Helene Wessel

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In 1965, Helene Wessel received the Federal Cross of Merit from Eugen Gerstenmaier

Helene Wessel (born July 6, 1898 in Hörde (now Dortmund ), † October 13, 1969 in Bonn ) was a German politician . From October 17, 1949 to January 1952, she was chairman of the center , after which she founded the All-German People's Party with Gustav Heinemann, and finally joined the SPD with it. She was elected to the Parliamentary Council and is thus one of the “ mothers of the Basic Law ”.

Life and work

Helene Wessel was born on July 6, 1898 in Hörde as the youngest of four children of the Reichsbahn official Heinrich Wessel and his wife Helene, née Linz. The parents were deeply Catholic, the father a member of the German Center Party. He died in 1905 as a result of an accident at work.

Helene Wessel first attended elementary and commercial school, then completed a commercial apprenticeship and in November 1915 accepted a position as a secretary in the center's Hörder party office. There she met Johannes Gronowski , an acquaintance of her father, who became her political foster father. In March 1923 she began a one-year course at the State Welfare School in Münster to become a youth and social welfare worker , which she paid for with her own resources - including by liquidating her stamp collection. From 1919 she became involved in the center and was elected to the Prussian state parliament in May 1928 . With that she gave up her two professions as party secretary and welfare worker of the Catholic Church. From October 1929 she received further training at the Berlin German Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work to become a qualified welfare worker.

After the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, Helene Wessel was classified as "politically unreliable". In the vote on the Enabling Act in the state parliament, she said she had abstained from voting . At first she worked in the administration of the St. Johannes Hospital , from 1935 on she carried out a research project on “The cohesion of the Catholic family through religion” and then briefly worked as a secretary at the Catholic Women's Association . From April she was first a secretary and then a welfare worker at the Catholic Welfare Association . As an initially voluntary, then again professional welfare worker in the “welfare at risk”, she lectured and published and, as an advocate of compulsory detention, advocated a preservation law and the sterilization of “ anti-social ”.

After the Second World War she was politically active again, first again in the center, then in the All-German People's Party (GVP) . When she failed to pass the five percent hurdle in the 1953 Bundestag election , she lost her mandate and temporarily worked as a freelancer for the German Federation of Trade Unions . She joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) , for which she was re-elected to the Bundestag in 1957, to which she then belonged until her death.

Helene Wessel died on October 13, 1969 at the age of 71 in Bonn and was buried in the southern cemetery there.

Political activity

Helene Wessel, who had worked for the German Center Party since 1915 and had been a member of it since 1919, was initially involved in the Windthorstbund . In 1922 she became its Westphalian state chairman and was a member of the federal executive committee from 1930. Through this activity she also achieved leading positions in the center. In 1924 she was delegated to the Reich Party Committee, the highest body between party conventions. A year later she became a member of the Reich Party Executive. In May 1928 there was finally an election to the Prussian state parliament for the constituency of Westphalia-South. She was the youngest member of her parliamentary group and was the specialist spokesperson for welfare issues. In the elections in April 1932 and March 1933 she was able to defend her mandate. She strictly refused to cooperate with the National Socialists, but with this position she found herself in the minority within her parliamentary group. Wessel's political career initially ended with the dissolution of the center and the state parliament.

After the end of the National Socialist dictatorship, she resumed her political work. She rejoined the center and became its deputy chairman at the first party congress in March 1946. In contrast to many former party friends, she did not join the newly founded Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) because she did not see it in the socially progressive tradition of political Catholicism and, in her opinion, too many reactionary forces and stirrup holders of Hitler found. In September 1946 she became the license holder of the New Westphalian Courier , which is why she moved to the Werl publishing location . She had already become a member of the Zone Advisory Council in February 1946 , from April she was a member of the Westphalian provincial parliament and from October also the appointed state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia .

She took part in discussions about the renewal of Germany within the Imshausen society . In September 1948 she was elected to the Parliamentary Council with Johannes Brockmann as representative of the center , in which she served as secretary. Along with Friederike Nadig , Elisabeth Selbert and Helene Weber, she was one of the four mothers of the Basic Law , which she, however, refused to approve because of the lack of basic democratic and social rights.

