Wilhelm Sollmann

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Wilhelm Sollmann, 1919 or earlier
Wilhelm Sollmann (right) at the Cologne city hall tower (sculptor Hans Karl Burgeff ).

Friedrich Wilhelm Sollmann , in exile William Frederick Sollmann (born April 1, 1881 in Oberlind , † January 6, 1951 in Mount Carmel , Connecticut near New Haven (Connecticut) ), was a German-American journalist and politician.

Life

Wilhelm Sollmann was born on April 1, 1881, the son of the brewer and innkeeper Johannes Sollmann and his wife Anna Christiane (née Schuhmann) and was baptized on April 28, 1881 in the Protestant church in Oberlind . He grew up in Coburg , where he attended the citizens' school from 1887 to 1891 and the Casimirianum Coburg from 1891 to 1897 . Due to economic difficulties, the parents moved to Cologne-Kalk in 1896, Wilhelm followed them in 1897. There he did a commercial apprenticeship and was employed as a clerk at the Stern-Sonneborn AG oil works in Cologne-Klettenberg until 1911 . During this time he trained as a guest auditor in evening courses at the Cologne Commercial College in economics and history .

Having grown up as a Christian, he was committed to the anti-alcohol movement as a staunch abstainer and was a member of the International Good Templar Order and the Christian Association of Young People (YMCA) . In addition, from 1906 to 1910 he was Gauleiter of the Workers' Abstinentenbund in Cologne. On March 27, 1908, he received Prussian citizenship and left the Protestant church on September 26, 1908 .

As a journalist, Sollmann worked from April 1911 first as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung and from October 1912 to 1913 as editor of the social democratic " Franconian People's Friend " in Würzburg and then again as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. There he became editor-in-chief on June 4, 1920 and remained so until 1933.

Wilhelm Sollmann was married to Anna Katharina (Käthe, Kate) Grümmer (* September 27, 1883, † May 29, 1972) since October 12, 1906. Daughter Elfriede (* August 21, 1912, † 1997) comes from the marriage.

Political career

In 1902, Sollmann became a member of the SPD and in 1907 founded the Free Youth as an organization to promote young German workers. From 1909 to 1913 he was together with Walter Stoecker chairman of the social democratic local youth committee and from 1911 to 1913 of the social democratic district youth committee. In the revisionism dispute he belonged more to the left party spectrum, but supported the truce policy in the SPD since 1914 . From 1914 to 1919 he was a member of the Cologne party executive committee, since 1915 chairman of the Social Democratic Association for the electoral district of Cologne and since April 1915 a member of the city food commission and since June 4, 1917 a member of the deputation for housing welfare. From January 1918 to December 1923 he was a member of the Cologne city ​​council and chairman of the Cologne SPD parliamentary group .

On November 8, 1918, before the Republic was proclaimed on November 9, 1918 , Wilhelm Sollmann was the founder and member of the Action Committee and the Security Service of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Cologne. Together with Konrad Adenauer , he prevented the outbreak of unrest in Cologne, in particular violent actions by the military against the revolting workers. With the Supreme Army Command in Spa he agreed the orderly withdrawal of the troops from the western front via the transport hub in Cologne.

In January 1919 he was elected to the Weimar National Assembly and took part in the peace negotiations in Versailles as a member of the German delegation . From 1920 to March 1933 he was a member of the Reichstag . Since 1918 he was active against any attempts to join the left bank of the Rhine with France and was particularly active in the "passive resistance" against the occupation of the Ruhr area by France in 1923. In 1921 he was a co-founder and partner of the Social Democratic Parliament Service (from 1924 Social Democratic Press Service ) . In the crisis year of 1923 he served for four months as Reich Minister of the Interior in Gustav Stresemann's cabinet (August 13, 1923 to November 3, 1923) . In the SPD parliamentary group he belonged to the right wing and dealt in particular with disarmament and cultural policy and fought resolutely in parliament for the republic and against the rising National Socialists .

When, after the takeover of power, a squad of National Socialists visited Sollmann on March 9, 1933 in his house in Cologne-Rath and harassed her, he threw her down the stairs. The National Socialists brought reinforcements and Wilhelm Sollmann was knocked down in his house by SA and SS people , beaten up and taken to the NSDAP's “Brown House” on Mozartstrasse. There he was further ill-treated. Finally, a Nazi stabbed Sollmann, who was lying on the floor, with a knife in the stomach. Sollmann was hospitalized and happened to survive. After his release from the police hospital, Sollman was initially placed in protective custody. Then he first emigrated to the Saar region . There he was in the resistance against National Socialism. He published the daily newspaper Deutsche Freiheit in Saarbrücken . After the Saar referendum, lost by the Democrats, and the annexation of the Saar area to Germany, Sollmann fled to Luxembourg and finally to the United States via England . During this time he was elected to the SPD's executive committee in absentia.

