Marie-Elisabeth Steffen

Marie-Elisabeth Steffen , also Maria-Elisabeth Steffen and Marlies Steffen (born April 25, 1925 in Saarburg ; † May 6, 2018 in Wuppertal ), was in 1950/51 the second German wine queen and the first female official under her maiden name Marie-Elisabeth Pütz that resulted from a formal election.

family

Marie-Elisabeth Steffen comes from a family of winemakers and grew up in her parents' business in Saarburg-Beurig. After attending the commercial school , she had to work on the winery because her older brother had died as a soldier in World War II .

During her tenure as wine queen, she married Hanns Steffen, a graduate engineer, in 1951 and followed him to his home town of Wuppertal in 1960 . From 1969 to 1989 she sat for the CDU in the city council of Wuppertal. During this time she also held numerous honorary posts in the social field; she was the chairman of the city's social and health committee for 15 years.

choice

In September 1950, Marie-Elisabeth Pütz was initially elected Saar wine queen. Four weeks later, she ran as a candidate in the first real election of a German wine queen. In contrast to her predecessor Elisabeth Kuhn (later Elisabeth Gies) she was not chosen for the office, but elected. On October 1, 1950, there was a runoff vote between her and her competitor Elisabeth Quink from the Rheingau in the Saalbau in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse .

Although the electors and the audience were informed that Saarburg was on the Saar , but in Rhineland-Palatinate , the election of a German wine queen from the Saar was often interpreted as a demonstration for the Saarland to return to the Federal Republic of Germany . In this sense, the election was also commented on by several national newspapers such as the Depesche Berlin .

representation

The two most popular appearances by Marie-Elisabeth Pütz during her tenure were the opening of the Berlin Wine Promotion Weeks in June 1951 and the trip with the "Rolling Wine Cellar", a specially designed special car of the Deutsche Bundesbahn , from Cologne to Constance on Lake Constance. For the first time, on June 3, 1951, she proclaimed Ascension Day as “Father's Wine Day”. The 1950s wine, so the aim of the wine marketing strategists of the young Federal Republic, should ensure that everyone could drink their quarter of wine for 50 pfennigs. The reason was that 3.25 million hectoliters of wine were harvested this year  . The consumption was three liters per person per year. With a yield of 65.6 hl / ha (with 51,000 hectares of vineyards), which had never been achieved before, a new era in German viticulture began : With the exception of the two "disaster vintages" 1956 and 1957, the annual yield never fell below the rest of the century 45 hl / ha.

Awards

• 1989 Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon
• 1994 Ring of Honor of the City of Wuppertal

literature

• Wolfgang Junglas and Norbert Heine: Wein & Krone - 50 years of the German Wine Queen . Ingelheim 1998

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The first elected German Wine Queen is dead Message from the Trierischer Volksfreunds (online edition) from May 10, 2018
2. ↑ Obituary notice of Marlies Steffen, geb. Pütz
3. ^ Honorary ring bearers of the city of Wuppertal. (PDF; 33 kB) (No longer available online.) Wuppertal City Administration, archived from the original on January 9, 2017 ; accessed on January 9, 2017 . 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.  

predecessor	Office	successor
Elisabeth Kuhn	German Wine Queen 1950/1951	Gisela Koch