Horst Niggemeier

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Horst Niggemeier (born May 10, 1929 in Datteln ; † October 1, 2000 there ) was a German trade unionist , journalist and social democratic politician .

Live and act

Niggemeier was the son of the miner Walter Niggemeier and his wife Anna, geb. Linn. He grew up in the Datteln miners' settlement in Beisenkamp . He attended the elementary school in Datteln and then the secondary school in Oer-Erkenschwick - by means of a kind of gifted promotion, since his parents could not have raised the school fees that were then also paid for attending secondary school. This school grant was only (continued) paid if the recipient was one of the five best students in his year. In the last weeks of the Second World War , Niggemeier was drafted into the Volkssturm at the age of 15 , but he soon fell out due to an injury caused by shrapnel. After the end of the war he and friends founded the band Kolibris , which performed in and around Datteln and played dance music in particular. Niggemeier took over the management of the band, organized the performances and negotiated the fee (in the time of the shortage economy before the currency reform, often in the form of food for the band members).

After graduating from secondary school, Niggemeier did a commercial apprenticeship and then worked as an employee at the Emscher-Lippe colliery in Datteln. As a hobby he began to write articles for the local newspaper Dattelner Morgenpost . Through his union involvement, he became a full-time editor of the members' newspaper of IG Bergbau und Energie , Einheit in 1954 . From 1966 to 1994 he was editor-in-chief of this newspaper.

Niggemeier had been a member of the SPD since 1952 and was chairman of the Recklinghausen sub-district from 1968 to 1986. For the party, he sat on the city council of Datteln from 1956 to 1992. Since 1962 he was deputy mayor, from 1967 to 1992 mayor of Datteln. He was also a member of the Recklinghausen district council from 1969 to 1994, where he was parliamentary group chairman from 1975 to 1994. He was also a member of the German Bundestag from 1987 to 1994 . He was directly elected twice in the constituency of Recklinghausen II . In addition, Niggemeier was a member of numerous other committees and organizations (e.g. Broadcasting Council of WDR , Administrative Council of VEW , Presidium of the North Rhine-Westphalia Association of Cities and Municipalities ). He was also major in the reserve.

Like many union-oriented social democrats who had political and administrative responsibility in cities in the Ruhr area, Niggemeier was a representative of the pragmatic right wing of the SPD, the so-called canal workers , who later became part of the Seeheimer Kreis of German social democracy. Then this also included Gesine Schwan on. With her and others, he campaigned against uncritical cooperation between the SPD and, in particular, the SED in the former GDR - for example in the book Where is the SPD drifting? , 1987 ed. by Jürgen Maruhn and Manfred Wilke .

Through contacts with the Israeli trade union federation Histadrut , he visited Israel for the first time in the 1960s and made contacts with the local Social Democratic Party (see Mapam and Avoda ) and the kibbutz movement. It contributed to his "right image" that Niggemeier from now on both as editor-in-chief of the unit and in free articles for other newspapers (not least in guest comments for Die Welt and Welt am Sonntag ), vehemently advocated Israel's right to exist and the PLO sharply criticized for their terrorist acts against Israel. Niggemeier contributed to the town twinning between Recklinghausen (Datteln belongs to the Recklinghausen district) and Akkon in northern Israel.

As editor-in-chief of the unit , he contributed to the politically moderate image of IG Bergbau, which tried to achieve the social compatibility of structural change in the Ruhr area - in particular avoiding layoffs in the mining sector - not in a class struggle but in pragmatic arrangements with politicians (including with the government Kohl ) and economy.

As a local politician, he endeavored to further develop his hometown of Datteln. In line with the structural change brought about by the end of mining in the northern Ruhr area, he established other branches of industry such as Rheinzink in Datteln. Together with the then medical director, Prof. Heinrich Rodeck , he ran the expansion of the Vestische Children's and Youth Clinic in Datteln , and together with the then dean Rev. Emmanuel Wethmar the new construction of the St. Vincenz Hospital in Datteln. He also tried to give dates a special image. To this end, he established the Dattelner Canal Festival in the early 1970s , had Sven Olsen & the Equilis play the hit song Come along to the Dattelner Canal and distill and distribute a clear Westphalian grain as Dattelner Canal water . In an effort to achieve reconciliation and international understanding at the municipal level, he initiated the town twinning of Datteln, which had suffered heavy British bombing at the end of the Second World War (the strategically important locks were targeted, and the civilian population was mainly hit), with the English mining and mining community Industrial city of Cannock . After the democratic revolution in the GDR in the autumn of 1989, Niggemeier also established a “domestic German” town twinning between Datteln and Genthin in Saxony-Anhalt .

At the beginning of the 1980s he was committed as a supporter of the retrofitting pursued by the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and as an opponent of the peace movement . After the social-liberal coalition ended in autumn 1982, Niggemeier was one of the few delegates at the SPD party congress in Cologne in 1983 who, along with Helmut Schmidt and the former defense minister Hans Apel, continued to vote for the implementation of the NATO double resolution. In line with the IG Bergbau und Energie and its long-term chairman, Adolf Schmidt , Niggemeier was an advocate of the so-called energy mix of coal and nuclear power. He was anti-communist and rejected his party's cooperation with the Greens, as well as cooperation with the SED. He also criticized the too lax handling of the asylum law. On the other hand, Niggemeier strongly advocated Datteln's Turkish citizens, including their right to an appropriate prayer room. It may have played a role here that many of the Turkish-born Dattelner had worked in the mining industry - to which Niggemeier, in turn, as the full-time editor-in-chief of the IG-Bergbau-Zeitung Einheit , felt a special bond.

Due to his political orientation and his combative appearance (for example as a “communist eater”), Niggemeier was suitable as an enemy image for many who saw themselves as “left”. The Bochum high school teacher and crime novelist Reinhard Junge worked several times on Niggemeier with his fictional character Ekel von Datteln .

Honors

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Notes on the role of Niggemeiers in the asylum debate )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.sussex.ac.uk
  2. ^ Report by Thomas Meiser
  3. ↑ a b Federal President's Office
personal data
SURNAME Niggemeier, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Dates
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 2000
Place of death Dates