Rolf Wernstedt

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Rolf Wernstedt, here in 2013 during the unveiling of the information board at the memorial for the murdered Jews of Hanover on Opernplatz

Rolf Wernstedt (* 6. May 1940 in Hamburg ) is a German SPD - politician , former Lower Saxony Minister of Culture and President of the Lower Saxony state parliament . Among other things, he was chairman of the Lower Saxony regional association of the German War Graves Commission for many years and president of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Society .

Life

Rolf Wernstedt grew up in Tangeln in what was then the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on a private farm owned by his parents . After attending school in Tangeln, he passed the Abitur at the Oberschule in Beetzendorf in 1958 . In the same year he left the GDR and in 1959 passed the special maturity examination for GDR refugees in Korntal near Stuttgart .

In West Germany Wernstedt could now starting from 1959 in Goettingen at the Georg-August University , as well as in Heidelberg at the Ruprecht-Karls-University of the subjects history , philosophy and Latin Philology study.

In 1963 Wernstedt married, and the marriage resulted in two daughters, who later became a student teacher, Bilke, and a doctor, Thela. In the meantime, Rolf Wernstedt had passed the state examination for teaching at higher schools in Lower Saxony in 1966 , and - supported by a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation - after a legal clerkship in Göttingen from 1966 to 1968 the second state examination for teaching at higher education Schools of the State of Lower Saxony.

In the year of the beginning of the '68 movement Rolf Wernstedt worked from 1968 in Hannover as Studienassessor and teacher in the teaching profession at that time operated more as a boy school there Leibniz School , joined the following year 1969, the SPD in. As a social democrat, he later chaired the SPD local association in Hanover-Stöcken from 1973 to 1987, was a member of the SPD sub-district executive committee of Hanover-City from 1973 to 1987 and, from 1991, of the state executive committee of the SPD Lower Saxony .

Meanwhile Rolf Wernstedt had already in 1972 by the teaching profession at the University of Education Lower Saxony , department Braunschweig changed, was there until 1974 as Assistant Professor or senior councilor responsible for the subject Political Sciences and its didactics .

After his election to the Lower Saxony state parliament , to which he belonged from the 8th to the 12th electoral period from June 21, 1974 to 2003, he received a lectureship at the Institute for Political Science from the then Technical University in Hanover in 1975 , to which he up to 1989 followed. From 1976 to 1983 he was the spokesman for education policy for the Lower Saxony SPD parliamentary group , and from 1983 to 1990 he was deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in Lower Saxony .

In the meantime, from 1979 until 1991, Wernstedt took on the honorary position of chairman of the German Association for Political Education (DVPB) in the Lower Saxony regional association. From 1988 to 1991 he was also the honorary federal chairman of the Working Group for Education in the SPD (AfB).

In 1989, in the year of the turning point due to the peaceful revolution in the GDR , Rolf Wernstedt received an honorary professorship from the Lower Saxony educational institution, which was then known as the University of Hanover , instead of the previous teaching position . At the same time, from 1990 to 1998, he took over the office of Lower Saxony Minister of Education as the successor to Horst Horrmann in the first and second cabinet of the then Lower Saxony Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder . During this time, Wernstedt was elected President of the Standing Conference of Education Ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany ( Standing Conference of Education Ministers, KMK ) in 1997. The spelling reform debate took place during his tenure.

From 1996 to 2008 Rolf Wernstedt was also a member and chairman of the convention of the Evangelical Academy Loccum , and from 1997 to 2009 he was also a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).

In the meantime, Wernstedt had already been elected to the office of President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament in 1998 by the members of the Lower Saxony State Parliament, Renate Jürgens-Pieper as his successor as Minister of Education. Wernstedt then chaired the state parliament until Christian Wulff was elected in 2003.

Also from 2003 Wernstedt took over the chairmanship of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge in the state association Lower Saxony (until 2015), in 2004 also on an honorary basis the moderation of the network education of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (until 2011).

