Erik Nölting

Karl Wilhelm Erik August Nölting (born November 20, 1892 in Plettenberg , † July 15, 1953 in Haan ) was a German SPD politician . He was the first economics minister of North Rhine-Westphalia .

Life

Erik Nölting was born on November 20, 1892 in Plettenberg as the son of a Prussian court inspector. He was the second of four children, his younger brother was Ernst Nölting . He attended grammar school in Bielefeld and already at that time took a critical stance towards imperial Germany. Nölting then studied sociology and economics in Halle (Saale), Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main , but also attended lectures on law, German and theater studies. He joined the Democratic Association , a left-wing liberal split from the Liberal Association . From 1914 he took part in the First World War as a war volunteer, in 1917 he was released for night blindness . Until 1918 he worked as a department head in the economic office of the city of Guben , where he collected material for his dissertation. In 1919 he received his doctorate in political science under Franz Oppenheimer in Frankfurt am Main . From spring 1920 he taught at the Fürst Leopold Academy for Administrative Sciences in Detmold , at the Leibniz Academy in Hanover and from 1923 at the Academy of Labor in Frankfurt am Main.

As early as 1921 Nölting joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD); In 1925 he took part in the Heidelberg party congress and was elected to the Prussian state parliament in 1928. Nölting always emerged as an economist, less as a party official. After he had described himself as an opponent of National Socialism on the Dutch broadcaster Hilversum in February 1933 , his professorship was revoked and he was banned from visiting Frankfurt am Main and Bielefeld. He moved to Berlin and later to Medebach . During this time he tried to keep himself afloat with literary work, some of which he published under pseudonyms and some under his real name, but was dependent on the support of friends. In 1940 he was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer .

After the end of the war he tried to find another job in Frankfurt am Main, but his application was lost. Fritz Fries , who knew him from the Prussian state parliament, employed him in June and July 1945 at the Arnsberg district government ; in September 1945 Nölting was appointed general advisor for economics to the Westphalian provincial government in Münster . On August 29, 1946, he became the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of Economics. In this capacity, he made particular efforts to end the dismantling .

In the first state elections in 1947, he was elected a member of parliament, as well as in the first federal election in 1949 , in which he won the constituency of Iserlohn-Stadt und -Land directly. He retained both mandates until his death. After the formation of a new government in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1950, he resigned his ministerial office and became more involved in journalism again. In the 1950/51 winter semester he took over the management of the economics department of the Dortmund Social Academy , which he had supported in founding. Nölting was a delegate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and was a member of the Bundestag committees for economic policy, ERP issues and the committee pursuant to Article 15 of the Basic Law (socialization of land). From 1950 to 1953 he worked at the Dortmund Social Academy .

Erik Nölting died on the evening of July 15, 1953 during an election campaign for the 2nd German Bundestag in Haan as a result of a stroke. His successor in the Bundestag was Franz Heinen for the few weeks until the election .

Honor

Streets in Kamen and Düsseldorf were named after Nölting . In addition, a primary school in Hattingen was named after him because he had successfully campaigned against the dismantling of the Henrichshütte .

literature

• Erik Nölting . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, pp. 234-235.
• Wolf Bierbach: Erik Nölting . In: Walter Först (Ed.): From thirty years. Rhenish-Westphalian politician portraits . Grote, Cologne 1979, ISBN 978-3-7745-6433-6 , pp. 210 f .
• Claudia Nölting: Erik Nölting. Minister of Economics and theoretician of the SPD (1892–1953) . Klartext, Essen 1989, ISBN 978-3-88474-136-8 .
• Christoph Stamm:  Nölting, Wilhelm Erik. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 315 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Erik Nölting in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Erik Nölting in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Short biography in the archive of social democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
• Erik Nölting at the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament
• Nölting, Karl Wilhelm Erik August. Hessian biography. (As of July 20, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Nölting, Erik . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Naber to Nydahl] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 893 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 140 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).

Individual evidence

1. ^ German Bundestag, plenary minutes of the 282nd session, PDF 2.3 MB, detailed obituary with cause of death
2. ↑ Homepage of the Erik Nölting School ( memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on June 4, 2013