Heinrich Hellwege

Hellewege in 1949

Heinrich Peter Hellwege (18 August 1908 in Neuenkirchen – 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 (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.[1] The first and the last position held by Hellwege was M.P. in the state legislature of Lower Saxony (1947–49 and 1959–63). Between 1947 and 1961, he was national chairman of the German Party (Deutsche Partei).[2] 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.[3]

  1. ^ For details see Rode, Norbert: 'Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Niedersächsischen Landespartei/Deutsche Partei (NLP/DP)', in: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, vol. 53 (1981), pp. 289-292
  2. ^ For some details see Ingo Nathusius: Am rechten Rand der Union. Der Weg der Deutschen Partei bis 1953, Ph.D. dissertation, Mainz 1992, pp. 287-308.
  3. ^ 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.