Willy Bickel

Willy Bickel (born December 13, 1908 in Rinklingen , † July 5, 1996 in Bretten ) was a German senior official and local researcher . His local history interest was primarily his hometown Bretten, about which he has published many times.

Life

After completing his school education, he embarked on an administrative career as a state civil servant in the senior service. During the Second World War he was an air force soldier. He then worked again in the state administration, where he retired in 1974 as a senior official at the Karlsruhe regional council.

Bickel published his first local history articles in the Pfeiferturm series as early as the 1920s and 1930s . He also devoted himself to family research at an early age and in 1950, together with his brother Otto Bickel, published the Bickel book, a genealogical work on his family. From 1956 to 1984 he was editor of the Bretten yearbooks , for which he also wrote numerous articles. He was a founding member of the Kraichgau homeland association, was its long-term deputy chairman until 1989 and has also written articles for the Kraichgau yearbooks . He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Kraichgau Foundation . He was in front of the local group Bretten of the Badische Heimat and was also a member of the main board of the association. In Bretten he also led guided tours through the Melanchthon House and the collegiate church.

For his local history work, Bickel was awarded the citizen medal of the city of Bretten, the Bretten Order of Peter and Paul and the Baden-Württemberg medal for services to the homeland. Many of his writings were created in collaboration with his brother Otto Bickel (1913–2003), who was also a senior official and in 1969 was made an honorary citizen of Rinklingen.

literature

• Michael Ertz : Willy Bickel for his 80th birthday , in: Kraichgau. Contributions to landscape and local research , volume 11, 1989, pp. 15-17.
• Bernd Röcker: On the death of Willy Bickel , in: Kraichgau. Contributions to landscape and local research , volume 16, 1999, p. 485/86.