Hans Meyer (politician, 1914)

Hans Meyer (born July 11, 1914 in Krangen , Preußisch Stargard district , West Prussia ; † August 5, 2007 in Iserlohn , North Rhine-Westphalia ) was a German local politician. As a CDU member, he was honorary mayor of the city of Hemer from 1969 to 1987 , which appointed him former mayor in 2003 . He gained national fame in connection with the affair of the ice hockey club ECD Iserlohn , which, through Meyer's mediation, concluded a controversial advertising contract with the Libyan revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi .

Life

After graduating from secondary school, Hans Meyer completed a commercial apprenticeship before he had to do first labor and then military service in the Second World War. After trying twice to escape from Soviet captivity, he was soon released and moved to live with relatives in Neviges .

Shortly afterwards, Hans Meyer was sent to Hemer by his employer, the German Community Diakonieverband , to convert the local hospital into a hospital for released prisoners of war. Meyer developed the special lung clinic from the hospital, which he prepared with the help of some deaconesses from the Bleibergquelle parent company to accept new patients . As director and head of administration, he ran the clinic for more than three decades.

When the previous chairman of EC Deilinghofen resigned surprisingly at the beginning of the 1970s , Hans Meyer took over this post for almost two years. In 1986 he also founded the Hemer-Edelburg equestrian club , which he also headed as chairman for 15 years. The business meetings at the annual riding festival and the founding of the business initiative Nordkreis go back to his initiative .

politics

In the 1960s he got involved in local politics in Hemeran and won his first council mandate for the FDP parliamentary group. On the advice of Hermann-Josef Geismann , however, he switched to the CDU a little later , for which he was elected honorary mayor of the city of Hemer in 1969. Meyer kept this office until 1987, with a brief interruption due to the local reorganization.

The term of office was determined by the debate and implementation of the Sauerland / Paderborn law . Together with the local member of the regional parliament Geismann and state interior minister Willi Weyer , who was a patient at the pulmonary clinic in Hemer several times in the mid-1970s, Meyer was able to avoid incorporating Hemer into Iserlohn and preserve the city's independence.

Meyer was also responsible for many new buildings in the city center. In 1972 the indoor swimming pool at Hademareplatz was opened, and a little later the pedestrian zone, the new market square and the modern town hall were built. The town twinning for Obervellach and Bretten also goes back to Meyer's tenure. Looking back, political pioneers and successors of the time praised Meyer's closeness to the citizens.

His international business talks in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Libya earned Hemeran companies millions in orders. In 1983, shortly after the second oil crisis, he made his first state visit to Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya, where he was enthusiastically received by the people and gave a speech to the Jamahiriya . Meyer used the contacts to Libya in 1987 when the ECD Iserlohn was in acute financial difficulties. Together with club boss Heinz Weifenbach , he again traveled to Muammar al-Gaddafi and agreed an advertising contract for the revolutionary leader's Green Book , which caused an international scandal. From then on Meyer was also controversial within Hemer and his own party, also because the promised orders from Libya for the Hemeran industry did not materialize.

When the CDU lost its absolute majority in the city council in 1984, Hans Meyer was again elected mayor with the votes of the CDU and UWG . He promised to resign on December 31, 1986, but did not implement it. In the following month, a life-threatening crisis at the Stadtsparkasse Hemer became public, the cause of which was, among other things, unsecured loans totaling around 32 million DM. In February 1987 he actually gave up his office. Until the end of the electoral term, Hans Meyer remained a member of the electoral association “Die Hemeraner”. In 1988 he resigned himself from the CDU during a party expulsion process.

Honors

• Citizen Medal of the City of Bretten (1984)
• Former Mayor of the City of Hemer (2004)
• Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon (October 25, 2004)
• Hans-Meyer-Strasse in Hemer-Geitbecke

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "The most prominent feature of Hans Meyer was without a doubt his proverbial closeness to the citizen." Michael Esken on Meyer's death, quoted from the IKZ of August 7, 2007
2. ↑ “Not to forget Meyer's international economic talks (Yugoslavia, Hungary, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, spectacular especially with guests from Libya)! Mayor Öhmann officially recognized this for the very first time: 'These talks were an important engine for our economy.' ”IKZ on January 29, 2005
3. ↑ ^{a b} Friedrich Sirringhaus: The fall of the mayor. In: The city. Göppingen 2002, ISBN 3-00-010026-1 .
4. ↑ "Her [Irene Rothhöfts] path through local politics began in 1987 in the 'Die Hemeraner' parliamentary group with former mayors Hans Meyer and Jörg Schauhoff." IKZ from June 1, 2007
5. ↑ "Hans Meyer was the driving force behind the CDU, from whom he parted in a bitter dispute in the end."
6. ↑ Office of the Federal President