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Heinrich Peter Hellwege (born 18 August 1908 in
Neuenkirchen; died 4 October 1991 in
Neuenkirchen) was a German politician (
DHP,
DP and
CDU). Hellwege was Federal Minister for Affairs of the
Federal Council (1949–1955) and
Minister President of Lower Saxony
The Minister-President of Lower Saxony (german: Ministerpräsident des Landes Niedersachsen), also referred to as Premier or Prime Minister, is the head of government of the German state of Lower Saxony. The position was created in 1946, when the ...
(1955–1959).
When he left secondary school in 1926 he started to work as a commercial clerk in Hamburg until in 1933 he joined the family business for six years. During World War II he served with the air force. After the war he turned into a
political entrepreneur who restarted a political party, the ''Niedersächsische Landespartei'' (NLP), later on to be renamed
DP, and began his own political career. The first and the last position held by Hellwege was M.P. in the state legislature of
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
(1947–49 and 1959–63). Between 1947 and 1961 he was national chairman of the
German Party (''Deutsche Partei''). When his party, the DP, started to fade away he joined the
Christian Democratic Union (1961–79) without ever being a candidate for that party.
[Joachim Detjen: 'Heinrich Hellwege', in: Udo Kempf and Hans-Georg Merz (eds.), ''Kanzler und Minister 1949-1998. Biografisches Lexikon der deutschen Bundesregierungen'', Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001, pp. 319-320.]
See also
*
German Party (1947)
The German Party (german: Deutsche Partei, DP) was a national-conservative political party in West Germany active during the post-war years. The party's ideology appealed to sentiments of German nationalism and nostalgia for the German Empire.
H ...
References
Bibliography
* Claudius Schmidt: ''Heinrich Hellwege, der vergessene Gründervater: ein politisches Lebensbild''. Stade: Landschaftsverband der Ehemaligen Herzogtümer Bremen und Verden, 1991, (Ph.D. dissertation, Berlin: Free University, 1990)
* Joachim Detjen: 'Heinrich Hellwege', in: Udo Kempf and Hans-Georg Merz (eds.), ''Kanzler und Minister 1949-1998. Biografisches Lexikon der deutschen Bundesregierungen'', Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001, pp. 316–320.
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hellwege, Heinrich
1908 births
1991 deaths
People from Stade (district)
People from the Province of Hanover
German-Hanoverian Party politicians
German Party (1947) politicians
Members of the Bundestag for Lower Saxony
Members of the Bundestag 1953–1957
Members of the Bundestag 1949–1953
Christian Democratic Union of Germany politicians
Ministers-President of Lower Saxony
Grand Crosses 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany