Hedwig Wachenheim

Hedwig Wachenheim (born August 27, 1891 in Mannheim ; died October 8, 1969 in Hanover ) was a German social politician and historian who was politically active at a young age.

Family background

Hedwig Wachenheim came from a long-established Mannheim family, whose name can be found in old documents before 1700. In 1816, her great-grandfather owned a house in the Lower Town, a district where traditional Jewish wholesalers lived. The grandparents ran a textile shop there until 1880. In 1880 they gave up the business, grandfather became a wine merchant and bought a nicer house in the center of town. The mother, a born Traumann, came from a wealthy, liberal Baden family. Although one of her ancestors had provided the garrison moving out of Mannheim with free food in 1785, as a Jew he was forbidden to acquire land. Only in 1814 does the Badische Chronik show him as the owner of extensive real estate. Markus Berle, maternal great-grandfather, was, among other things, the banker of the Duke of Nassau. Hedwig's father, banker and chairman of the Freedom Association and city councilor, died when she was seven years old.

Hedwig Wachenheim grew up in upper middle-class, affluent circumstances in which it was unusual for women of her state were working or lower ran housework themselves. When Wachenheim decided to become a welfare worker against her mother's wishes , it meant a break with the family.

education and profession

Wachenheim went to Berlin and studied from 1912 to 1914 at the Alice Salomon University . From 1914 to 1915 she worked as a welfare worker in Mannheim and returned to Berlin in 1915. There she worked from 1916 to 1917 as an employee in the commission of the National Women's Service in Berlin and from 1917 to 1919 as head of a complaints office ("Saure Milch Wachenheim") in the Berlin milk supply. From 1919 to 1922 she worked in the Reichszentrale für Heimatdienst (“predecessor institution” of the Federal Agency for Political Education ) and from 1922 to 1933 as an employee and later as a member of the government at the Reichsfilmprüfstelle.

Commitment to workers' welfare

In 1919 she was a co-founder of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and from that time a member of the main committee (secretary).

Signature Hedwig Wachenheim

From 1926 she was editor of the magazine Arbeiterwohlfahrt and from 1928 director of the welfare school of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt. She made particular merits in establishing social work as a professional work.

Social Democratic Politics

After the beginning of an intense friendship with the Social Democratic Reichstag deputy Ludwig Frank , Wachenheim joined the SPD in 1914 . After a short time as a member of the Berlin SPD-USPD magistrate in 1919, she became a Berlin city councilor and in 1928 she entered the Prussian state parliament as a member of Frankfurt / Oder , to which she was a member until 1933. After emigrating for political reasons, she became involved in the exile organization of German social democrats, the German Labor Delegation, in the USA from 1935 . As part of this work, she particularly advocated the entry of people persecuted by the National Socialists.

emigration

After the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, she had lost her mandate in the state parliament and her position as a member of the government, had been searched and asked to report to the police every day. It was not hidden from her that many of her friends experienced dire fates for political reasons. Hedwig Wachenheim decided to emigrate. She first traveled to France, where she attended lectures at the Sorbonne , and in 1935 to England, where she attended lectures at the London School of Economics .

In 1935 she emigrated to the United States of America (USA), where she made a living from research assignments for the New School of Social Research and from journalistic activities, for example for the journal Foreign Affairs . In 1938 she acquired US citizenship. In 1946 she returned to Germany and worked until 1949 as an employee of the welfare department of the US military government in Stuttgart and until 1951 as an employee of the welfare department of the US High Commissioner in Frankfurt am Main . She then returned to the USA and worked on a scholarship from the University of California, Berkeley on her major scientific work on the German labor movement until 1914 , which was published in 1967.

Wachenheim died in October 1969 during a visit to Germany in Hanover. She found her final resting place in the Jewish cemetery in Mannheim. Her estate is in the archive of the social democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bonn.

Honors

• She was awarded the Marie Juchacz plaque from the Arbeiterwohlfahrt in 1969.
• A number of streets and institutions were named after her. Selection:

Hedwig-Wachenheim-Strasse in Berlin

• Hedwig-Wachenheim-Strasse in Berlin-Friedrichshain
• Hedwig Wachenheim-Karree in Cologne
• awo-Hedwig-Wachenheim family center in Wiehl
• awo Hedwig Wachenheim house in Lahr

Fonts (selection)

• Women and politics. An introduction. Reich Committee for Socialist Educational Work, Berlin 1926.
• The German labor movement from 1844 to 1914. Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne / Opladen 1967.
• From the upper class to social democracy. Memoirs of a Reformist . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1973.

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 2: Social politicians in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism 1919 to 1945. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 , pp. 209 f. ( Online , PDF; 3.9 MB).
• Stine Harm: Citizens or Comrades? Carlo Schmid and Hedwig Wachenheim - Social Democrats despite their bourgeois origin. ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-8382-0104-7 .
• Susanne Zeller: Wachenheim, Hedwig , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 605f.
• Active Museum Association (Ed.): Put in front of the door. Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-00-018931-9 , p. 368.
• Corinna Schneider: Hedwig Wachenheim (1891–1969), SPD politician, co-founder of the Workers' Welfare Association, persecuted by National Socialism - “From the upper bourgeoisie to social democracy”. In: Mannheim history sheets. NF 29. 2015, pp. 81-102, ISSN  0948-2784 .

Web links

• Hedwig-Wachenheim-Gesellschaft e. V.
• Literature by and about Hedwig Wachenheim in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hedwig Wachenheim: From the upper middle class to social democracy. P. 1 and 5 f.
2. ^ Hedwig Wachenheim: From the upper middle class to social democracy. P. 141.
3. ↑ Jüdischer Friedhof Mannheim ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ awo family center in Wiehl
5. ↑ awo Hedwig-Wachenheim-Haus in Lahr