Erika Riemer-Noltenius

Erika Riemer-Noltenius (born November 15, 1939 in Kiel , † June 13, 2009 in Bremen ) was a German politician ( Die Frauen ) and women's rights activist .

Early life

Erika Noltenius was born as the daughter of the businessman Friedrich August Noltenius and the doctor Gertrud Elisabeth Noltenius (née Heine). She was the niece of the mayor of Bremen at the time, Jules Eberhard Noltenius . Her father died in France in 1940 during the Second World War , whereupon the mother took care of the family, consisting of Erika, her brother Friedrich Peter (* 1938) and the grandmother, while working at the same time and completing her training and doctorate as a doctor. The family moved frequently and lived in Kiel, Würzburg and Schonderfeld until they found a permanent home in Bremen in 1946.

Erika Noltenius experienced school as a deprivation of liberty and therefore learned poorly, but her mother insisted on an Abitur and a degree, which is why Erika graduated from school in 1959 and began studying history and French a year later in Hamburg. Soon she joined the European Federalist Party (EFP). Years of study in Paris and Berlin followed, until she finally received her doctorate in political science in Vienna in 1968 on the subject of the development towards independence from British Guyana .

Employment, marriage and first contact with feminism

After her doctorate, her uncle Jules Eberhard Noltenius, a Bremen senator , gave her a job at the Bremen Chamber of Commerce in 1968 . She was the first woman to hold the post of foreign trade officer. She spent six months each in New York City and Chicago in contact with the German-American Chamber of Commerce and also worked in Brussels. As head of staff, she fought for equal wages for women and achieved various social advances, but quit in 1976 with the statement that her cleaning lady earned more net than she did. In 1974 she married the company doctor Rudolph Riemer, 28 years her senior, whom she had met while playing tennis in her youth. The couple traveled through Europe and the United States for the next eight years until Rudolph Riemer died of lung cancer in 1982.

After the death of her husband, Riemer-Noltenius took up further studies in adult education at the University of Bremen. During the Bremen Women's Week in 1982 she came into contact with feminists for the first time and began to deal extensively with feminist issues. She attended thematic events, read relevant literature and took part in an International Women's Conference in New Zealand in 1986. According to her own statements, it became clear to her that so far she had only been an alibi woman and a beautiful figurehead in the still conservative structures. Here the starting shot was given for her further career and her lifelong commitment as a women's lobbyist.

Political career and engagement as a women's rights activist

German Association of Women Academics and Bremen Women's Committee

Riemer-Noletenius had been a member of the German Association of Women Academics (DAB) since 1968, at her mother's request . In 1985, at the start of her career in women's politics, she was elected to the board of the DAB and at the same time to that of the Bremen Women's Committee (BFA) (elsewhere in the State Women's Council ). The women's committee soon represented 40 women-specific associations and organizations and over 100,000 women. She was part of the board of directors for twelve years and held the office as first chairwoman from 1991 to 1997. Here she established herself in urban politics and was considered determined, combative, motivating, contentious and tireless in her commitment to women's political issues.

The Bremer Frauenclub eV and the women's university project

In 1988 Riemer-Noltenius founded the Bremer Frauenclub eV She wanted to celebrate her 50th birthday in a club for women with its own rooms, following the example of the men's clubs. The premises were made available by the Sparkasse Bremen and the club was founded with 120 women present. The association exists to this day and has set itself the goal of enriching the lives of other women with cultural offers.

In 1993 Riemer-Noltenius discovered the project of a women's university based on the model of several colleges in the USA. To do this, she founded the Virgina Woolf Women's University Association. The aim was to increase equality through more women in science. She was able to organize three successful conferences with the association, but in 1998 the interest of other women failed, which means that Riemer-Noltenius had to dissolve the association in 2001.

Non-party candidacies in the 1990s

Her social engagement for women reached a new political dimension with her candidacy for the Bundestag in 1994 . She started as a non-party women's rights activist because she wanted to improve the disproportionate representation of women in politics. In the following year she was also put up as a direct candidate on the Bremen women's list for the state election in Bremen. Although both candidacies failed at the 5% hurdle, Riemer-Noltenius gained greater media and social awareness through them.

