Helene Wessel

(1898 to 1969) - Women's (places) in Bonn:
Bundestag; Bismarckstr. 25 (for rent since 1949); Joachimstraße 14 (in her own house since 1958); Südfriedhof (South Cemetery)

A politician with the courage of a suffragette and the heart of a woman.

Obituary of the Bundestag

Helene Wessel

"Women must consciously and joyfully get involved in civic tasks." (1930)

"Life is a struggle - win!" (1956)

"We want to create a social order with the individual at its center." (1960)

The politician Helene Wessel is almost forgotten today, although she was "one of the most important politicians of the post-war period" (Friese, p. 288) and "one of the most unusual women in German political life" (SZ 14.10.1969). She was extremely well known in the 1950s. In the press, she was dubbed "pious Helene", "house dragon", "black dragoon" and "commander". She was a feisty woman who stood her ground with a consistency that seemed to have no regard for personal or inter-factional considerations and was only committed to her own conscience, even when it made her uncomfortable.

As a staunch Catholic, she did not join the CDU after the war, but was a notable opponent of Adenauer's government policy.
In 1948/49, she was one of four women to work on the Basic Law in the Parliamentary Council, but then voted against the final draft.
She was the first woman to head a political party in the Federal Republic. In 1949, she became party and parliamentary group leader of the Center Party, which she had built up with all the strength at her disposal, but with which she broke in 1952.
Together with Gustav Heinemann, she founded the All-German People's Party in 1952, which campaigned against the rearmament of the Federal Republic but failed.
From 1957 until her death, she represented the SPD in the German Bundestag. There she fought against the nuclear armament of the Bundeswehr. In 1968, she voted in the minority of her parliamentary group against the emergency laws.
She stood for a conservative family concept, but lived with her partner Alwine Cloidt.

Antje Dertinger wrote about her: "A woman full of contradictions? Not at all. But a personality with principles".

By the early 1960s, she was no longer so present in public. On August 7, 1962, she was informed on the eight o'clock news on WDR that she would be buried on the same day in Recklinghausen. She had been mistaken for the CDU member of parliament Helene Weber. (Spiegel 32/1962)

In the course of her life, Helene Wessel experienced the monarchy of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist dictatorship and the parliamentary democracy of the Federal Republic, as well as both world wars. Her two political careers in the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic made her an exception at a time when women in politics were a major phenomenon.

Origin, education, political beginnings (1898 to 1918)

Professional qualification and political career (1919 to 1933)

The period of National Socialism (1933 to 1945)

Under Nazi rule, Helene Wessel refrained from political activities. "I made myself very invisible so as not to offer the Gestapo a target," she explained in retrospect. Classified as "politically unreliable", she was unable to find employment in the profession she had learned during the Nazi era. She took on office work in various Catholic institutions. In 1939, she was given a job as a welfare worker in a Catholic women's association. She also moved in there after being bombed out three times. After the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, Helene Wessel went to Baden to join her mother, who had been evacuated from bomb-threatened Dortmund, as part of the so-called "Aktion Gewitter" ("Action Thunderstorm").

Helene Wessel published the book "Bewahrung - nicht Verwahrlosung" in 1934. In it, she uses language that was quite common in the 1920s but seems appalling to us today when she speaks of "asocials" and "inferiors". The "Bewahrungsgesetz", which she called for and which provided for the forced placement of people of legal age "in need of care" in institutions, had been under discussion since the 1920s. The radicalization of this welfare concept by the National Socialists through to the systematic murder of the disabled and sick was a possibility, but was not foreseen or intended by Helene Wessel.

"The classification of Helene Wessel as a perpetrator, i.e. as a social politician who, by formulating the Custody Act, prepared the ground for its later perversion by the National Socialists, as Ebbinghaus (...) does, must be rejected. In doing so, she insinuates that Helene Wessel consciously accepted, or even ultimately intended, the measures that the National Socialists took in the area of euthanasia and the youth concentration camps. The fact that Helene Wessel rejected sterilization because of her faith is also not taken into account. Helene Wessel never commented on euthanasia as a "solution" to welfare policy problems. From my knowledge of her, she would have rejected this idea out of hand." (Friese, p. 42)

In the Center Party until the party chairmanship (1945 to 1949)

After the Second World War, Helene Wessel was involved in building a new democratic republic. In October 1945, she was one of the founding members of the Center Party, whose reconstruction she drove forward with enormous personal commitment. At the first party conference of the Center Party in 1946, she was elected deputy chairwoman.

However, there was a competing party re-establishment, the CDU, which many former members of the Center joined. Helene Wessel considered the CDU to be a rallying point for reactionary forces and old Nazis. Moreover, in her view, the CDU did not stand in the socially progressive tradition of political Catholicism, for which the establishment of social justice was the most important concern.

Initially, Helene Wessel continued to work in her profession as a welfare worker in Dortmund. According to her own statement, she did not want to become a "professional politician", as this would mean "losing one's completely independent position, which is so urgently needed in political life". After a short time, however, she gave up her job and concentrated on her political work. It was no longer possible to do both at the same time without overworking herself. By 1947, she was practically a professional politician. She owned a car and chauffeur financed by the Center and employed Alwine Cloidt as her private secretary.

