Hanna Gerig

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Hanna Gerig born Degenhardt (born May 31, 1900 in Potsdam , † December 15, 1991 in Cologne ) (actually Johanna Gerig ) was a German politician of the German Center Party and the CDU .

Life

Hanna Gerig was born as the daughter of Anton Degenhardt in Potsdam, grew up there Catholic and attended the Lyceum . Due to the upscale lifestyle of her parents, she also had contact with members of the imperial family. The father was the local chairman of the center and included his daughter in his work, which shaped his daughter. During her school days she worked with the Catholic youth and from 1918 she headed the Catholic Women's Association . On May 10, 1924 she married Otto Gerig and moved with him to Cologne , where she became a housewife and mother of five children. In 1929/30 she was on the executive committee of the women's council of the Cologne Center Party.

1933-1945

After taking power, the husband lost all of his offices and positions. The Nazis searched the family's home several times and Hanna Gerig and her husband were repeatedly interrogated. She was able to work for a Bremen company as a sales representative for coffee, occasionally wrote small paid articles for the church newspaper and also gave piano lessons to bridge the financial emergency. The attempt to gain a foothold financially with a delicatessen shop in Deutz was thwarted by a boycott organized by the NSDAP . Both secretly kept in contact with political acquaintances, including the Cologne district . After the attempt on Hitler , her husband was in the action "grid" with other former Reichstag deputies and politicians of democratic parties (u. A. Konrad Adenauer , Joseph Tree Hoff , Peter Schlack , Joseph Roth and Hubert Peffeköver) arrested and taken to the work camp in the exhibition halls in Cologne Deutz transferred. Hanna Gerig fought for her husband and his fellow prisoners by all means, but on September 16, 1944 Otto Gerig was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp together with Baumhoff, Schlack, Roth and Peffeköver . Nevertheless, she continued to be so committed to the prisoners in Deutz that the camp administration threatened to arrest her and her children as well. This earned her the name "angel of the exhibition halls" among the prisoners. After she had learned after a long time that her husband had died in the concentration camp and was again threatened with concentration camp imprisonment, she and her children hid outside Cologne with Johann Peffeköver, whose brother Hubert was a fellow prisoner from the Deutz camp and the Buchenwald concentration camp was.

After 1945

In order to make ends meet as a widow financially after the war, she worked as a social officer at Rhenag until 1949 . From 1949 to 1965 she then worked as an editor for the Kölnische Rundschau . As a well-known opponent of the Nazi system, she was appointed a member of the city council by the British occupying forces in 1946 and was a member of the assembly until 1964 without interruption. In 1945 she was involved in the drafting of the Cologne Guidelines and in the founding of the CDU, and her membership number was 32, lower than that of Adenauer. During this time Mrs. Gerig worked closely with Sibille Hartmann , Hanna Adenauer , Leni Encke and Rosemarie Ellscheidt. After the return of the men from captivity and escape, Ms. Gerig was almost pushed out of the political scene and lost her safe constituency in Deutz (where she was also nicknamed "Löwin von Deutz"), but was able to successfully find a new one in Cologne-Ehrenfeld build political position. She was appointed by the Federal Ministry to the committee that was supposed to create the legal basis to compensate Nazi victims as much as possible. In 1950 she founded the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime as a voice for the "Victims" in the Cologne district and was its chairman for many years. She became vice-president of the "Union international de la résistance et de la déportation". In the same year she became a member of the trade union council and the federal women's group of the DAG . In 1952 she became the first woman to be eligible to vote on the federal board for job placement and unemployment insurance. In 1965 she retired from professional and political life.

Honors

  • 1965 Awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class
  • 1988 Award of the Great Federal Cross of Merit

literature

  • AKDFB Women's Council; HAStK 1111/3711; Greven's address book for Cologne and the surrounding area; NL Lauer
  • G. letter / B. Kaff / H.-O. Kleinmann: "Christian Democrats against Hitler". Published on behalf of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung eV, Verlag Herder Freiburg im Breisgau, 2004, ISBN 3-451-20805-9 , pp. 205-216.
  • "Hanna Gerig", in: Against the brown current. Cologne female resistance fighters in portraits by Arbeiterfotografie Cologne (exhibition catalog of the NS Documentation Center Cologne). 2000; Pp. 48-57.
  • "Resistance and Persecution in Cologne 1933-1945" (exhibition catalog). Cologne 1974; P. 389f
  • ACDP (Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Sankt Augustin): Otto Gerig and Hanna Gerig estate

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ ACDP: Estate of Otto Gerig and Hanna Gerig
  2. ↑ For me he was a hero Bergische Landeszeitung from August 26, 2005
  3. ↑ Internationales Rotes Kreuz Bad Arolsen, Archive: Excerpt from the block relocations of the Buchenwald concentration camp, relocations on September 29, 1944 from the tent camp, sheet 659


personal data
SURNAME Gerig, Hanna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Degenhardt, Hanna (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (center, CDU)
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1991
Place of death Cologne