The Bremen beguinage model

Riemer-Noltenius' largest but also most controversial project was the Bremen beguinage . The resurgence of the Beguine movement in the 1990s inspired Riemer-Noltenius to found a kind of living, working and living community for women in Bremen. As part of Agenda 21 , a UN sustainability project based on the environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 , she presented her idea in Bremen as chairwoman of the BFA. This should create a space for a large community of women and also be built in an environmentally friendly way with sustainable materials and for many people in a smaller space. It immediately won numerous acclaim. In 1997 she founded an association with Elke Schmidt-Prestin, which was converted into a cooperative in 1998 . Shortly afterwards, construction work began on the planned land in the Neustadt district of Bremen and the project was recognized as a contribution to Expo 2000 . In 2001 there was finally a building complex with commercial space and 85 rental and condominium apartments, which was awarded the Habitat Scroll of Honor by the UN and took first place on Agenda 21 in Bremen.

Nevertheless, the project quickly faced financial failure. The construction of the plant resulted in costs of 32 million DM , which should be covered from different sources. 7.5 million DM were estimated as EU funding , of which the city of Bremen was to bear half. The rest should be financed by selling the condominiums and the cooperative shares to members and tenants. In addition, there were loans from Bremer Sparkasse, for which the two board members, Riemer-Noltenius and Schmidt-Prestin, took on guarantees of DM 200,000 each. Although the Bremen Senate had promised the financial support, it ultimately did not comply with it for unknown reasons, which also meant that the EU did not receive money and the cooperative finally went bankrupt. Nevertheless, the model was regarded as a model for women's political projects in other cities.

Riemer-Noltenius was heavily criticized for the failed project. She was accused of being too naive about financial planning, which meant that the women involved had lost large amounts of money and that Riemer-Noltenius himself had to sell her parents' house to cover the guarantee. The plant still existed, but now belonged to the Sparkasse Bremen. The insolvency administrator decided not to let vacant apartments to any further; they were only for sale and that at a price of € 1,400 per square meter in 2006. Riemer-Noltenius nevertheless lived among women in the beguinage for the rest of her life after the sale of her parents' house .

The Feminist Party The Women

In 2002, Riemer-Noltenius resumed her political involvement and established a regional association of the feminist party Die Frauen (short: Die Frauen) in Bremen. She made it to the electoral list with 500 signatures and was ultimately elected to the federal executive committee. An important topic for her in these years is the commitment to the unconditional basic income , as she sharply criticized the current financial system. She also founded many other beguinage associations, became the national spokeswoman for the feminist party Die Frauen and a member of Attac .

As a member of the federal executive committee of the party Die Frauen , Riemer-Noltenius wrote The Feminist Manifesto in 2006 , which was distributed a thousand times as a leaflet without any changes to the party and is to be regarded as one of its most important legacies. The feminist manifesto contains ten points that are elementary for Riemer-Noltenius' explanation and goal of feminism. She also wrote other statements on the subject of feminist economics.

The 2000s and end of life

Riemer-Noltenius' intensive political commitment in the 2000s was primarily strained by the lawsuit brought by Wilbers Bau GmbH because of the last unpaid installment of 1.1 million euros. The Bremen Regional Court acquitted them and Schmidt-Prestin, however, because they had acted negligently but not willfully. In the following years Riemer-Noltenius suffered from cancer. In 2009 she was voted Bremen Woman of the Year by the Bremen Women's Committee before she died three months later in her beguinage accompanied by beguines.

Web links

• The complete feminist manifesto by Erika Riemer-Noltenius

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Romina Schmitter: Riemer-Noltenius, Erika, geb. Noltenius. In: Bremer Frauenmuseum eV March 24, 2017, accessed on May 6, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Karin Buggeln: Erika Riemer-Noltenius. In: Digital German Women's Archive. September 19, 2018, accessed May 6, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Jeanette Simon: A dream is for sale . In: The daily newspaper: taz . March 6, 2006, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 22 ( taz.de [accessed on May 6, 2020]).
4. ↑ Erika Riemer-Noltenius: the-feminist-manifest-of-erika-riemer-noltenius. In: Yumpu. Retrieved May 6, 2020 . 
5. ↑ EIB: Beguines in court . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 16, 2003, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 21 ( taz.de [accessed on May 6, 2020]).