Johannes Herda

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Johannes Herda (born July 4, 1929 in Dyhernfurth ) is a former teacher and party functionary of the CDU in the GDR. He was a member of the People's Chamber for many years.

Life

Herda grew up in Dyhernfurth in Lower Silesia as the child of a working-class family. After elementary school he began an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk in 1943, which he was unable to finish when the war ended. At the age of 15, Herda was drafted into military service and was taken prisoner by the Americans, from which he was released after a short time. In search of his parents and the no longer possible return to his homeland, which now belonged to Poland, he ended up in Roßwein in Saxony , where he initially found work in a small printing company. Among other things, this printed a call to recruit new teachers , to which Herda responded promptly. After a course for new teachers, he started teaching at the Etzdorf elementary school in September 1946 . Due to a lack of living space, Herda set up an apartment on the top floor of the school, which he later expanded. From 1946 onwards, the Catholic Herda was politically active in the CDU of the Soviet occupation zone. First he built up the CDU local group Roßwein, later he took over the management of the Etzdorf local group. In 1949 he passed the first teacher examination.

As a result, Herda was instrumental in making the Etzdorf School a formative village institution in the agriculturally dominated area. This went so far that the school was selected for a model project, which provided for the establishment of day schools. In these day schools, the children from the 1st to the 6th grade were looked after all day. This republic-wide project, which was scientifically supervised by the Rostock University from 1960, also received a lot of international recognition and is considered to be the forerunner of later after-school care in the GDR. Herda, meanwhile deputy school director, took care of the afternoon arrangements within this project. Herda's participation in this project also made him interesting from a party-political point of view.

In the early 1960s he was appointed chairman of the working group on cultural work in the countryside within the cultural-political working group on the main board of the CDU. In 1962, as a result of Herda's commitment, the Etzdorf High School received the rather unusual honor for a school with the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze as a sign of recognition of outstanding services in the field of popular education. In 1963 Herda was elected to the central board of the teaching and education union, and in 1964 he was appointed senior student councilor. At the 11th party congress of the CDU in Erfurt at the end of September of the same year, the party congress delegates elected Herda as the successor candidate for the main board of the CDU. In 1966 he became a member of the main board, succeeding the late party chairman August Bach .

In accordance with his party function, Herda ran for the first time in the Volkskammer elections in 1967. He was elected as the successor candidate in constituency 61. Professionally, Herda had already been entrusted with new tasks at this point; he had been the director of the polytechnic high school in Marbach since 1966 . In 1971 he was first elected as a member of the People's Chamber. In later electoral terms he acted as the first deputy chairman of the committee for popular education and a member of the interparliamentary group. This activity enabled Herda to travel to western countries in his function as a member of parliament and representative of the GDR. Despite this, in some cases, close proximity to the state, the educator was given an important role within the party during the political change in the GDR.

On November 10, 1989, Herda headed the nomination committee, which was responsible for proposing the election of a new party leader. At this meeting of the main CDU board, the long-time party chairman Gerald Götting was replaced by the later and last GDR Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere .

For a short time Herda was given more responsibility in the People's Chamber. Since the chairman of the committee for popular education, Kurt Hager , had resigned from his political functions, Herda initially headed this committee, which also dealt with reforming the school system in the GDR.

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 4, 1984 p. 4
  2. ↑ Neue Zeit of June 8, 1977 p. 6
  3. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 6, 1962, p. 4
  4. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 4, 1963 p. 4
  5. ↑ Neue Zeit of June 12, 1964 p. 1
  6. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 4, 1964, p. 7
  7. ↑ Neue Zeit of May 4, 1966 p. 1
  8. ↑ Neue Zeit of December 11, 1966 p. 1
  9. ↑ Neues Deutschland, May 5, 1970 p. 4
  10. ↑ Neue Zeit of June 13, 1977 p. 1
  11. ↑ Neue Zeit of May 2, 1984 p. 3
  12. ↑ Neue Zeit of June 13, 1989 p. 1
personal data
SURNAME Herda, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher, MdV, member of the main board of the CDU
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Dyhernfurth