Esther-Maria von Coelln

Esther-Maria von Coelln , b. Küstermann (born June 24, 1911 in Meiningen , † April 29, 1997 in Munich ) was a German government official and CDU politician . First she worked from 1947 to 1949 in the Thuringian state government and from 1950 briefly in the Weimar city administration. After fleeing to the Federal Republic of Germany, she worked in the Federal Ministry for all-German issues from 1956 until she retired . For the CDU she sat from 1946 to 1950 as a member of the Thuringian state parliament .

Life

Years in the time of National Socialism

Von Coelln was born as Esther-Maria Küstermann as the daughter of an officer in Meiningen . First she attended a lyceum , then the upper lyceum in Berlin-Friedenau . Her school attendance was interrupted by longer stays abroad, so that she did not take her Abitur until 1931 at the age of 20, which she passed with distinction. After her schooling was from Coelln initially as a private tutor in the family of in Ascona living former director of IG Farben AG , Dr. chem. Kurt Oppenheim works. In 1933 she moved back to Berlin, where she worked as an office clerk in the Reich Statistical Office in Berlin in 1933 and met her future husband Dr. jur. Carl-Günther von Coelln met. After their marriage in December 1934, von Coelln stayed at home as a housewife. She became the mother of five children. Because of the increasing effects of the war, her family was evacuated to the Wriezen area in 1943 . In February 1945 the von Coelln family fled from the approaching Red Army to the home of the Küstermann family in Meiningen, Thuringia, which was initially occupied by American troops in April 1945.

Party career in the Soviet occupation zone

As a result, she initially remained a housewife and earned extra income as a language teacher. Von Coelln was initially politically active in the women's committee in Meiningen, and from 1946 until May 1947 she was also a member of the state board of the Thuringian women's committee. In terms of party politics, von Coelln found her home in the newly founded CDU , which she joined on November 15, 1945. She initially represented this party in the Meiningen local executive committee, and in 1946 also in the Thuringian Advisory State Assembly . In the first state elections for the new Thuringian state parliament , von Coelln also ran for the CDU and represented her party as a member of this state parliament from 1946 to 1950. In the spring of 1947, Ministerialdirektor Otto Schneider, who was employed in the Thuringian Ministry of Trade and Supply in February 1947, brought his party friend von Coelln to the ministry, where she worked from April 1, 1947 in the then headquarters of the ministry in Weimar , initially as Schneider's personal assistant. Both CDU members had also been elected to the CDU state committee for Thuringia from the end of April 1947. After Schneider died in July 1947 at the age of just 45, von Coelln changed the department and became press officer of the ministry, from December 1947 as a member of the government. When the ministry moved from Weimar to Erfurt in the summer of 1949 , von Coelln left the government agency on August 31, 1949 at his own request. She applied for a position in the Weimar city administration and on December 16, 1949 she was elected as the department head for public education in the city of Weimar. She took up this position on New Year 1950.

Escape and a new beginning in the Federal Republic

Because of the increasing political pressure on CDU officials, the von Coelln family decided to flee to the Federal Republic of Germany via West Berlin on May 22, 1950. A party expulsion from the CDU in the GDR was the inevitable consequence, but she joined the CDU in exile shortly after she fled . In the Federal Republic of Germany, people were initially admitted to Neheim-Hüsten in the Sauerland. The von Coellns lived briefly in Neviges and Caldenhof, and then in 1951 in the suburb of Oberkassel on the right bank of the Rhine, which was then still in Bonn . The reason for this was that Esther-Maria von Coelln's husband was employed in the Bonn Federal Ministry of Economics , where he ultimately rose to the position of Ministerialrat. In 1956 the von Coellns moved to the Godesberg villa district of the then independent Bonn suburb of Bad Godesberg on the left bank of the Rhine . Now Ms. von Coelln also resumed administrative work. She became an employee of the Federal Ministry for All German Issues , from which she resigned in 1976 with the rank of government councilor. In Bad Godesberg, Ms. von Coelln began to be involved in party politics again. From 1961 to 1969 she was for the CDU city council in Bad Godesberg and a member of the Bonn-Land district council, and also chairwoman of the CDU local association in Bad Godesberg-Villenviertel. After Bad Godesberg was incorporated into Bonn in 1969, von Coelln was CDU city councilor in Bonn until 1974 .
After working, the von Coellns first moved to Gernsbach in the Black Forest , where her husband died in 1979. In 1993 Esther-Maria von Coelln finally moved to a residential home in Munich as a pensioner , where she died in 1997 at the age of 85. She was buried in the Rüngsdorf cemetery in Bonn-Bad Godesberg.

literature

• Jochen Lengemann : Thuringian state parliaments 1919–1952. Biographical manual. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2014, ISBN 9783412221799 . P. 202f