Hans-Helmuth Wüstenhagen

Hans-Helmuth Wüstenhagen (* 1923 ; † December 1996 in Norden ) was a German environmental activist and chairman of the environmental umbrella organization Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection (BBU).

The son of the actor and theater director Karl Wüstenhagen came from the war without any professional training. As a journalist and writer, in 1948 as an employee of " New Germany ", he had little success. He studied natural sciences, became a graduate chemist and worked in the pharmaceutical industry at Degussa until 1972.

Wüstenhagen began with an "emergency community for civil rights" in his housing estate when an airport was to be expanded in Karlsruhe in 1959 . He stayed with the protest movement, which was organized as the "Karlsruhe Citizens 'Initiative" and later became active as part of the "Citizens' Action Environmental Protection Central Rhine Region". He joined the FDP and there agreed with the left-liberal direction around the environmentally politically committed Hans-Dietrich Genscher . In 1972 Wüstenhagen co-founded the BBU, took over its chairmanship in 1973 and set up the central office in his Karlsruhe apartment, while his wife organized the administration. Wüstenhagen also wrote anti-nuclear power poems. The planned nuclear power plant construction in Wyhl led to major protests. In 1973 right-wing organizations such as the World Association for the Protection of Life and Herbert Bruns board member left the BBU.

The resistance against the nuclear power plants became more radical: Wüstenhagen demanded an "escalation of civil disobedience" in front of the nuclear power station construction site in Brokdorf , implored an imminent "revolution" and called for electricity bills not to be paid. In 1977 he had to resign after long conflicts with left groups, some of which were close to the SED . For years he disappeared to Thailand until 1982 . In 1977 he gave impulses for an "Environmental Science Institute" (UWI) of the BBU, which Wolfgang Sternstein directed. He gave up politically and lived largely unknown until his death at the age of 72 in December 1996.

Fonts

• with Bernd Moldenhauer: Nuclear industry and citizens' initiatives against environmental destruction , Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1975 ISBN 978-3-7609-0248-7
• Citizens against nuclear power plants. Wyhl the beginning? , rororo, 1975 ISBN 978-3499119491

literature

• Frank Uekötter : Ecological interrelations. Outlines of a green contemporary history , in: Frank Bösch (Ed.): Divided history. East and West Germany 1970–2000, Göttingen 2015 ISBN 9783838906362 , pp. 117–152
• Wolfgang Sternstein : "Nuclear power - no thanks!" The long way to get out , Frankfurt a. M. 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "I want, I want, I want" - DER SPIEGEL 9/1977. Retrieved May 11, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Udo Kempf: Citizens' initiatives and representative system . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-99364-9 ( google.de [accessed on May 11, 2020]).
3. ^ Sandra Chaney: Nature of the Miracle Years: Conservation in West Germany, 1945-1975 . Berghahn Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84545-430-2 ( google.de [accessed on May 11, 2020]).
4. ↑ Horst Bieber: Number one of the citizens' initiatives. Incitator with bourgeois scruples. ZEIT ONLINE, February 18, 1977, accessed on May 11, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Udo Kempf: Citizens' initiatives and representative system . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-99364-9 ( google.de [accessed on May 11, 2020]).
6. ↑ Environmentalists: Away with damage. ZEIT ONLINE, July 29, 1977, accessed on May 11, 2020 . 
7. ↑ ENVIRONMENT: Tinkerer in the countryside - DER SPIEGEL 36/1980. Retrieved May 11, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Annette Jensen: The portrait: A citizen fighting against nuclear power plants . In: The daily newspaper: taz . December 4, 1996, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 11 ( taz.de [accessed on May 11, 2020]).