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 The All-German People's Party (german: Gesamtdeutsche Volkspartei, GVP) was a minor political party in West Germany active between 1952 and 1957. It was a Christian, pacifist, centre-left party that opposed the Wiederbewaffnung, re-armament of W ...

, which eventually joined the

SPD The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been t ...

. She was elected to the

Parlamentarischer Rat The ''Parlamentarischer Rat'' (German for "Parliamentary Council") 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 Ma ...

, the

West German West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

constitutional convention.

Early life

Helene Wessel was born on 6 July 1898 in

Hörde Hörde is a ''Stadtbezirk'' ("City District") and also a ''Stadtteil'' ('' Quarter'') in the south of the city of Dortmund, in Germany. Hörde is situated at 51°29' North, 7°30' West, and is at an elevation of 112 metres above mean sea level. ...

(now in

Dortmund Dortmund (; Westphalian nds, Düörpm ; la, Tremonia) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the eighth-largest city of Germany, with a population of 588,250 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the la ...

) and was the youngest of four children of the

Reichsbahn The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...

officials Henry Wessel and his wife, Helene Wessel, born in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

. Her parents were deeply influenced by their Catholic faith, her father being a member of the

German Centre Party The Centre Party (german: Zentrum), officially the German Centre Party (german: link=no, Deutsche Zentrumspartei) and also known in English as the Catholic Centre Party, is a Catholic political party in Germany, influential in the German Empire ...

. 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".

Political career

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, the left-wing Catholic vocally opposed in 1951. 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.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wessel, Helene 1898 births 1969 deaths German social democrats Lutheran pacifists Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 20th-century Lutherans Members of Parlamentarischer Rat