Helene Wessel (6 July 1898 - 13 October 1969) was a German politician. From October 1949 to January 1952 she was chairwoman of the Centre Party and a founding member of the All-German People's Party, which eventually joined the SPD. She was elected to the Parlamentarischer Rat, [1] the West German constitutional convention.
Helene Wessel was born on 6 July 1898 in Hörde (now in Dortmund) and was the youngest of four children of the Reichsbahn officials Henry Wessel and his wife, Helene Wessel, born in Linz. Her parents were deeply influenced by their Catholic faith, her father being a member of the German Centre Party. He died in 1905 from the consequences of an unknown accident.
She completed a commercial apprenticeship in November 1915 and worked as a secretary in the office of the Centre Party Horder. In March 1923, she began a one-year course at the State Welfare School in Munster for youth and social welfare. In 1919, she became involved in the Centre Party, and was elected in May 1928 in the Prussian Parliament. She managed two professions on as party secretary and another as a social worker of the Catholic Church. In October 1929, she settled at the Berlin Academy of German social and educational women's work to educate graduate welfare workers. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Wessel was classified as "politically unreliable". [2]
After the Second World War she was active politically again. In 1949 she was one of the Center part's representatives in the Bundestag and also was elected chairwoman of the party, the first woman ever to lead a German party. A Lutheran pacifist, [3] the left-wing Catholic vocally opposed in 1951. [4] Adenauer's policy of German rearmament and joined forces with the CDU's Gustav Heinemann, the former Minister of the Interior. Both formed the "Notgemeinschaft zur Rettung des Friedens in Europa" ("Emergency Community to Save Peace in Europe"), an initiative intended to prevent rearmament.
Wessel resigned from her post and in November 1952 and left the party. Immediately afterwards, Wessel and Heinemann turned the "Notgemeinschaft" into a political party, the "Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei" ("Whole-German People's Party" aka GVP), which failed badly in the elections of 1953. In 1957, the GVP dissolved and most members joined the SPD.
Johannes Rau was a German politician who served as President of Germany from 1999 to 2004. A member of the Social Democratic Party, he previously served as the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1978 to 1998. In the latter role, he also served as President of the Bundesrat in 1982/83 and in 1994/95.
Gustav Walter Heinemann was a German politician who was President of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He served as mayor of Essen from 1946 to 1949, West German Minister of the Interior from 1949 to 1950, and Minister of Justice from 1966 to 1969.
The Centre Party, officially the German Centre Party and also known in English as the Catholic Centre Party, is a Christian democratic political party in Germany. It was most Influential in the German Empire and Weimar Republic. Formed in 1870, it successfully battled the Kulturkampf waged by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck against the Catholic Church. It soon won a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and its middle position on most issues allowed it to play a decisive role in the formation of majorities. The party name Zentrum (Centre) originally came from the fact that Catholic representatives would take up the middle section of seats in parliament between the social democrats and the conservatives.
The Parlamentarischer Rat was the West German constituent assembly in Bonn that drafted and adopted the constitution of West Germany, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, promulgated on 23 May 1949.
Edelgard Bulmahn is a German politician from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). She served as Member of the German Bundestag between 1987 and 2017. She was Federal Minister of Education and Research from 1998 to 2005. From 2013 until 2017 she was elected as one of the Vice Presidents of the Bundestag.
Paul Gustav Emil Löbe was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a member and president of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic, and member of the Bundestag of West Germany. He died in Bonn in 1967.
Erhard Eppler was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and founder of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). He studied English, German and history in Frankfurt, Bern and Tübingen, achieved a PhD and worked as a teacher. He met Gustav Heinemann in the late 1940s, who became a role model. Eppler was a member of the Bundestag from 1961 to 1976. He was appointed Minister for Economic Cooperation first in 1968 during the grand coalition of Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU) and Willy Brandt (SPD), continuing under Chancellor Brandt in 1969 and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) in 1974, when he stepped down.
The All-German People's Party was a minor political party in West Germany active between 1952 and 1957. It was a Christian, pacifist, centre-left party that opposed the re-armament of West Germany because it believed that the remilitarisation and NATO integration would make German reunification impossible, deepen the division of Europe and pose a danger to peace.
Marie Juchacz was a German politician, social reformer and women's rights activist. She served as a member of the Reichstag from 1919 to 1933 and founded the Workers' Welfare Committee, serving as its chairwoman from 1919 to 1933.
Rosa Aschenbrenner was a German politician. After the Second World War, she became increasingly marginalised from the political mainstream because of her opposition to rearmament.
Angelika Barbe is a German biologist who became a politician.
Anke Gabriele Rehlinger is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been the minister-president of Saarland since 25 April 2022. After her party won the 2022 state elections in Saarland, she became the second female minister-president after Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and the first from her party. She was previously the deputy minister president of Saarland from 17 December 2013 until her election by the State Parliament of Saarland as minister-president in 2022.
Bärbel Bas is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as the 14th president of the Bundestag since 2021. She has been a member of the German Bundestag since the federal election in 2009. She served as the deputy chairwoman of the SPD parliamentary group under the leadership of chairman Rolf Mützenich from 2019 to 2021.
Elisabeth Zillken was a German politician.
Helga Magdalena Timm was a German politician.
Serpil Midyatli is a German politician who has been serving as deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and chairwoman of the SPD in Schleswig-Holstein since 2019. She has been the Leader of the Opposition in Schleswig-Holstein since July 2021.
Katrin Budde is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Saxony-Anhalt since 2017.
Mareike Lotte Wulf is a German politician (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since 2021. From 2017 to 2021, she was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament.
Emilie (Emmi) Florine Auguste Welter was a German politician. She was a Member of the Bundestag from the Christian Democratic Union in the 1950s and 1960s.
Elfriede Eilers was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
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