From 2005 to 2016, Rolf Wernstedt also served as President of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Society . Since then he has been its honorary president. In 2005 he became a member of the senior citizens' council of the SPD.

In the 1990s, Rolf Wernstedt was a member of the board of trustees of the Georg Eckert Institute for international textbook research and chairman of the Sonnenberg district , the Society for the Promotion of International Cooperation

In conversation (from left): Erich Barke , Prime Minister Stephan Weil and Rolf Wernstedt;
2016 on the 300th anniversary of Leibniz's death shortly before the wreath-laying ceremony at the tomb of the universal genius in Hanover

In 2011 Rolf Wernstedt took over an honorary professorship at the University of Heifei in China .

Wernstedt's daughter Thela Wernstedt was elected to the Lower Saxony state parliament in 2013.

Honors

Rolf Wernstedt has received the highest award in Lower Saxony , the Lower Saxony State Medal . It was awarded to him on February 13, 2012 by Prime Minister David McAllister . In 2018, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded him the First Class Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany . Prime Minister Stephan Weil handed him this medal on May 29, 2018.

Works (selection)

Publications (selection)

  • Werner Holtfort , Eckart Spoo , Rainer Butenschön, Rolf Wernstedt: The Guelphs and their treasure. Stories about Ernst August and Ernst Albrecht , Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 1984. ISBN 3-88243-026-5 .
  • Rolf Wernstedt: dowry or inheritance? Culture, history and religion in the German-German educational landscape , Hanover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1997, ISBN 978-3-7859-0757-3 and ISBN 3-7859-0757-5
  • Rolf Wernstedt, Gerhard Schröder: Leibniz in the present. Contributions to the update potential of Leibniz's thinking , Hanover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 2010, ISBN 978-3-9808167-3-1
  • Rolf Wernstedt: German cultures of remembrance since 1945 and the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV (= Volksbund-Forum , Edition 2), Kassel: Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, 2009
  • Straightforwardness and independence: Helmut Kasimier and commitment and tolerance: Bernhard Kreibohm , in: SPD parliamentary group of Lower Saxony (ed.): 70 years of the SPD parliamentary group in the Lower Saxony state parliament , Hanover (no year, 2017), without ISBN

Editor (selection)

In addition, from 2005 to 2011, Rolf Wernstedt was the editor of issues 1 to 25 of the series of publications of the Education Network of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

literature

  • Barbara Simon (edit.): Prof. Wernstedt, Rolf SPD , in this .: MPs in Lower Saxony 1946–1994: Biographisches Handbuch, ed. by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament, 1996, p. 404
  • Wolfgang Jüttner , Oskar Negt (Ed.): Guidelines for political action. Gift of friend for Rolf Wernstedt on his 65th birthday , Hannover: Offizin Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-930345-45-8 and ISBN 3-930345-45-5 ; contents
  • Is the German school to blame for reading frustration? , Interview with Dankwart Guratzsch in: Die Welt from January 15, 1996

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Barbara Simon (edit.): Prof. Wernstedt, Rolf SPD , in this .: Members of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994: Biographisches Handbuch, ed. by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament, 1996, p. 404
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Draft for an illustration "Rolf Wernstedt" at Wikipedia, email to Bernd Schwabe from March 23, 2015 , PDF document at Wikimedia Commons
  3. ↑ Wolfram Hänel: Biography of Wolfram Hänel and Ulrike Gerold on haenel-buecher.weebly.com , last accessed on September 6, 2016
  4. ^ Website of the Leibniz Society , accessed on June 30, 2019
  5. ↑ The state medal on Niedersachsen.de with a list of the 25 carriers, accessed on January 30, 2020
  6. ↑ Report from May 28, 2018 in Rundblick, Political Journal for Lower Saxony , accessed on January 30, 2020
  7. ↑ Report with photo of the ceremony on Volksbund.de , accessed on January 30, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Wernstedt, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg