Ernst Wienecke (politician, 1888)

Ernst Wienecke (born January 11, 1888 in Stöcken near Wittingen, † 1973 ) was a German politician (DDP, FDP) and opponent of National Socialism .

Life

Ernst Wienecke was born in Stöcken near Wittingen, grew up there and on the ancestral farm of the Wieneckes in Croya. After training as a teacher at the preparatory institute in Gifhorn and the seminar in Uelzen, which at the time was considered “free-spirited”, he began his first teaching position in Oerrel in 1908. In 1911 he was transferred to Bostelbeck and in 1913 to the primary school in Harburg an der Elbe .

During the First World War he was a lieutenant in the artillery reserve. During the major Allied offensive on July 18, 1918, he was seriously wounded and taken prisoner by the French. He has been a pacifist since the war and in the garrison hospital in Hanover until 1920. Then he worked as a teacher again. He studied commercial science and French during hyperinflation in Berlin. In 1924 he graduated as a commercial teacher . After graduating from 1925 he worked in this profession at the commercial schools in Harburg on the Elbe. There he rose to the position of head of department.

As a pacifist and a staunch liberal, Ernst Wienecke was already strongly committed to the DDP in Harburg-Wilhelmsburg in the Weimar Republic at the end of the 1920s. His political commitment to the liberal German Democratic Party included the then province of Hanover. He was the campaign manager of the DDP in the province of Hanover and as such a committed election speaker in northern Germany. He was also a candidate for his party's Reichstag. As second chairman of the Reichsbund Schwarz-Rot-Gold he tried with like-minded democrats to protect the assemblies of the bourgeois parties from interference by the Nazis. Ernst Wienecke's outstanding position as a DDP politician in Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, his political attitude and, above all, his active election campaign against the Nazis made him suspicious of the National Socialists.

As early as January 22nd, 1932, it was said in the Striker that there would no longer be any place in National Socialist society for pedagogues like the Wienecke. That was implemented in 1933. Ernst Wienecke was initially to be completely removed from service, then he was ultimately only transferred to Lüneburg and demoted. The family survived here with his wife Else Wienecke, nee. Lüthje, son Klaus (* 1934) and daughter Jutta (* 1937) War and National Socialism. It was bombed out in Lüneburg on April 7, 1945 just eleven days before the British invaded.

After the surrender in 1945, Ernst Wienecke immediately got involved again in building democratic structures. He was a member of the Zone Advisory Council (forerunner of the Bundestag ) and was one of the first liberals. He ran the establishment of the FDP in Lüneburg. On November 11, 1945, with the approval of the military government, he organized the very first political meeting in the British zone of occupation. Thus Ernst Wienecke became the engine of the democratic reconstruction in post-war Germany. Professionally, he returned to Hamburg-Harburg in June 1945 as director of the industrial and commercial school - the family did not do so until May 1946.

In Hamburg-Harburg, Ernst Wienecke immediately returned to his old place of work in a leading position for the FDP in local politics. For many years he was district chairman, parliamentary group leader of the FDP in the district assembly and deputy chairman of the district assembly in Harburg. Thus Ernst Wienecke shaped local politics in Harburg and the FDP in Hamburg for more than twenty years.

proof

• Personal file Ernst Wienecke, State Archives Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
• Issue No. 32 Lüneburger Blätter, Museum Association for the Principality of Lüneburg