forum for Christian politicians in post-war Germany.
The states of Bavaria, Hesse and Württemberg-Baden had existed in the American zone of occupation since 1945 and set up a state council . The CDU and CSU politicians of the state governments wanted to coordinate their approach in the state council and also to discuss fundamental questions of German politics. The conference location Ellwangen was suggested by Hermann Gögler , who as State Secretary in the Württemberg-Baden State Ministry also took over the organization.
The first meeting of the circle took place on March 1st and 2nd, 1947 in the retreat house on the Schönenberg . The Pravda rated this southern German as an anti-Communist conspiracy politicians with the Vatican. For this reason, all other Ellwang meetings were no longer held in church rooms, but in the Golden Eagle on the market square or in the meeting room of the town hall. The Ellwanger Kreis met 57 times between 1947 and 1972, the number of participants fluctuated and reached a maximum of 60. District Administrator Anton Huber collected the written documents from the conferences, which are now owned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation .
Politicians from the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) , the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) as well as the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and non-party Christians from the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church were represented in the Ellwanger Kreis . The forum, which meets irregularly, met to discuss political events with the aim of initiating the reunification of Germany on a federal basis.
In 1949 the Ellwanger Kreis discussed the structure of a new German constitution at a meeting in Bad Brückenau and proposed the state name "Federal Republic of Germany".
In the 1950s, the Ellwanger district dealt primarily with rearmament and military pastoral care as well as school and educational policy. The interest in the more fundamental questions of the circle gradually decreased.
According to a report by the Spiegel from 1962, the (never confirmed) goal of the district was named to de-nationalize the German schools and to subordinate them primarily to the churches of both denominations.
The initiators of the group included:
- Konrad Adenauer , Federal Chancellor
- Hans Asmussen , provost in Kiel
- Heinrich von Brentano , Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1955 to 1961
- Eugen Gerstenmaier , President of the Bundestag
- Bruno Heck , Federal Minister for Family Affairs from 1962 to 1968
- Eugen Kogon , publicist, sociologist and political scientist
- Hermann Kunst , Protestant military bishop
- Anton Pfeiffer , State Secretary and Head of the Bavarian State Chancellery from 1946 to 1950
- Werner Schütz , Minister of Education in North Rhine-Westphalia from 1954 to 1956 and from 1958 to 1962
- Josef Schwalber , Bavarian State Minister for Education and Culture from 1951 to 1954
- Wilhelm Sedlmeier , auxiliary bishop in Stuttgart-Rottenburg from 1953 to 1976
- Walter Strauss , State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Justice
Web links
- Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation: Ellwanger-Kreis
- Günter letter : Ellwanger district . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Hans Pfeifer: Ellwangen. Art and history from 1250 years. Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Ulm 2000, ISBN 3-88294-295-9 , pp. 199-200.
- ^ Democrat and Europeans , NZZ , February 1, 2003
- ↑ CSU : The first years ( memento of July 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Bad Brückenau: Parkhotel , accessed on October 20, 2019.
- ↑ As in the Middle Ages . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1962, pp. 29 ( Online - March 28, 1962 ).