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Herbert Wehner | |
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 Iconic portrait of Minister Wehner with his pipe, 1966 | |
| President by right of age of the Bundestag | |
| In office 4 November 1980 – 29 March 1983 | |
| Preceded by | Ludwig Erhard |
| Succeeded by | Willy Brandt |
| Leader of the Opposition | |
| In office 1 October 1982 – 6 March 1983 | |
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Leader | Willy Brandt |
| Preceded by | Helmut Kohl |
| Succeeded by | Hans-Jochen Vogel |
| Leader of theSocial Democratic Party in theBundestag | |
| In office 22 October 1969 – 8 March 1983 | |
| Chancellor | Kurt Georg Kiesinger |
| Preceded by | Helmut Schmidt |
| Succeeded by | Hans-Jochen Vogel |
| Federal Minister of Intra-German Relations | |
| In office 1 December 1966 – 21 October 1969 | |
| Preceded by | Johann Baptist Gradl |
| Succeeded by | Egon Franke |
| Member of theBundestag forHamburg-Harburg | |
| In office 14 August 1949 – 6 March 1983 | |
| Preceded by | Parliament established |
| Succeeded by | Hans-Ulrich Klose |
| Member of theLandtag of Saxony | |
| In office 10 July 1930 – 18 June 1931 | |
| Preceded by | Multi-member district |
| Succeeded by | Max Silbermann |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Richard Herbert Wehner (1906-07-11)11 July 1906 |
| Died | 19 January 1990(1990-01-19) (aged 83) |
| Political party | Communist Party(1927–1942) Social Democratic Party(1946–1990) |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | 2 (adopted) |
| Occupation | Politician |
| Signature |  |
Central institution membership
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Richard Herbert Wehner (11 July 1906 – 19 January 1990) was a German politician. A former member of theCommunist Party, he joined theSocial Democrats (SPD) afterWorld War II. He served as FederalMinister of Intra-German Relations from 1966 to 1969 and thereafter as chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in theBundestag until 1983.[1]
During his tenure in the Bundestag from 1949 to 1983, Wehner became (in-)famous for his caustic rhetoric andheckling style, often hurling personal insults at MPs with whom he disagreed. He holds the record for official censures (77 by one count, 78 or 79 by others) handed down by thepresiding officer.
Herbert Wehner was born inDresden, the son of a shoemaker. His father was active in histrade union and a member of the Social Democratic Party. More radical than his father, Wehner engaged inanarcho-syndicalist circles aroundErich Mühsam, driven by the 1923 invasion ofReichswehr troops into theFree State of Saxony at the behest of theDVP–SPDReich government of ChancellorGustav Stresemann. He also fell out with Mühsam, whosepacifist manners he rejected and was accused of stealing money by him, which Wehner never denied.[2]He finally joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1927, becoming an official of the party'sRote Hilfe organisation the same year.
Wehner rose quickly and was elected to theLandtag state legislature of Saxony in 1930. Nevertheless, he resigned one year later to work at the KPDpolitburo in Berlin withWalter Ulbricht. After Hitler'sseizure of power in January 1933, he participated in the communistresistance against theNazi regime from theSaar Protectorate. When the Saar was re-incorporated in 1935, Wehner went intoexile, first to Paris, then in 1937 toMoscow, where he lived atHotel Lux, wrote for theDeutsche Zentral-Zeitung and had to faceJoseph Stalin'sGreat Purge of 1937–38.[3] After Wehner's death, German news magazineDer Spiegel documented accusations that he informed theNKVD on several party fellows likeHugo Eberlein, presumably to save his own life.[4] After being sent to neutral Sweden in 1941 in order to re-enter Germany, he was arrested atStockholm and interned forespionage in 1942. Whether he deliberately went into custody has not been conclusively established; at least he was excluded from the Communist Party by politburo chiefWilhelm Pieck.[5]
Upon his return to Germany in 1946, Wehner joined the Social Democratic Party inHamburg and soon became an aide of ChairmanKurt Schumacher. After the1949 federal election he entered theBundestag parliament and remained an MP until his retirement from politics in 1983, from 1952 to 1958 also as a member of theEuropean 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 theGodesberg Program in which the Social Democrats repudiated a fixation onMarxist ideology and broadened its appeal.[6] In 1966, he was named Federal Minister for All-German Affairs in theCDU–SPDgrand coalition government of ChancellorKurt Georg Kiesinger.[7] The cooperation between the ex-communist and the former member of theNazi Party went well; Wehner even promised the CDU partners to stabilize the coalition by backing the implementation of aplurality voting system, which he later denoted as "nonsense".
When the SPD assumed thereins of government under ChancellorWilly Brandt upon the1969 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 aconstructive 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 candidateRainer Barzel failed to reach theabsolute majority by two votes. After Brandt was re-elected in1972, the relations between the two men cooled down during the1973 oil crisis, when Wehner increasingly viewed the chancellor's policies as indecisive. In the course of theGuillaume Affair, he did not make great efforts to persuade Brandt to stay in office and promoted the chancellorship ofHelmut Schmidt.[8]
AlreadyFather of the House from 1980, Wehner did not seek re-election in1983, after thesocial-liberal coalition had finally broken up. He retired toBonn, where he died in 1990 at the age of 83 after a long illness, suffering fromDiabetes mellitus andBinswanger's disease.
Wehner held an infamous reputation among members of the Bundestag (and the public) for his sharp, and often insulting, rhetoric towards MPs that disagreed with him. His remarks about political opponents often revolved around insulting word plays with their respective last names. One notable exception is his pejorative neologism "Düffeldoffel" which he used to insultHelmut Kohl. His sharp comments would not stop at his own party either: When the SPD-MP Franz Josef Zebisch complained about how the alphabetic seating order in the Bundestag in the 1960s left him at the back of the room, Wehner told him to just rename himself to “Comrade Asshole”.
German media occasionally depicts Wehner and CSU-politicianFranz Josef Strauß to have been political rivals as both had highly influential yet never the highest positions within their respective parties and Strauß was also known for a fierce albeit less personally insulting rhetoric.
Wehner's reception across the aisle among CDU/CSU politicians was mostly negative due to his rhetoric. However, CDU politicianHeiner Geißler acknowledged Wehner's uncompromising style of standing up for his party's positions as "the biggest parliamentary howitzer of all time".
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