Herbert Wehner: Difference between revisions

{{refimproveUse dmy dates|date=NovemberMarch 20112021}}

|imagesize = 200px

|term_end term_start = 2122 October 1969

|chancellorsuccessor = [[Kurt GeorgHans-Jochen KiesingerVogel]]

|office2leader = Member of the [[BundestagWilly Brandt]]

|birth_place = [[Dresden]], [[Saxony]]<br>[[German Empire]]

|death_place = [[Bonn]], [[North Rhine-Westphalia]]<br>[[West Germany]]

'''Herbert Richard Wehner''' (11 July 1906 – 19 January 1990) was a German [[politician]]. A former member of the [[Communist Party of Germany|Communist Party]], he joined the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social Democrats]] (SPD) after [[World War II]]. He served as Federal [[Minister of Intra-German Relations]] from 1966 to 1969 and thereafter as chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the [[Bundestag]] until 1983.

Herbert Wehner was born in [[Dresden]], the son of a [[shoemaking|shoemaker]]. His father was active in his [[trade union]] and a member of the Social Democratic Party. More radical than his father, Wehner engaged in [[Anarcho-syndicalism|anarcho-syndicalist]] circles around [[Erich Mühsam]], driven by the 1923 invasion of [[Reichswehr]] troops into the [[Saxony|Free State of Saxony]] at the behest of the [[German People's Party|DVP]]&ndash;SPD [[German Reich|Reich]] government of Chancellor [[Gustav Stresemann]]. He also fell out with Mühsam, whose [[pacifism|pacifist]] manners he rejected, and was accused of stealing money by him, which Wehner never denied.<ref> Helga Döring: Kein Befehlen, kein Gehorchen! Bern 2011. p. 199 [in German]</ref>
He finally joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1927, becoming an official of the party's ''[[Rote Hilfe]]'' organisation the same year.

Wehner rose quickly and was elected to the ''[[Landtag]]'' state legislature of Saxony in 1930. Nevertheless, he resigned one year later to work at the KPD [[politburo]] in [[Berlin]] with [[Walter Ulbricht]]. After Hitler's [[Machtergreifung|seizure of power]] in January 1933, he participated in the communist [[German resistance to Nazism|resistance]] against the [[Nazi Germany|Nazi]] regime from the [[Saar (protectorate)|Saar Protectorate]]. When the Saar was re-incorporated in 1935, Wehner went into [[exile]], first to [[Paris]], then in 1937 to [[Moscow]], where he lived at [[Hotel Lux]], wrote for the ''[[Deutsche Zentral -Zeitung]]'' and had to face [[Joseph Stalin]]'s [[Great Purge]] of 1937-381937–38.<ref name="geo">[http://www.geo.de/GEO/heftreihen/geo_epoche/61487.html „Emigranten: Hotel Lux“] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111112124233/http://www.geo.de/GEO/heftreihen/geo_epoche/61487.html |date=12 November 2011 }} ''Geo Epoche'', No. 38 (August 2009). Retrieved 12 November 2011 {{dein iconlang|de}}</ref> After Wehner's death, German news magazine ''[[Der Spiegel]]'' magazine documented accusations that he informed the [[NKVD]] on several party fellows like [[Hugo Eberlein]], presumably to save his own life.<ref>[http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13503270.html "Menschlicher Abschaum"] ''Der Spiegel'' (31 December 1990). Retrieved 15 November 2011 {{in lang|de icon}}</ref> After being sent to neutral [[Sweden]] in 1941 in order to re-enter Germany, he was arrested at [[Stockholm]] and interned for [[espionage]] in 1942. IfWhether he deliberately went into custody has not been conclusively established,; at least he was excluded from the Communist Party by politburo chief [[Wilhelm Pieck]].

Upon his return to Germany in 1946, Wehner joined the Social Democratic Party in [[Hamburg]] and soon became an aide of Chairman [[Kurt Schumacher]]. After the [[1949 West German federal election, 1949|1949 federal election]] he entered the [[Bundestag]] parliament and remained an MP until his retirement from politics in 1983, from 1952 to 1958 also as a member of the [[European Parliament]]. In 1957/58 and again from 1964 to 1966, he served as deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Wehner was instrumental in the party's adoption of the [[Godesberg Program]] in which the Social Democrats repudiated a fixation on [[Marxism|Marxist]] ideology and broadened its appeal. In 1966, he was named Federal Minister for All-German Affairs in the [[Christian Democratic Union (Germany)|CDU]]&ndash;SPD [[grand coalition]] government of Chancellor [[Kurt Georg Kiesinger]]. The cooperation between the ex-communist and the former member of the [[Nazi Party]] went well; Wehner even promised the CDU partners to stabilize the coalition by backing the implementation of a [[plurality voting system]], which he later denoted as "nonsense".

When the SPD assumed the [[Rein#In popular expression|reins]] of government under Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]] upon the [[1969 West German federal election, 1969|1969 federal election]], Wehner became chairman of the SPD parliamentary faction. He was known as a hard disciplinarian who kept his members in line. When the CDU on 27 April 1972 waged a [[constructive vote of no confidence]] against Brandt, he ordered the SPD deputies not to participate in the ballot in order to exclude possible bribed dissidents. The opposing candidate [[Rainer Barzel]] failed to reach the [[Supermajority|absolute majority]] by two votes. After Brandt was re-elected in [[1972 West German federal election, 1972|1972]], the relations between the two men cooled down during the [[1973 oil crisis]], when Wehner increasingly viewed the chancellor's policies as indecisive. In the course of the [[Guillaume Affair]], he did not make great efforts to persuade Brandt to stay in office and promoted the chancellorship of [[Helmut Schmidt]].

Already [[Father of the House]] from 1980, Herbert Wehner did not seek re-election in [[1983 West German federal election, 1983|1983]], after the [[social-liberal coalition]] had finally broken up. He retired to [[Bonn]], where he died in 1990 at the age of 83 after a long illness, suffering from [[Diabetes mellitus]] and [[Binswanger's disease]].

*Bedürftig, Friedemann (Hrsg.): ''Die Leiden des jungen Wehner: Dokumentiert in einer Brieffreundschaft in bewegter Zeit 1924–1926.'' Parthas, Berlin 2005, {{ISBN|3-86601-059-1}}.

[[Category:HonoraryMembers citizensof the Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party of HamburgGermany]]