Alwine Cloidt (left) and Helene Wessel (right)

She had been friends with Alwine Cloidt, her future partner, since her youth. In 1916, she wrote in her poetry album: "Pure in heart, clear in mind, modest in spirit, true in words!" In 1920, the two performed together at a song and ballad recital in Dortmund. After 1945, Alwine Cloidt, who had been married since 1921 and divorced in 1950, became Helene Wessel's closest collaborator. When she moved to Bonn in 1949, the two moved into an apartment together. In 1958, they bought a house together in Bonn, which they each owned half of.

Helene Wessel believed it was urgently necessary to mobilize more women for politics because they made up the vast majority of the population and their work in politics, business and society would benefit everyone. In order to activate women for the Center Party, she set up local women's committees, headed by the Party Women's Committee, which she herself chaired. She tried to get more women into leading positions in the Center Party. At the party conference in January 1948, she was able to push through a 20 percent quota for women on the party's main executive committee. There she also proposed that women be nominated for safe list positions in elections. It was clear to her that women always had to "fight for and work for" their rights. To this end, she was even prepared to work together with communist women, such as the Democratic Women's Association founded in East Berlin in 1947. "We women must transcend party fences and try to promote the common great women's cause of our time".

Helene Wessel's election as party chairwoman at the Center Party Congress in October 1949 with 95% of the vote was the high point of her political work in post-war Germany. She saw her rise to the top of the party not only as a personal achievement, but also as "a special recognition for women in general".

Basic Law work in the Parliamentary Council (1948 to 1949)

Helene Wessel felt obliged to help draw up a new constitution for the Federal Republic in order to achieve something for the "women's cause". The Parliamentary Council consisted of four women and 61 men. The four women had to represent the 53 percent of the female German population! In the eyes of Bonn court reporter Walter Henkels, Helene Wessel was the "most striking personality among the female members of parliament". "There is a lot of womanly kindness in her face, but she does not refrain from saying a few things to the masters of creation. In her incorruptible and balanced manner, she has an impressive, warm humanity."

Although Helene Wessel - according to Henkels - "unconcernedly demonstrated the equality of women", she did not initially support the motion tabled by Elisabeth Selbert (SPD) with the wording "Men and women have equal rights". Only later did she change her mind when, on Selbert's initiative, a broad women's public protested and a large majority emerged in the Parliamentary Council.

Together with Helene Weber (CDU), she pushed through the privileging of the traditional family in the Basic Law, which at the same time enshrined discrimination against all other forms of life. Both value-conservative women firmly rejected the SPD's call for illegitimate children to be treated equally to legitimate children. "If we start from this concept of order, that marriage and family are the bearers of the state, we cannot place something that contradicts this concept of order (...) in the same order of priority." The fierce opposition of Selbert and Friederike Nadig (SPD) did not help. It was not until 1970 that the legal discrimination of illegitimate children was abolished in the Non-Marriage Act.

Helene Wessel, together with the other member of parliament from the Center Party, campaigned for the inclusion of the referendum as an element of direct democracy in the Basic Law and fought for the establishment of basic social rights and parental rights, which allowed parents to choose a denominational school for their children. She was unable to achieve success with these key demands. In the decision on the Basic Law on May 8, 1949, she therefore voted no, although she certainly appreciated the draft constitution. She particularly emphasized the fundamental rights, the right to conscientious objection, the protection of marriage and family and the abolition of the death penalty. The Basic Law was ultimately adopted by 53 votes to 12.

In the Bundestag for the Center until leaving the party (1949 to 1952)

In the first Bundestag, Helene Wessel was one of ten members of the Center Party and its parliamentary group leader. As chairwoman of the Committee on Public Welfare, she took up an initiative by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group to introduce a custody law. Invited experts and committee members unscrupulously debated the problems in terms of "inferiority", "abnormal disposition" and "moral neglect", as if the forced sterilizations and murders of the sick under National Socialism had never happened. Despite the Nazi past, the danger of abuse of such a law and the severity of coercive measures, which could lead to lifelong imprisonment, were not reflected upon.

Helene Wessel's commitment against rearmament and the Federal Republic's ties to the West put her at odds with her own party. When it became known in early 1950 that Adenauer was in favour of a Western military alliance involving German soldiers, Helene Wessel declared: "The Centre Party is of the opinion that the German people cannot possibly be expected to accept the idea of remilitarization in any form. We Germans still fear for the fate of 500,000 former soldiers who have not yet been released from Russian captivity. Day after day, we see the cruel ruins of a world war before our eyes. The Center Party is firmly convinced that the overwhelming majority of the German people (...) will not tolerate the slightest step on a path that could somehow lead to a new war." She also feared that West German rearmament would stand in the way of reunification.

