Leo Schwering

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Leo Schwering (born March 16, 1883 in Coesfeld , † May 7, 1971 in Cologne ) was a German historian , philologist , high school teacher and politician . He was a Prussian and North Rhine-Westphalian member of the state parliament and co-founder of the CDU .

Life

Origin and work until 1933

Schwering was born on March 16, 1883 into a family of Catholic faith. After elementary school, he attended the Apostle High School in Cologne , where his father Karl Schwering had been director since 1901. Influenced by his Catholic upbringing, Schwering and his brother Ernst became members of the center . In 1903 he began to study classical philology , history and geography in Bonn . 1907 doctorate he became Dr. phil. and worked as a trainee on a habilitation on Cologne trade in the Middle Ages. In 1908 he then passed his state examination. From 1911 he worked in higher education at the Kreuzgasse grammar school in Cologne.

His political work began in 1912 when he became chairman of the Cologne section of the Volksverein for Catholic Germany and journalist for the centre's press. Schwering took part in a trade union congress in Essen in 1920, at which Adam Stegerwald called for the establishment of an interdenominational party. In 1921 he was elected to the Prussian state parliament and dealt mainly with cultural policy . In the state elections in 1932, he failed to return to the state parliament. After that he returned to school, but before the elections on March 5, 1933 he was the center's election speaker. In the public speeches he used the slogan " Whoever votes Hitler , chooses war ".

Persecution under National Socialism

After taking power, political and professional activities were made impossible for him. Since May 1933 there have been repeated attempts on the part of the Cologne councilor for schools and the district administration to remove Schwering from school service due to the law to restore the professional civil service. On June 1, 1934, he was finally forcibly retired by the Nazis. In his financial need, he published his own newspaper and in 1939 founded a Silentium , a kind of tutoring school for high school students. At the suggestion of the later Cardinal Joseph Frings , he also gave religious and cultural-historical slide lectures in Cologne parishes. Fearing for his family, he kept his distance from the Kettelerhaus in Cologne. But he made contact with a discussion group formed around the Kolping House in Cologne . This included Heinrich Richter and Theodor Babilon on. On August 15, 1944, shortly before the nationwide thunderstorm campaign , Schwering was arrested by the Gestapo together with Babilon and Richter , interrogated for five days in the notorious cellars of the EL-DE building and in the Cologne-Deutz police auxiliary prison, also a labor education camp (AEL) Köln-Messe (on the grounds of the so-called exhibition warehouse) called, locked up.

After the war

On June 17, 1945, he met in the Breite Straße 118 in Cologne Kolpinghaus under almost conspiratorial circumstances with former center members who under the name Democratic Christian People's Party (CDPP) a non-denominational People's Party wanted to form a new type. Further members were Josef Baumhoff , Fritz Fuchs , Mathilde Gescher , Robert Grosche , Bernhard Günther , Sibille Hartmann , Clemens Hastrich, Josef Hellmich, Dr. Josef Hofmann, Alfred Keller, Josef Kuner, Dr. Robert Pferdmenges , Hans Pimperz, Bruno Potthast, Peter Schlack , Dr. Schlochauer, Leo's brother Ernst Schwering , the secretary of the newspaper publisher Kurt Neven DuMont , Erika Voigt, Dr. Wilhelm Warsch , Franz Wiegert and Dr. Karl Zimmermann. They asked the Allied Military Government for approval to found a Christian Democratic Party. Schwering was elected chairman of the program committee.

In July 1945, like Dominican Provincial Laurentius Siemer , Father Eberhard Welty , Protestant superintendent Hans Encke and widow Hanna Gerig, he was one of the co-adopters of the new program entitled " Cologne Guidelines " in the Dominican monastery of St. Albert in Walberberg .

