Walter König (politician, April 1908)

Walter König (born April 9, 1908 in Nidau ; † July 4, 2003 in Biel , reformed , resident in Wiggiswil ) was a Swiss politician (SP) .

Life

Walter König was born on April 9, 1908 in Nidau ​​as the son of the machinist Rudolf König and Maria, born Gasser. After attending school in Biel, Walter König completed a banking apprenticeship at Volksbank from 1924 to 1927 , before graduating as a stenography teacher in 1931 . He then took up studies in Paris and London between 1932 and 1933 , until he also received a commercial teacher diploma in 1933.

As a result, Walter König was appointed city finance secretary in Biel in 1934, as a police adjunct in 1939, entrusted with the establishment of the Biel air raid protection, and finally in 1943 as police inspector. In the years 1973 to 1974, his trial about the legacy of the showman Marguerite Weidauer-Wallenda caused a sensation, which ended with a settlement before the higher court.

Walter König married Margaritha Maria Josefa, daughter of Friedrich Alois Grediger, who died in 1963 in 1936, and Elleonora, daughter of Max Jakob Walther, in 1965. He died on July 4, 2003, three months after he had turned 95 in Biel.

Political career

Walter König joined the Social Democratic Party in 1946. In 1953 he was elected to the Biel municipal council , in which he was appointed director of the police and industrial companies in 1956, before he was transferred from the bourgeois majority to the welfare directorate in 1957, where he set up the housing welfare foundation for the elderly residents of Biel he was president between 1958 and 1978 and built four retirement homes. From 1960 to 1965 he served as finance director thanks to the SP majority in the city ​​council . In 1960 and 1964 he lost the mayor election against Fritz Stähli .

He also represented his party in the Bernese Grand Council between 1950 and 1962 . In 1964, his election to the Zurich government council failed . In addition, he was a member of the National Council for the canton from 1959 to 1965 . To this end, he acted as director of the Federal Office for Civil Protection from 1965 to 1974, where he implemented the full expansion of the civil defense systems, and from 1960 to 1978 as President of the Biel Hospital Association.

literature

• Yearbook of the Federal Authorities 1964 , 1964
• The federal government of July 11, 1965 and March 27, 1974
• Bieler Tagblatt dated April 9, 1973, April 10, 1978, January 25, 1994 and April 8, 1999
• Neue Zürcher Zeitung from March 26, 1974
• Walter and Marcus Bourquin: Biel, urban history lexicon: from Roman times (Petinesca) to the end of the 1930s: historical, biographical, topographical: with additions for the period up to 1999, 1999, p. 481 f.

Web links

• Christoph Zürcher: König, Walter. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .