Otto Wenger

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Nidau, the birthplace of Otto Wenger (1890)

Otto Wenger , also Otto M (Oritz) Wenger (born October 14, 1910 in Nidau ; † September 20, 1999 in Esselbach , Bavaria) was a Swiss doctor , ICRC delegate, company director and politician ( FDP ).

job

Otto Wenger grew up in a large veterinarian family and married the daughter of a doctor. He studied human medicine from 1929 and, after his years of assistance, worked from 1937 to 1941 as a senior physician at the Breitenau psychiatric clinic in Schaffhausen . He also studied law and political science for seven semesters . However, he had to break off this course because of the Second World War .

Otto Wenger was a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Germany from 1942 to 1943 , and from 1943 he was entrusted with looking after prisoners of war in India . He experienced the separation of Pakistan and India as an ICRC delegate for refugees . From 1948 he took over the management of the Indian subsidiaries of Ciba . From 1954 Otto Wenger worked in India for the Swiss company Oerlikon-Bührle , as a member of the board of directors and member of the management . After returning to Switzerland in 1958, he became director of Oerlikon-Bührle.

Mountbatten and Nehru 1947

Otto Wenger got to know numerous famous people personally, namely Lord Mountbatten , Mahatma Gandi , Pandit Nehru and kings of Nepal . In 1963 he represented their country as the first honorary consul in Switzerland. He was responsible for the visas for Swiss people traveling to Nepal.

As President of the Association for Tibetan Homesteads in Switzerland , he successfully submitted the application to accept 1,000 Tibetan refugees in 1962 . The Federal Council approved the project in March 1963 on the condition that the Swiss Red Cross (SRK), as a recognized aid organization, look after the refugees.

Politician

Pilatus PC-6/350 Porter airplane (photo 1962)

Otto Wenger was politically active from 1963 to 1972 as mayor of his hometown of Nidau ​​and from 1963 to 1971 as a national councilor of the FDP. Although he was not known at the federal level, his election came as a surprise, including for his own party. The press reported that Wenger had run American-style campaigns and had leaflets and brochures distributed in the city of Bern . Wenger was described as a close confidante of the industrialist Bührle. For example, in 1965 he had personally agreed with Dieter Bührle to treat the sale of six Pilatus-Porter PC-6/340 aircraft to Indonesia with discretion. When the Flugzeugwerke published a press release despite this assurance, a representative of the Federal Political Department intervened violently at Wenger.

In the National Council, Otto Wenger was a member of around 40 temporary and permanent commissions (namely the Foreign Policy Commission) and spoke out primarily on the subjects of foreign policy , development aid , transport and the economy . When he was elected to the National Council, he had to give up his post as Honorary Consul of Nepal, which he had taken up only a few weeks earlier, because otherwise the two posts would have been incompatible.

New period of my life

After retiring from political office, he married, completed post-graduate studies in San Francisco for a year and a half, and opened a psychiatric practice in Bern in 1974 .

Otto Wenger spent his twilight years in Zimmerwald and Germany.

Works

  • Otto Wenger: History of Epilepsy: A Review of 4 Millennia. Diss. Med. Bern. In: Monthly journal for psychiatry and neurology, Vol. 106, No 2/4 (1942), pp. 163-216
  • Otto M. Wenger: Thoughts on this and that: essays and notes. Biel: Gassmann, [1967]. 111 pp.
  • Nidau . [Texts: Hedwig Schaffer, Otto Wenger]. Nidau: [Municipal Office], 1973. 59 pp.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Berner Zeitung, October 14, 1980
  2. ↑ Der Bund , September 1, 1963
  3. ↑ Minutes of the Federal Council of March 29, 1963: “No. 621. Admission of Tibetan refugees » in the Dodis database of Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
  4. ^ Marc Perrenoud: Tibet. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  5. ^ Berner Zeitung, October 14, 1980; According to the federal government, October 14, 1980 he was only mayor from 1965
  6. ↑ Gazette de Lausanne, November 2, 1963 ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / letempsarchives.ch
  7. ^ Bührle's husband from Nepal was the headline of the social democratic newspaper Volksrecht , November 27, 1963
  8. ↑ Une belle carrière vue au cinéthéodolite , in: Domaine public, N. 39, 23 September 1965
  9. ↑ In the Gazette de Lausanne of November 2, 1963 ( Memento of the original of September 25, 2015 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. only speaks of Bührle and does not specify whether the father Emil Georg Bührle (1890–1956) or son Dieter Bührle (1921–2012) was meant. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / letempsarchives.ch
  10. ↑ On p. 6 Wenger is referred to as "Bührle's shop steward", cf. Protocol of 18 September 1964: "Protocol on face meeting a delegation of the Swiss Association of Machinery Manufacturers Mr. Federal elections" in the database Dodis the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
  11. ↑ memo written by R. Probst of 12 June 1965: "Pilatus Porter for Indonesia" in the database Dodis the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
  12. ↑ Minutes of the National Council of December 2, 1963, p. 18 (PDF)
  13. ↑ Schaffhauser Nachrichten, November 11, 1963
  14. ↑ Otto Frauenlob in: Der Bund, October 10, 1980
  15. ↑ Der Bund, October 30, 1999
personal data
SURNAME Wenger, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wenger, Otto M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss doctor, company manager and politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Nidau
DATE OF DEATH September 20, 1999
Place of death Esselbach