Together with some members of the Bundestag, she supported the West German Women's Peace Movement. She was in contact with Bonn history professor Klara Marie Faßbinder, campaigned for the international peace initiative "WOMAN" (World Organization of Mothers of all Nations) and gave many lectures at non-parliamentary peace organizations. She was vilified as a communist in the predominantly pro-government press, by opposing politicians and by the Catholic Church. The Cold War had begun and the anti-communism of the West German majority made it difficult for anyone who spoke out against rearmament. Peace activist Hannelis Schulte commented: "The buckets of dirt and defamation that poured down on anyone politically active at that time who did not conform to Adenauer's policy also hit her. It took a lot of bravery and unwavering faith in the rightness of the cause she represented to endure it all." On several occasions, Helene Wessel even had to be protected by the police from stone-throwing demonstrators at her events.

In November 1951, Helene Wessel and Gustav Heinemann (CDU), who had resigned as Federal Minister of the Interior in October 1950 in protest against Adenauer's policies, founded the "Emergency Community for the Salvation of Peace in Europe". Its aim was to unite all opponents of rearmament. The aim was a non-aligned, neutral, reunified Germany, confirmed in a peace treaty by all the victorious powers. Concerns were raised in the Center Party as to whether the party chairmanship was compatible with a leadership role in the "emergency community".

As a result, Helene Wessel resigned as party and parliamentary group leader in January 1952 and left the party, which had been her political home for 37 years, in November 1952. She found hardly any allies in the Center for her conviction that an understanding with the East was indispensable. She was disappointed. "With the Center Party, we were striving for a just solution to social differences, a new and reorganized economic and social order. We rejected the CDU because we didn't want to encourage the formation of a new bourgeois bloc with the old anti-social and anti-Christian liberal forces behind a Christian corporate shield." She resigned. Because the Catholic Church unilaterally supported the CDU and Adenauer's policies, she no longer saw a future for the Center. "I don't want to become bitter (...) and that's why I'm stepping down from this battlefield".

Foundation and dissolution of the All-German People's Party (1952 to 1957)

In the Bundestag for the SPD (1957 to 1969)

Helene Wessel joined the SPD despite certain reservations. She could not imagine leaving politics. She and Gustav Heinemann stood as candidates in the 1957 Bundestag elections on safe lists. Both felt it was necessary to "fight at the forefront against the dangerous rearmament and foreign policy of the Federal Government (...)". Helene Wessel was supported above all by female members of the Bundestag and by the SPD's women's secretariat, especially Herta Gotthelf. She sat in the Bundestag for the SPD for three terms. Throughout this time, she was a member of the Petitions Committee, which she chaired from 1959 to 1965.

In the third Bundestag, she continued to argue - against her own parliamentary group - in favor of the Detention Act. The forced placement of "at-risk persons" was finally included in the Federal Social Welfare Act passed in 1961. In 1967, however, the Federal Constitutional Court repealed these provisions as a violation of the fundamental right to personal freedom.

One of Helene Wessel's central concerns was the fight against nuclear armament. She began her much-noticed speech in the Bundestag on March 21, 1958 with the following words: "Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I have had to gain the impression from the speakers of the CDU that their belief in the power of atomic bombs for the Federal Republic is greater than their belief in God as the guide of world history." She implored the government to abandon its previous policy of military intimidation and strategy of retaliation. She strongly condemned their intention to equip the Bundeswehr with nuclear weapons. "We do not want our Bundeswehr to be equipped with nuclear weapons and we do not want nuclear weapons to be manufactured in Germany. We also consider the storage of nuclear weapons by foreign armed forces stationed in Germany to be dangerous." In her speech, she appealed in particular to women as the "guardians of life". Helene Wessel was considered a brilliant speaker, famous for her duels with Adenauer.

In 1968, Helene Wessel spoke for the last time in the Bundestag when the emergency laws were being negotiated. She voted against them - unlike the majority of her parliamentary group - on the grounds that she had experienced the effects of Hitler's "Enabling Act".

She practised the policy of understanding that Helene Wessel called for herself by traveling to the Soviet Union, always accompanied by her friend Alwine Cloidt. In October 1958, she led a 19-member women's delegation of politicians, journalists and social workers on an invitation from the Moscow magazine "Die Sowjetfrau". A return visit took place in 1959. Another trip with six women followed in September 1964. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, this was not convenient for SPD headquarters. Helene Wessel was not allowed to lead the delegation. At this time, the SPD leadership still rejected the idea of a new Ostpolitik, as later advocated by Willy Brandt. Their third trip to the Soviet Union as a couple to the Crimea in the summer of 1967 was purely private.

Grave of Helene Wessel and Alwine Cloidt in the South Cemetery

After a long and serious illness, Helene Wessel died in Bonn on October 13, 1969 at the age of 71. With her end in sight, she wrote to her partner from the sanatorium in the summer of 1969: "My dear, I know that this letter is causing you grief. I don't want to miss the opportunity to thank you very much for everything you have done for me, for your loyalty and loving care (...). This is such a precious gift that few people receive from life."

Gustav Heinemann, Federal President since 1969, paid tribute to his long-time political companion: "She was a kind and courageous woman who had the ability to empathize with others, to work publicly with courage and determination and to fight for social and political reforms, never giving up even in difficult situations."

Text: Ulrike Klens