Robert F. Wagner

Robert F. Wagner

Robert Ferdinand Wagner (born June 8, 1877 in Nastaeten , Hessen-Nassau , †  May 4, 1953 in New York City ) was a German-American politician . He represented the state of New York in the United States Senate .

Life

Robert Wagner was born the youngest of nine children. He and his family came to the United States in 1885, where the eight-year-old attended school in New York City. Unable to speak a word of English , he learned quickly. Since his family lived in poverty, Wagner had to go to work at an early age, worked as a newspaper seller or as an assistant in a grocery store. This childhood shaped him:

“My boyhood was a pretty rough passage. I came through it, yes. But that was luck, luck, luck! Think of the others! "

“My childhood was a pretty tough period. I did it, yeah But that was luck, luck, luck! Think of the others! "

In 1898 he graduated from City College of New York , so that he then enrolled at Columbia University . Here he studied law and was admitted to the bar in New York State in 1900. He joined Tammany Hall , the organization of the New York Democrats, and then became a member of the Democratic Party .

Wagner held his first public office in 1905, when he was a candidate for his party in the New York State Assembly , the House of Representatives of New York State . In 1908 he was elected to the New York Senate, where he held a seat from 1909 to 1918. From 1911 to 1914 he was President pro Tempore and majority faction leader there. After the governor of New York, William Sulzer , had to resign in October 1913 in the course of impeachment proceedings , Martin H. Glynn , the previous lieutenant governor , took over his duties. Glynn then nominated Wagner as his lieutenant governor . So it came about that Wagner was Lieutenant Governor of New York from October 1913 to December 1914, parallel to his work in the New York Senate.

Wagner's career took him in 1919 as a judge at the New York Supreme Court , the supreme court of the State of New York, where he served until 1926. In the same year he ran successfully for a seat in the US Senate and was able to oust the Republican incumbent James Wolcott Wadsworth . Robert Wagner, who took office on March 4, 1927, was re-elected three times in a row. In 1944 he was a delegate at the conference in Bretton Woods (New Hampshire) , at which the Bretton Woods system was decided. On the initiative of him and Congressman Edith Nourse Rogers from Massachusetts , the Wagner – Rogers Bill came to the vote in 1939 . The law stipulated that 20,000 Jewish children under the age of 14 were allowed to flee Germany and enter the USA. However, this legislative initiative was "easily thrown off by a coalition of anti-Jewish forces - including the Catholic charity and conservative women's organizations, who argued that there was no particular emergency to justify this measure".

Domestically , the New Deal was pushed under Senator Wagner, who was a close friend of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt . In particular, he sponsored the Wagner Act , which gave workers the right to form unions and to bargain collectively for wages and working conditions.

Due to a heart disease, Wagner withdrew into private life as a senator on June 28, 1949. He died four years later, on May 4, 1953, in New York and was 75 years old. He was no longer allowed to see how a year later, in 1954, his son Robert (1910–1991) was elected Mayor of New York City . He stayed there until 1965. His grandson Robert Ferdinand Wagner III (1944–1993) was a member of the New York City Council in the 1970s.

Web links

• Robert F. Wagner in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, The American People in Depression and War 1929--1945 , Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-503834-7 , p. 288
2. ^ Walter Laqueur: Born in Germany. The exodus of the Jewish youth after 1933 , Propylaea, Berlin and Munich 2000, ISBN 3-549-07122-1 , p. 46. For more detailed information on the controversy over the Wagner – Rogers Bill see: Jewish Virtual Library: Wagner – Rogers Bill , or the short article in the English WIKIPEDIA: Wagner – Rogers Bill .
3. ↑ Susan E. Hamen, The New Deal , Essential Lib, 1st Edition, 2010, ISBN 978-1-61613-684-0 , 69