From 1945 he did not return to the school service, and on August 19, 1945 the Cologne Christian Democratic Party (CDP) was officially co-founded by Schwering without the involvement of Konrad Adenauer (contrary to rumors he promoted). In April 1945 Schwering had visited Adenauer in Rhöndorf to persuade him to participate in founding the party, but Adenauer did not consider the event promising. On September 2, 1945, this discussion in the Rhineland-Westphalia area decided in favor of a non-denominational Christian Democratic Party: on the same day, Westphalian party circles in Bochum founded the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) Westphalia and Rhineland party circles in Cologne the CDP Rhineland. Leo Schwering was elected chairman of the Rhenish regional association, which only took over the name CDU , which was coined in Berlin , in December. Adenauer was elected to the seven-member party executive committee in absentia, but on October 6, 1945 the latter resigned at his request with reference to his political activity ban by the British military government. On February 5, 1946, at a board meeting of the Rhenish CDU in Krefeld-Uerdingen am Rhein, with the help of the trade union wing around Karl Arnold and Protestant board members (Wuppertaler Kreis), Konrad Adenauer was ousted from the office of Rhenish chairman in a controversial battle vote.

tomb

Until the Ahlen program , which was adopted on February 3, 1947 for the CDU of the British zone, Schwering and Arnold and Jakob Kaiser succeeded in anchoring the formula of “ Christian socialism ” in the party. Schwering was then from 1947 to 1958 a member of the state parliament of the new federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. After 1958 withdrew from daily politics, but still served his party as a historiographer . The CDU social committees formed by Johannes Albers , Schwering, Kaiser and others, in cooperation with other political forces, still achieved the establishment of the social obligation of property in Article 14 of the Basic Law , collective bargaining , the adoption of the Works Constitution Act and " a right of co-determination for employees fundamental questions of economic planning and social design ”in the coal and steel industry .

Schwering died in 1971 at the age of 88 and was found in the family grave of his wife Ida nee. Haehner (1884–1976) is buried in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (hall 19 (D)).

MP

Fonts

  • The emigration of Protestant merchants from Cologne to Mülheim a.Rh. in 1714 .
  • Bonn Phil. Diss. Buchdruckerei Lintz, Trier 1907, printed in: Westdeutsche Zeitschrift (Trier) . Volume 26, 1907, pp. 194-250
  • The religious and economic development of Protestantism in Cologne during the 17th century. An attempt . In: Treatises of the Historical Association of the Lower Rhine . Volume 85, 1908
  • The creation of the CDU . Cologne 1946
  • Prehistory and formation of the CDU . Cologne 1952
  • Border issues 1949-52
  • Early history of the Christian Democratic Union . Recklinghausen 1963
  • Worldwide impact. P. Welty. Man of resistance, builder of the new time . In: Echo of Time . June 13, 1965, p. 8
  • Autobiography 1883–1968
  • Looking for the new course. In memory of the founding of the CDU in the Rhineland 25 years ago . Cologne 1970
  • In the claws of the Gestapo , edited and commented by Markus Schwering, Cologne 1988

Web links

literature

  • Estate in the historical archive of the city of Cologne.
  • Günter letter , Brigitte Kaff, Hans-Otto Kleinmann : Christian democrats against Hitler. Published on behalf of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung eV, Verlag Herder Freiburg im Breisgau, 2004, ISBN 3-451-20805-9 ; Pp. 13, 36 74, 77, 453-460.
  • Joachim Trapp: Cologne schools during the Nazi era. Cologne 1994.
  • Leo Schwering: In the clutches of the Gestapo. Edited and commented by Markus Schwering, Cologne 1988.
  • Cologne guiding principles : Preliminary draft for e. Program of the Christian Democrats of Germany; Submitted by the Christian Democrats of Cologne in June 1945; A call to collection d. dt. People, Verlag Christlich-Demokratie. Union, 1945.
  • Winfried Herbers:  Schwering, Leo. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 80 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Christoph Klausing (ed.): The Cologne guiding principles 1945 and today. A search for the core brand of Christian Democracy. LIT Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-643-14103-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ West German magazine (Trier) . Volume 26, 1907, pp. 194-250
  2. ^ Schwering estate: Historical Archive of the City of Cologne
  3. ↑ Christian Democrats against Hitler.
  4. ↑ In the clutches of the Gestapo. Cologne 1988.
  5. ↑ http://www.grundsatzprogramm.cdu.de/doc/1945_2_Koelner-Leitsaetze.pdf
  6. ^ Prehistory and formation of the CDU . Cologne 1952
  7. ↑ Historical archive A 406, letters Adenauer, Schwering, Warsch, Albers
personal data
SURNAME Schwering, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, philologist, high school teacher and politician (CDU), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Coesfeld
DATE OF DEATH May 7th 1971
Place of death Cologne