Elly Heuss-Knapp

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Elly Heuss-Knapp with her husband Theodor Heuss (1950)
Theodor Heuss and Elly Heuss-Knapp visiting the German Garden Show in Stuttgart,
June 3, 1950

Elisabeth Eleonore Anna Justine "Elly" Heuss-Knapp (née Knapp ; born January 25, 1881 in Strasbourg , † July 19, 1952 in Bonn ) was a German politician , social reformer and the founder of the maternal recovery organization . Her husband Theodor Heuss was the first German Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1959 .

Life

origin

Elly Knapp was born in 1881 as the daughter of Lidia Korganow and the economist Georg Friedrich Knapp . The father taught at the University of Strasbourg from 1874 to 1918 . Shortly after her birth, her mother, who came from Georgia, fell ill with a mental illness and from then on lived in sanatoriums. Elly and her older sister Marianne were raised by their father alone.

education

In 1899 Elly Knapp passed her teacher exams and from 1900 worked at a so-called progress school (for girls who had only attended the seven-year elementary school) in Strasbourg, of which she was a co-founder. Knapp greatly appreciated the work of Friedrich Naumann . In 1905 she studied economics in Freiburg and Berlin and began to give her first political lectures . In 1906 she volunteered as a student in the preparatory work for the large home work exhibition . a. was about the system of intermediate masters , publishers and the possibility of collective agreements and minimum wages. Soon she began devoting a series of lectures to this subject.

Caricature about Elly Heuss-Knapp as "The woman in house u. Profession ”by Friedrich Naumann

family

In 1908 Elly Knapp married the journalist and later Federal President Theodor Heuss , an employee of Friedrich Naumann. They were married in Strasbourg by Albert Schweitzer . The marriage in 1910 resulted in the son Ernst Ludwig Heuss . This birth was complicated and nearly fatal. As a result, Elly could not have any more children.

activities

From 1922 onwards, Knapp's theological interest began, above all in biblical studies and working in the Protestant community of Pastor Otto Dibelius .

When the NSDAP came to power , Heuss-Knapp was banned from performing and her husband, who was now working as a lecturer , was banned from working . Persecuted people and opponents of the Nazi dictatorship, such as Pastor Martin Niemöller , met in their home . During this time Heuss-Knapp began to work as a writer and - mediated by his cousin Hermann Geiger, owner of the Wybert company - in advertising . She supported the family with her work. She revolutionized radio advertising, which until then only consisted of reading newspaper advertisements, and is considered to be the inventor of jingle as the acoustic trademark of a company. Heuss-Knapp had this idea patented and used it for other companies and products; for example for Nivea , Erdal , Kaffee Hag , Blaupunkt and Persil . The autobiography Outlook from the Münsterturm appeared in the first edition in 1934, in a new edition in 1941: Outlook from the Münsterturm, experiences from Alsace and the Reich , in a second edition in 1952. She and her husband experienced the end of the war in Heidelberg with their sister, the painter and photographer Marianne Lesser-Knapp .

politics

From 1946 to 1949 Heuss-Knapp was a member of the state parliament of Württemberg-Baden - first for the Democratic People's Party (DVP) and later for the Free Democratic Party (FDP), which was formed in 1948 through the merger of national and left-wing liberal groups. She worked in the socio-political committee, where she campaigned for school-age children to have at least one meal every day and that school classes had fewer than 50 to 60 students. Sometimes she was affectionately and mockingly called the mother of the country because of her care .

Elly Heuss-Knapp - like her husband - had already been nominated as a candidate for the DDP in the election for the German National Assembly in 1919 . But third place on the list of the constituency Potsdam II was not enough for a mandate. This election was the first all-German election in which women also had the right to vote. Heuss-Knapp fought for the fact that women should be addressed specifically without campaigning for the individual parties.

Elly Heuss-Knapp and her husband helped found the German Council of the European Movement in June 1949 in Wiesbaden. She became vice president of the organization.

Heuss-Knapp on a stamp of the Deutsche Bundespost Berlin from 1957
Memorial plaque on the house at Grillparzerstraße 15, Berlin-Steglitz

Maternal recovery work

Elly Heuss-Knapp and Antonie Nopitsch founded the Deutsche Müttergenesungswerk in 1950 (full name today: Elly-Heuss-Knapp-Stiftung - German Müttergenesungswerk).

Death / burial

Heuss-Knapp died in 1952 in the Bonn University Clinic and was buried after a funeral service held by Helmut Gollwitzer in Bonn's Luther Church at the Stuttgart forest cemetery.

Honors

Numerous schools and streets were named after Elly Heuss-Knapp. a. the Elly-Heuss-Knapp-Schule in Darmstadt and high schools in Duisburg , Wiesbaden, Düsseldorf, Heilbronn / Neckar , Stuttgart and Weiden . There are roads u. a. in Büdelsdorf . At the foot of the Karlshöhe in Stuttgart is the Elly-Heuss-Knapp-Brunnen.

Stuttgart memorial stone

Stuttgart memorial stone

In 1955 a memorial stone for Ms. Elly Heuss-Knapp was inaugurated in the oak grove in Sillenbuch . Among the participants in the event were a. her husband, the then Federal President Theodor Heuss, the regional bishop Dr. D. Haug as well as several editors of Stuttgart newspapers. The memorial stone was designed by the artist Lore Niessner based on a design by master sculptor Willy Schönfeld . In the commemorative speech by Mayor Arnulf Klett , Elly Heuss-Knapp was recognized as a clever and kind woman.

Books

  • Citizenship Studies and Economics for Women , Voigtländer, Leipzig 1910.
  • Narrow paths , Wunderlich, Tübingen 1946.
  • (Together with Georg Friedrich Knapp): Eine Jugend , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2., ext. Stuttgart 1947 edition.
  • View from the cathedral tower. Memories , Wunderlich, Tübingen 1984, ISBN 3-8052-0086-2 , 1st edition 1934; New edition 1941 (with a second preface to justify the new edition).
  • (Together with Margarethe Vater): Citizen of two worlds , Wunderlich, Tübingen 1961.
  • Advice and action. Echoes of a life , published by Friedrich Kaufmann, Wunderlich, Tübingen 1964.

literature

Web links

Commons : Elly Heuss-Knapp  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth register, registry office Strasbourg (248/1881).
  2. ^ Theodor Heuss: Memoirs 1905–1933 , Wunderlich Verlag Hermann Leins , Tübingen 1963, p. 119.
  3. ^ "The films of the first lady" ( Spiegel Online in February 2010).
  4. ↑ Berliner Tageblatt and Handels-Zeitung, January 18, 1919 .
  5. ↑ Curriculum vitae on the website of the Theodor-Heuss-Schule Reutlingen , section Elly for the second time in the post-war period ... does this woman still have strength?
  6. ↑ See Mareike König, Wolf D. Gruner, Matthias Schulz: The Federal Republic of Germany and European Unification 1949–2000 , Stuttgart 2004, p. 71.
  7. ↑ A bright place of silent remembrance . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . March 28, 1955.
personal data
SURNAME Heuss-Knapp, Elly
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heuss-Knapp, Elisabeth Eleonore Anna Justine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DVP, FDP), Member of the Bundestag, founder of the maternal recovery organization
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1952
Place of death Bonn