Women's Union

Easter crown , set up by the Frauen Union Eichenau in April 2019

The Frauen-Union (FU; own spelling: “Frauen Union”) includes all female members of the CDU in Germany (approx. 155,000), provided they do not contradict this. Women who are not members of the CDU but feel committed to the goals and tasks of the Women's Union can also join. In Bavaria , the women's union of the CSU , which is independent of the women's union of the CDU, is a working group of the CSU , but has its own membership, which means that membership does not take place automatically when you join the CSU. Its goal is to motivate women to participate in politics, to enforce women's claims to representation in party organs and parliaments and to get involved in women's political education. The FU has been publishing the magazine Frau und Politik since 1955 .

history

The FU sees its roots in the middle-class Christian women's movement in the middle of the 19th century. After 1945, women's committees of the CDU and CSU were set up in the zones of occupation . On May 1, 1948, the “Women's Association of the CDU / CSU in Germany” was formed from these committees in the “Monopol” hotel in Frankfurt . Helene Weber , among others, was in charge of this establishment . At the party convention of the CDU in Karlsruhe in 1951, the Federal Women's Committee of the CDU was constituted under Margarete Gröwel . This committee separated organizationally from the sister party CSU. In January the newspaper “Frau und Politik” appeared for the first time.

From May 1956, the committee was called the “CDU Women's Association”. From now on, all female CDU members were automatically also members of the women's association. With the Karlsruhe CDU party congress, the women in the CDU were granted their own constitutional organization, the women's association.

In 1961, Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt appointed a woman to the federal cabinet for the first time after massive action by the women's association.

In 1988 the women's association was renamed "Frauen Union". Annette Widmann-Mauz has been federal chairwoman since 2015. Honorary chairmen are Rita Süssmuth and Maria Böhmer .

Chairperson

For reasons of denominational proportionality, the CDU's federal women's committee and the women's association were each headed by a Catholic and a Protestant chairman until 1969 .

Federal Women's Committee

• 1951–1956 Helene Weber , cath.
• 1951–1954 Maria Eichelbaum , ev.
• 1954–1956 Margarete Schuckert , ev.

Women's Union (before 1988 women's union )

• 1956–1958 Helene Weber , cath.
• 1956–1966 Hedwig Jochmus , ev.
• 1958–1969 Aenne Brauksiepe , cath.
• 1966–1969 Charlotte Fera , ev.
• 1969–1971 Aenne Brauksiepe
• 1971–1986 Helga Wex
• 1986-2001 Rita Süssmuth
• 2001–2015 Maria Böhmer
• since 2015 Annette Widmann-Mauz

literature

• Hans Süssmuth : Brief history of the CDU women's union: successes and setbacks 1948–1990. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1990, ISBN 3-7890-2166-0 .

Web links

• Women's Union
• History of the Women's Union of the CDU (PDF) on the Women's Union website

Individual evidence

1. ^ [1] Kreisbote: Easter coronation of the Rathauswiese