Willy slip

Willy Rutsch (born March 29, 1904 in Rathenow ; † February 13, 1989 in Erfurt ) was a German politician ( CDU ). At times he was Minister for Trade and Supply for the State of Thuringia.

Life

Rutsch was born in 1904 as the son of a commercial clerk in Rathenow, Prussia. His father died in 1907 at the age of 47. From 1910 to 1915, Rutsch attended the boys' seminar in Heiligenstadt in the Catholic Eichsfeld , today's youth and adult education center Marcel Callo . He was then taught at the Luisen Middle School in Wiesbaden until 1918. Thereafter, Rutsch completed a commercial apprenticeship at a craft company in Friedland from 1919 to 1922 . On the side, he studied insurance business for two semesters at the University of Göttingen , but did not enroll there. In 1922, Rutsch found a job in a Göttingen companyWholesale and retail trade in hardware as clerk and cashier. In 1930 he accepted an offer from Flamma Funeral and Life Insurance and moved to Leipzig , where he officially worked as organizational manager, auditor and finally as deputy manager until the end of the war. However, Rutsch was drafted into military service in 1940. He served first in an air force pioneer battalion, later in the heavy flak , and finally as a corporal . In February 1945, Rutsch was seriously wounded and remained in a hospital until October 1945. In the same year Rutsch ended up in Meiningen , where he initially earned his living as a city history guide. From March 1946 he worked for the Thuringian State Insurance Company, whose district directorate in Meiningen he led as city manager and city inspector for four years until July 1950. On August 1, 1950, Rutsch - as successor to Hermann Kalb - became deputy district administrator of the Meiningen district and was responsible for the finance, transport and industry departments. However, he only held this position for a few months, because on November 21, 1950, Rutsch was appointed as the successor to the dismissed Walter Rücker as the new Minister for Trade and Supply of the Thuringian state government under Werner Eggerath . This office occupied Rutsch until the dissolution of the states in June 1952. He was then taken over to the council of the Erfurt district, in which he worked until October 1963 as deputy chairman. Thereafter, Rutsch was President of the United Church and Monastery Chamber in Erfurt until 1977 .

Political offices

Rutsch joined the CDU in July 1946. After he was first local group chairman in Meiningen, he worked from 1948 to 1950 as deputy chairman of the CDU district association Meiningen. For the state elections that took place in 1950, Rutsch was put up as a candidate and elected as a member of parliament. After his appointment as minister, he also became a member of the CDU state executive committee of Thuringia. After the dissolution of the states, Rutsch took over political offices in the Erfurt district. He was a member of the Erfurt District Assembly until 1963 and also represented his district from 1954 to 1958 as a member of the GDR Land Chamber . Within the party, Rutsch was a member of the CDU district executive in Erfurt from 1952 until his death and a member of the CDU main executive committee from October 1952 to October 1958.

Rutsch was also a member of the Presidium of the Peace Council of the GDR and several leading bodies of the National Front and the CDU as well as co-founder of the Berlin Conference of Catholic Christians from European States .

Fonts (selection)

• To all people of good will . National Council of the National Front of Democratic Germany, Berlin 1964.
• For the 25th anniversary: ​​United Church and Monastery Chamber, Foundation under Public Law . Erfurt 1972.

Awards

• Badge of Honor of the National Front
• Silver plaque of the German Peace Council
• Medal of Merit of the GDR (1959)
• Ernst Moritz Arndt Medal (1964)
• Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze (1969) and in silver (1974)

literature

• Federal Ministry for All-German Issues (Ed.): SBZ biography . Deutscher Bundes-Verlag, Berlin 1964, p. 295.
• Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who . Volume II. Arani-Verlag, Berlin-Grunewald 1965, p. 281.
• Willy Rutsch - in various probabilities . In: The work of Christian democrats in the Erfurt district. Experiences, experiences, insights . CDU District Executive Committee Erfurt 1980, p. 56f.
• Michael Richter: The East CDU 1948–1952 between resistance and conformity (= research and sources on contemporary history , volume 19). Droste, Düsseldorf 1990, ISBN 3-7700-0899-5 , p. 417.
• Jochen Lengemann . Thuringian state parliaments 1919–1952. Biographical manual . Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22179-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Neue Zeit , October 4, 1964, p. 5.