Wilhelm Sollmann was expatriated from Germany on December 3, 1934 without his consent .

Exile in the USA

Even in exile, Sollmann belonged to a right-wing tendency within the party leadership that called for a return to “Lassalle's patriotic socialism” (Sollmann). Therefore, he also took part in the German Labor delegation . On June 10, 1943, Wilhelm Sollmann became an American citizen and changed his name to "William Frederick Sollmann". He taught for several years at Pendle Hill Quaker College in Media , Pennsylvania and as a visiting professor at Bard College , Reed College and Haverford College , but did not join the Quakers. He only returned to Germany temporarily. In 1949 he was visiting professor at the University of Cologne and at times advisor to the Office of Strategic Services and lecturer in the Army Specialized Training Program and in 1950 for the American High Commissioner in Germany. In 1950 he was also on the road for the American Civil Liberties Union in Germany. Wilhelm Sollmann became seriously ill in the summer of 1950 and died on January 6, 1951 in Mount Carmel , Connecticut.

Honors

literature

  • Wilhelm Sollmann . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Volume 1: Deceased Personalities. Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf. GmbH, Hanover 1960, pp. 293-294.
  • Eugene Harold Kist: William Sollmann. The Emergence of a Social Democratic Leader. Dissertation, Philadelphia 1969.
  • Franz Walter : Wilhelm Sollmann (1881–1951). The party reformer. In: Peter Lösche, Michael Scholing, Franz Walter (Eds.): Preserve from forgetting. Life paths of Weimar Social Democrats. Berlin 1988, pp. 362-390.
  • Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : Social democratic parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1867-1933. Biographies, chronicles and election documentation. A manual. Düsseldorf, 1995, ISBN 3-7700-5192-0 , p. 708.
  • Alexander Christov: We are the young guard of the proletariat! Workers' youth movement in the Cologne area 1904–1919. Siegburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-938535-25-7 , p. 22ff.
  • Simon Ebert: Wilhelm Sollmann. Socialist-Democrat-Citizen of the World (1881-1951) . Dietz, Bonn 2014, ISBN 978-3-8012-4223-7 .
  • The Wilhelm Sollmann estate, edited by Ulrike Nyassi (communications from the Cologne City Archives, edited by Hugo Stehkämper, 65th issue), Cologne-Vienna 1985, ISBN 978-3-412-08484-4 .
  • Nyassi-Fäuster, Ulrike, The way of the social democratic politician Wilhelm Sollmann into emigration in 1933. Represented by Wilhelm and Käthe Sollmann in letters to their daughter, in: Rechtsrheinisches Köln 18, 1992, pp. 163-185.
  • Nyassi-Fäuster, Ulrike, "I have been shown a lot of kindness here". The social democratic politician Wilhelm Sollmann in exile in Luxembourg, in: Galerie 12 (1994), pp. 69–94.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Hugo Stehkämper on the holdings on Wilhelm Sollmann in the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne , accessed on July 20, 2016
  2. ^ The Wilhelm Sollmann estate, edited by Ulrike Nyassi (communications from the Cologne City Archives, edited by Hugo Stehkämper, 65th issue), Cologne-Vienna 1985, ISBN 978-3-412-08484-4 .
  3. ^ A b c d Heinz Boberach : Biographical Lexicon for the Weimar Republic . Ed .: Wolfgang Benz . Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32988-8 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Gisela Notz :  Sollmann, Friedrich Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 553 f. ( Digitized version ).
  5. ^ A b c Eduard Prüssen (linocuts), Werner Schäfke and Günter Henne (texts): Cologne heads . 1st edition. University and City Library, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-931596-53-8 , pp. 56 .
  6. ↑ a b c Ulrich S. Soénius (Ed.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon . Greven-Verl, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 511-512 .
  7. ↑ Arnold Brecht : Up close. Life memories; First half; 1884-1927. Stuttgart 1966, p. 409.
  8. ↑ Horst Matzerath: Cologne in the time of National Socialism 1933-1945 . Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7743-0429-1 , p. 462.
  9. ^ Lübecker Nachrichten , June 23, 1950.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Sollmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Sollmann, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sollmann, Friedrich Wilhelm (full name); Sollmann, William Frederick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and politician (SPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberlind , today Sonneberg
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1951
Place of death Mount Carmel , Connecticut