Helga Schuchardt

Helga Schuchardt (* 2. August 1939 as Helga Meyer in Hannover ) is a German liberal politician who from the 1982 FDP resigned. After leaving the party, she was Hamburg's Senator for Culture and Lower Saxony's Minister for Science and Culture .

Helga Schuchardt at the FDP federal party conference in 1977

Work and private life

As the daughter of a businessman who was killed in World War II, Schuchardt grew up in Aumühle near Hamburg. She attended a high school and a commercial college. Schuchardt then worked for two and a half years as a physical-technical assistant in Lübeck , before she passed the state examination as an engineer for technical physics at the Wedel Institute of Physics and Technology in 1964 . Schuchardt then worked from 1965 until she was elected to the German Bundestag in 1972 as an engineer at Lufthansa in Hamburg . Since 1968 she was married to the lawyer Wolfgang Schuchardt, who among other things worked from 1975 to 1978 as press spokesman for the Hamburg Justice Senator Ulrich Klug and from 2002 to 2006 as head of the prison in Glasmoor .

In January 1988 Schuchardt returned to her former employer, Lufthansa, with a fee contract and advised the company on "issues of cultural engagement" (sponsoring). At the same time she became a partner in the newly founded Cultur-Consortium GmbH in Hamburg.

Political career

Schuchardt joined the FDP in 1965 and soon occupied various posts on the state and federal executive boards of the youth organization German Young Democrats . From 1970 to 1982 Schuchardt belonged to the federal executive committee of the FDP , from 1975 she was state chairman of the FDP Hamburg . From 1972 to 1983 she was a member of the German Bundestag . She was the education and development policy spokesperson for her group, a member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation, Chair of the Subcommittee on Humanitarian Aid, and a member of the Committee on Education and Science.

In 1982 she resigned from the FDP in the course of internal party disputes over the coalition change of the FDP in the ninth legislative period of the German Bundestag, since then she has been non-party and chairwoman of the independent Liberal Association .

From 1978 to 1982 she was a member of the Advisory Board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation . Schuchardt was President of the Board of Trustees of the German Foundation for International Development from 1981 to 1983 .

From 1983 to 1987 Schuchardt was Hamburg's Senator for Culture and took over the then press officer Inge Volk, who soon became her partner. After leaving office, Schuchardt and Volk founded an agency for cultural events until she was appointed minister to Hanover and moved in with Volk there. She never kept a secret from her partner, but she never talked about her in public either. In 1992 she was the first top lesbian politician to be " outed " by a newspaper with the headline "German Minister loves a woman ".

From June 21, 1990 to March 30, 1998, Schuchardt was Lower Saxony's Minister for Science and Culture , from 1992 to 2002 a member of the Board of Trustees of the Volkswagen Foundation, and since 1994 chairwoman. She is a member of the advisory board of the Humanist Union (HU), co-founder of the ifu (International Women's University), Chairwoman of the University Council of the University of Music and Theater Hanover and Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Osnabrück .

Award

1998 Honorary Citizen of the Hanseatic City of Lüneburg

Fonts

with Lieselotte Berger , Lenelotte von Bothmer : Women in Parliament? About the difficulties of being equal (= rororo. 1946). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-499-11946-3 .
with Günter Verheugen (ed.): The liberal conscience (= rororo. 5127). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1982, ISBN 3-499-15127-8 .

Web links

Commons : Helga Schuchardt - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Helga Schuchardt in the catalog of the German National Library
Helga Schuchardt in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

^ Helga Schuchardt, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, Holger Börner, Henry Miller, Walter Scheel . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1978 ( online ).
↑ Citizens at last . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1977 ( online ).
↑ Hamburger Abendblatt , February 25, 2006: Karl-Heinz Becker is now in charge of the Glasmoor correctional facility .
↑ Axel Schock & Karen-Susan Fessel: OUT! - 800 famous lesbians, gays and bisexuals , Querverlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89656-111-1 .
↑ Miriam Hollstein: "Why lesbian and gay politicians rarely come out" , Die Welt, July 8, 2007.
↑ Ralf Garten: Manfred Hülsmann advises Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences: The Board of Trustees is newly constituted under the chairmanship of Helga Schuchardt. Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, press release of July 8, 2011 from the Science Information Service (idw-online.de), accessed on June 18, 2019.

personal data
SURNAME	Schuchardt, Helga
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Meyer, Helga (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German politician (FDP, independent), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH	August 2, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hanover

[spiegel-40616131-1] Helga Schuchardt, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, Holger Börner, Henry Miller, Walter Scheel . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1978 ( online ).

[spiegel-40941952-2] Citizens at last . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1977 ( online ).

[3] Hamburger Abendblatt , February 25, 2006: Karl-Heinz Becker is now in charge of the Glasmoor correctional facility .

[OUT-4] Axel Schock & Karen-Susan Fessel: OUT! - 800 famous lesbians, gays and bisexuals , Querverlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89656-111-1 .

[5] Miriam Hollstein: "Why lesbian and gay politicians rarely come out" , Die Welt, July 8, 2007.

[6] Ralf Garten: Manfred Hülsmann advises Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences: The Board of Trustees is newly constituted under the chairmanship of Helga Schuchardt. Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, press release of July 8, 2011 from the Science Information Service (idw-online.de), accessed on June 18, 2019.