After the death of Fritz Stricker at the beginning of July 1949, Helene Wessel took over the federal chairmanship of the center in October, which she held until she left the party. She was the first female leader of a party in Germany. In the 1949 election she was elected to the first German Bundestag for the Center Party . There she also took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group , which she initially retained after merging with the Bavarian party to form the Federal Union (FU). There was a female parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag only decades later. She was also chairman of the Public Welfare Committee until February 13, 1953.

Wessel's vehement rejection of rearmament and her engagement in the emergency community for peace in Europe met with rejection in large parts of the party. In January 1952 she resigned from the party chairmanship, and on November 12th she left the party entirely. Together with Gustav Heinemann , Hans Bodensteiner , Thea Arnold , Hermann Etzel , Diether Posser and Johannes Rau , she founded on 29./30. November the GVP. However, this failed in the next election due to the newly introduced five percent hurdle . After the dissolution of the GVP, like most of its members, she switched to the SPD and in 1957 again achieved a Bundestag mandate via its state list, which she held until her death. She headed the Petitions Committee until 1965 , after which she was deputy chairman of this committee until her death. However, she did not take any other top positions due to her poor health. She was still involved in the Fight against Nuclear Death movement , advocated international understanding and voted against the emergency laws in 1968 on the grounds that she had experienced the effects of the Enabling Act .

Fonts

  • Standard of living from care and employment. An examination of the cost of social security, welfare and care compared to family income from employment . Publishing company Müller, Berlin 1931.
  • Preservation, Not Neglect: A Caring and Eugenic Need . van Gils, Geilenkirchen 1934.
  • Our way to Europe . Wording of the speech in the Berlin student house to the working groups of the 'Emergency Community for Peace in Europe' on July 6, 1952. Berlin Working Groups of the Emergency Community for Peace in Europe, Berlin 1952.

literature

  • Walter Henkels : 99 Bonn heads , reviewed and supplemented edition, Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 264ff.
  • Elisabeth Friese: Helene Wessel (1898–1969) . From the Center Party to Social Democracy. In: Düsseldorfer Schriften on recent regional history and the history of North Rhine-Westphalia . tape 36 . Klartext, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-88474-064-4 .
  • Elisabeth Friese: Helene Wessel, an uncomfortable Christian . In: Peter Grafe, Bodo Hombach, Reinhard Grätz (eds.): The locomotive changes wheels at full speed. History and stories from North Rhine-Westphalia . Dietz, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-8012-0118-X , p. 120 ff .
  • Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators. Women's biographies of National Socialism . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1996, ISBN 3-596-13094-8 , pp. 191 ff .
  • Antje Dertinger : women from the very beginning. From the founding years of the Federal Republic . Latka, Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-925068-11-2 , pp. 227 ff .
  • An example of continuity in social policy: Helene Wessel . In: Catalog for the exhibition: “We weren't allowed to speak. As soon as you made contact with anyone, penalties rained down. “The former concentration camp for girls and young women and later the Uckermark extermination camp . Berlin 1998, p. 14th f . ( maedchen-kz-uckermark.de [PDF; 681 kB ]).

Web links

Commons : Helene Wessel  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Antje Dertinger: Women from the very beginning. From the founding years of the Federal Republic . Latka, Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-925068-11-2 , pp. 231 .
  2. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators. Women's biographies of National Socialism . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1996, ISBN 3-596-13094-8 , pp. 217 .
  3. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators. Women's biographies of National Socialism . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1996, ISBN 3-596-13094-8 , pp. 203 ff .
  4. ^ A b Karl Lauschke: Wessel, Helene . In: Hans Bohrmann (Ed.): Biographies of important Dortmunders. People in, from and for Dortmund . tape 2 . Klartext, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88474-677-4 , p. 144 ff .
  5. ^ Helene Wessel at the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia
  6. ↑ http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/deutsche-geschichte/grundgesetz-und-parlamentarischer-rat/39159/helene-wessel-zentrumspartei Biography at the "Federal Agency for Political Education"
personal data
SURNAME Wessel, Helene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (center, GVP, SPD), MdB, MdL (Prussia and North Rhine-Westphalia)
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Hear
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1969
Place of death Bonn