Rolf Schwedler

Rolf Schwedler (born March 25, 1914 in Berlin ; † February 13, 1981 there ) was a German politician ( SPD ). From 1955 to 1972 he was Senator for Construction and Housing for West Berlin .

Life

Memorial plaque at Wilmersdorf cemetery

In 1932 he passed the Abitur at the Werner-Siemens-Realgymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg and then took up a degree in civil engineering at the TU Berlin , which he graduated in 1938 with a degree in engineering . After participating in the Second World War and intermittently working in the construction administration of the Steglitz district , he joined the Berlin construction administration in 1947, where he was appointed Senate Director in 1950 by the governing mayor Ernst Reuter . In 1955, the Berlin House of Representatives elected him Senator for Construction and Housing.

During Schwedler's term of office, the reconstruction of the parts of West Berlin that had been destroyed in World War II, the conversion of the areas of the trams , which were closed until 1967, for car traffic, and the construction of the city ​​motorway through the western city center. Allegedly more buildings were demolished in West Berlin during this time than were destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. For example, he was responsible for the demolition of the Anhalter and Görlitz train stations . Plans for the demolition of the area in Berlin-Kreuzberg were also worked out under his leadership.

In 1972, Schwedler, the longest-serving senator in Berlin's history, retired from the office of building senator and moved to the German Bundestag as a Berlin member of the Bundestag , to which he was a member until 1976. There, however, he soon caught up with the affair surrounding the Steglitzer Kreisel , a high-rise office building that the Berlin state government had guaranteed to finance. When the architect Sigrid Kressmann-Zschach filed for bankruptcy, Berlin suffered considerable damage. A committee of inquiry found that in addition to Finance Senator Heinz Striek , Schwedler in particular had trusted the architect's statements without criticism. After that, Schwedler withdrew from politics.

Wilmersdorf cemetery in Berlin; Grave of Rolf Schwedler (Honorary Grave of the State of Berlin)

Honors

• 1967: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1974: Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany
• Honorary grave of the city of Berlin in the Wilmersdorf cemetery

See also

• Senate Suhr - Senate Brandt I - Senate Brandt II - Senate Brandt III - Senate Albertz I - Senate Albertz II - Senate Schütz I - Senate Schütz II

literature

• Werner Breunig, Siegfried Heimann , Andreas Herbst : Biographical Handbook of Berlin City Councilors and Members of Parliament 1946–1963 (=  series of publications by the Berlin State Archives . Volume 14 ). Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9803303-4-3 , p. 248-249 (331 pages).
• Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 2: N-Z. Attachment. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 806.

Web links

Commons : Rolf Schwedler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Rolf Schwedler in the catalog of the German National Library
• SPD Berlin - biographies on the SPD history
• Rolf Schwedler in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)