Klaus Wedemeier

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Klaus Wedemeier

Klaus Wedemeier (born January 12, 1944 in Hof an der Saale ) is a German businessman and politician ( SPD ). From 1985 to 1995 he was mayor and president of the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen .

biography

Family, education and work

In 1956, Wedemeier's family moved from the Franconian Hof an der Saale, which lived in the Groß-Döhren district of Goslar after the Second World War , to Bremen. He completed an apprenticeship as a wholesale and foreign trade merchant and was a commercial clerk in electrical wholesaling and foreign trade from 1961, where he has been an authorized representative since 1969. In 1972 he became an authorized representative of the Bremen Society for Urban Development, Urban Renewal and Housing Construction. From 1976 to 1979 he worked as a department head for location and store network planning in the food retail sector at co op AG . After his time as mayor, he joined the Düsseldorf o.tel.o GmbH ( telecommunications company of VEBA + RWE) as general manager in 1995 ; Wedemeier has been a managing partner of We2 Kommunikation GmbH - Wirtschaft + Politik - and has been a consultant for industrial companies since 1999 .

Wedemeier ended his professional and voluntary activities in 2019.

Wedemeier is married to Ute Wedemeier .

politics

Political party

Wedemeier joined the SPD in 1964 . From 1970 to 1976 he was state chairman of the SPD youth organization Jusos . At the same time he was chairman of his SPD local association Bremen Horn-Achterdiek . Since 1972 he was a member of the board of the SPD Bremen . From 1976 to 1980 he was chairman of the SPD sub-district Bremen-Ost in the SPD Bremen. From 1985 to 1995 he was an advisory member of the Presidium of the Federal SPD and from 1989 to 1996 Chairman of the Social Democratic Community for Local Politics (Bundes-SGK). From 1985 to 1995 he was an advisory member of the Presidium of the Federal SPD.

Citizenship

Wedemeier was a member of Bremen's citizenship from 1971 to 1985 and from 1995 to 1999 . He was a member of various deputations (including finance deputation) and the parliamentary budget committee. In 1979 he was elected to succeed Egon Kähler as chairman of the SPD parliamentary group of the state of Bremen; he was followed in 1985 by Konrad Kunick .

senate

On September 18, 1985, after the resignation of Hans Koschnick (SPD), Wedemeier was named president and mayor of the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen elected and formed the Senate Wedemeier I . He was also a senator for church affairs until 1995 . Its Senate was a sole government until 1991 .

He stood for the first time as the top candidate of the SPD for the state elections in 1987 . The SPD received 50.5% of the vote; The Senate Wedemeier II from 1987 to 1991 was also a sole government.

His particular concern during his reign was the modernization of Bremen's economic structure such as aerospace, automobile construction, environmental technology or the food and beverage industry.
During his term of office, the University of Bremen was also redirected and opened up more to natural and engineering sciences. Important research institutions such as the Institute for Marine and Polar Research and the Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) were expanded and founded.

The takeover of Neue Heimat Niedersachsen / Bremen from the collapsed Neue Heimat group for 1 mark in 1987 was of major importance in terms of housing policy, in particular to safeguard the interests of the tenants of around 45,000 apartments . Bremen's largest housing construction company was created under the former name GEWOBA .
In 1987 the Senate founded the Bremen Solidarity Prize for Democracy and Human Rights . The first winners were Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela .

Wedemeier strengthened the maintenance of the existing city partnerships with Danzig and Riga . In 1987 he was able to agree a town twinning with the port city of Rostock , in 1988 the close ties between the Israeli port city of Haifa and Bremen were consolidated through a town twinning, and in 1989 Bratislava followed .
In 1989 the Bremen Music Festival was founded on the initiative of the town hall . In the same year, efforts began to found a collector's museum, which opened in 1991 in the New Weserburg Museum .

In the 1991 election , the SPD received only 38.8% of the vote and thus lost an absolute majority after twenty years. The SPD and Wedemeier concluded a traffic light coalition , the Senate Wedemeier III (1991 to 1995), with the FDP and Alliance 90 / The Greens .

In the dispute about the reorganization of the state financial equalization in 1992, he ensured that the specific concerns of the city-state were adequately taken into account. With the implementation of a ruling on the state financial equalization before the Federal Constitutional Court , he reached a. the constitutionally recognized right to additional federal grants. Securing the population rating and adequate compensation for port loads was also achieved. In the following years, Bremen received more than ten billion D-Marks.
With the “Bremen Declaration” of November 1992, the Senate established a broad alliance (business associations, trade unions and chambers) to implement the necessary restructuring and modernization process.

In 1992, the Bremen Senate under Wedemeier managed to offer the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie , which wanted to leave Frankfurt, a new place of activity in Bremen.
The preservation of the former Klöckner steel works as an industrial location in Bremen - since 1994 Stahlwerke Bremen - was achieved in 1992/94 with the help of the Senate; 6000 jobs were retained.

Wedemeier was particularly committed to the Jewish population and the Sinti and Roma . On Wedemeier's initiative, as the acting President of the Federal Council , the Federal Council officially commemorates the persecution of the Sinti and Roma in December since 1994.

The traffic light coalition broke up in January 1995.

In the early elections in 1995 , the SPD received 33.4% of the vote, only 0.8 percentage points more than the CDU . Wedemeier announced his resignation; Henning Scherf (SPD) was elected as his successor.

Wedemeier was President of the Federal Council from November 1, 1993 to October 31, 1994 . From 1985 to 1995 he was mayor of the Presidium of the German Association of Cities .

Further memberships and offices

  • From 1994 to 1999 member of the Committee of the Regions of the European Union .
  • From 2000 to 2018 chairman of the board of the Wirtschaftsverband Weser e. V., since 1998 honorary chairman.
  • From 2002 to 2018 chairman of the board of the Weserbund eV, since 1998 honorary chairman.
  • Managing partner of We2 Kommunikation GmbH.
  • From 2014 to 2019 chairman of the Weserbrücke e. V., Friends of the Bremen State Representation in Berlin from 2014
  • Member of the steering committee of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's management group
  • Honorary member of the board of the Social Democratic Community for Local Politics (Federal - SGK)

Honors

Works

  • Intentional and enforced: The SPD parliamentary group of the state of Bremen from the turn of the century to the present . Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Bremen 1983/2012.
  • Our Wilhelm Kaisen . Nordwestdeutscher Verlag, 1987.
  • Courage to remember. Against forgetting . Donat Verlag, Bremen 1994, ISBN 3924444811 .
  • Remember for the future . Bremen 1989. ISBN 3927857017 .
  • with Heinrich Albertz : Deportation of Bremen Jews to Minsk . Edition Temmen , Bremen 1999.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung : Archive of Social Democracy: Klaus Wedemeier .
  2. ^ Press office of the Senate of January 8, 2004.
  3. taz-nord-bremen of December 14, 2019.
  4. The proposal to Wedemeier came from the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, Romani Rose, together with his friend Helmut Hafner from Bremen.
  5. www.weser.de ( Memento of the original dated November 7, 2016 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. (As of November 7, 2016) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.weser.de
  6. ^ Press office of the Senate of January 8, 2004.