Wilhelm Sollmann
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Wilhelm Sollmann (1 April 1881, Oberlind
, Saxe-Meiningen
- 6 January 1951) was a German
journalist, politician, and interior minister of the Weimar Republic
. In 1919 he was a member of the German delegation to the Treaty of Versailles
. In 1933 he was beaten by Nazi
stormtroopers and later emigrated to the United States
where he became an advocate for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
(today a part of Sonneberg
, Thuringia
) and grew up in Coburg, Germany. His father was in the brewery business, and his mother ran an inn. In 1897, at the age of 16, his family moved to Kalk, a suburb of Cologne
. There, he began work as a business apprentice. From 1901 until 1903 he attended, as a night student, lectures at the Cologne College of Business Administration. Later in life Sollmann would play a major role, along with Konrad Adenauer
, mayor of Cologne, in transforming this school (in 1919) into the University of Cologne
.
He became involved in the German temperance movement, becoming a member of the International Order of Good Templars
in 1903 and of the Workers' Abstinence Union ("Arbeiter Abstinentenbund") in 1906. His political career began in 1906, when he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany
(SPD). In 1911, at the age of 30, he abandoned his business career and became city editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. By 1920 he was chief editor of that newspaper, a position first held by Karl Marx
. He bid to become a member of the German parliament in 1914, when he was the SPD candidate for the Cologne district, but failed. In 1918 Sollmann was one of the first members of the SPD ever elected to the Cologne municipal government, and remained chairman of that fraction until 1924.
of 1918 he became chairman of the newly formed Workers and Soldiers council of Cologne. This council then successfully exercised authority over the fortress of Cologne, which had tens of thousands of retreating, demoralized soldiers. In this role Sollmann helped keep control of the city out of the hands of radical elements. Violence did not occur in Cologne, as it would in Kiel, Munich, and Berlin. In 1919 he was elected a member of the National Assembly in Weimar, and was a staff member of the German delegation to the peace negotiations in Versailles, where he served as an expert on problems of the Rheinland occupation. In 1920 he was elected to the German parliament, representing the district of Cologne and Aachen. Sollman was one of the organizers in 1923 of the passive resistance to the French occupation of the Saarland
. In that same year he served as Minister of the Interior in two cabinets of Gustav Stresemann
.
In parliament he served as a member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs, and as an expert on disarmament and adult education. Within the SPD, he founded and was director of the Social Democratic Press Service, the party's parliamentary press service. He also served on the executive board of the SPD.
party headquarters in Cologne, where he was confined with Hugo Efferoth, a fellow editor of the "Rheinische Zeitung". There, both were tortured and threatened with death, and Effenroth was stabbed and nearly killed. Two days later Sollmann was able to flee to Luxembourg
from a prison hospital with the help of a doctor. Soon after he moved to the Saarland, under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations
, and became editor-in-chief of the anti-Nazi daily "Deutsche Freiheit". This ended in 1935 when a plebiscite returned the Saarland to Germany, and Sollmann fled again, travelling throughout Europe and contributing to various newspapers. At the end of 1936 he resided at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre
, a Quaker center near Birmingham, England, and in 1937 he emigrated to the United States. There, he became a member of the faculty at Pendle Hill
, another Quaker study center located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.
, Bard
, and Reed Colleges
. In 1943 he was naturalized and changed his name to William Frederick Sollmann. At the request of the American Friends Service Committee
, a Quaker organization, Sollmann visited occupied Germany in 1948, where he held speeches and radio addresses. In a trip the following year he served as visiting professor at the University of Cologne. On a final trip in 1950 he started work for a new German Civil Liberties Union, but had to return to the States due to the onset of illness. On January 6, 1951. Sollmann died in Mount Carmel, Connecticut.
Sonneberg
Sonneberg is a town in Thuringia, Germany, which is seat of the district Sonneberg.It has long been a centre of toy making and is still well known for this...
, Saxe-Meiningen
Saxe-Meiningen
The Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine line of the Wettin dynasty, located in the southwest of the present-day German state of Thuringia....
- 6 January 1951) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
journalist, politician, and interior minister of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
. In 1919 he was a member of the German delegation to the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
. In 1933 he was beaten by Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
stormtroopers and later emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
where he became an advocate for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Overview
Wilhelm was born on April 1, 1881 in Oberlind, Saxe-MeiningenSaxe-Meiningen
The Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine line of the Wettin dynasty, located in the southwest of the present-day German state of Thuringia....
(today a part of Sonneberg
Sonneberg
Sonneberg is a town in Thuringia, Germany, which is seat of the district Sonneberg.It has long been a centre of toy making and is still well known for this...
, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
) and grew up in Coburg, Germany. His father was in the brewery business, and his mother ran an inn. In 1897, at the age of 16, his family moved to Kalk, a suburb of Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. There, he began work as a business apprentice. From 1901 until 1903 he attended, as a night student, lectures at the Cologne College of Business Administration. Later in life Sollmann would play a major role, along with Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...
, mayor of Cologne, in transforming this school (in 1919) into the University of Cologne
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...
.
He became involved in the German temperance movement, becoming a member of the International Order of Good Templars
International Organisation of Good Templars
The IOGT International is an international non-governmental organisation working in the field of temperance...
in 1903 and of the Workers' Abstinence Union ("Arbeiter Abstinentenbund") in 1906. His political career began in 1906, when he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
(SPD). In 1911, at the age of 30, he abandoned his business career and became city editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. By 1920 he was chief editor of that newspaper, a position first held by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. He bid to become a member of the German parliament in 1914, when he was the SPD candidate for the Cologne district, but failed. In 1918 Sollmann was one of the first members of the SPD ever elected to the Cologne municipal government, and remained chairman of that fraction until 1924.
1918
During the German RevolutionGerman Revolution
The German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I, which resulted in the replacement of Germany's imperial government with a republic...
of 1918 he became chairman of the newly formed Workers and Soldiers council of Cologne. This council then successfully exercised authority over the fortress of Cologne, which had tens of thousands of retreating, demoralized soldiers. In this role Sollmann helped keep control of the city out of the hands of radical elements. Violence did not occur in Cologne, as it would in Kiel, Munich, and Berlin. In 1919 he was elected a member of the National Assembly in Weimar, and was a staff member of the German delegation to the peace negotiations in Versailles, where he served as an expert on problems of the Rheinland occupation. In 1920 he was elected to the German parliament, representing the district of Cologne and Aachen. Sollman was one of the organizers in 1923 of the passive resistance to the French occupation of the Saarland
Saarland
Saarland is one of the sixteen states of Germany. The capital is Saarbrücken. It has an area of 2570 km² and 1,045,000 inhabitants. In both area and population, it is the smallest state in Germany other than the city-states...
. In that same year he served as Minister of the Interior in two cabinets of Gustav Stresemann
Gustav Stresemann
was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor and Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic. He was co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.Stresemann's politics defy easy categorization...
.
In parliament he served as a member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs, and as an expert on disarmament and adult education. Within the SPD, he founded and was director of the Social Democratic Press Service, the party's parliamentary press service. He also served on the executive board of the SPD.
1933
Sollmann remained a member of parliament until 1933, when he was forced to flee Germany. In January of that year the Nazis seized power (the "Machtergreifung"), and on March 9 Sollmann became the first member of parliament to be attacked by the SS. He was beaten and taken to NaziNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
party headquarters in Cologne, where he was confined with Hugo Efferoth, a fellow editor of the "Rheinische Zeitung". There, both were tortured and threatened with death, and Effenroth was stabbed and nearly killed. Two days later Sollmann was able to flee to Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
from a prison hospital with the help of a doctor. Soon after he moved to the Saarland, under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
, and became editor-in-chief of the anti-Nazi daily "Deutsche Freiheit". This ended in 1935 when a plebiscite returned the Saarland to Germany, and Sollmann fled again, travelling throughout Europe and contributing to various newspapers. At the end of 1936 he resided at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre
Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre
Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre is a Quaker college based in the Selly Oak area of Birmingham, England.The only Quaker Study Centre in Europe, it was founded by George Cadbury in 1903 and occupies his former home on the Bristol Road. Woodbrooke's first Director of Studies was the biblical scholar J...
, a Quaker center near Birmingham, England, and in 1937 he emigrated to the United States. There, he became a member of the faculty at Pendle Hill
Pendle Hill
Pendle Hill is located in the north-east of Lancashire, England, near the towns of Burnley, Nelson, Colne, Clitheroe and Padiham, an area known as Pendleside. Its summit is above mean sea level. It gives its name to the Borough of Pendle. It is an isolated hill, separated from the Pennines to the...
, another Quaker study center located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.
America
In the next years Sollmann travelled through most of the United States, giving lectures on world affairs. He became a visiting professor of international affairs at HaverfordHaverford College
Haverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia...
, Bard
Bard College
Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
, and Reed Colleges
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
. In 1943 he was naturalized and changed his name to William Frederick Sollmann. At the request of the American Friends Service Committee
American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee is a Religious Society of Friends affiliated organization which works for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world...
, a Quaker organization, Sollmann visited occupied Germany in 1948, where he held speeches and radio addresses. In a trip the following year he served as visiting professor at the University of Cologne. On a final trip in 1950 he started work for a new German Civil Liberties Union, but had to return to the States due to the onset of illness. On January 6, 1951. Sollmann died in Mount Carmel, Connecticut.