SOLLMANN, WILHELM
Publié le 22/02/2012
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SOLLMANN, WILHELM (1881–1951), politician and journalist; one of the
SPD's pragmatists, he regularly sponsored collaboration with the moderate bourgeois
parties. Born to a middle-class home in the village of Oberlind, near
Coburg, he completed a business apprenticeship in Cologne and attended the
local Handelshochschule. In 1907, soon after joining the SPD, he founded a
youth group, Freie Jugend Ko¨ln. Shifting his attention to journalism, he joined
the staff of the Rheinische Zeitung in 1911 and remained at the newspaper*
(with a one-year interruption) until 1933—from 1920 as editor-in-chief. Meanwhile,
he entered the Reichstag* in 1914 via by-election and became chairman
of the Cologne SPD in 1915.
An adherent of Germany's war effort, Sollmann served on Cologne's city
council during 1915–1923. He helped Konrad Adenauer* moderate the temper
of Cologne's Workers' and Soldiers' Council* during the Armistice* and was
elected to the National Assembly* in January 1919. In the wake of the March
1920 Kapp* Putsch he championed the embattled Defense Minister, Gustav
Noske*; he then declined the proffered Defense portfolio. Founding the journal
Sozialdemokratischer Pressedienst in 1920, he encouraged socialist debate on
defense and other issues. With Noske and Otto Braun,* he led a minority of
prominent SPD leaders who sought to foster trust with the Reichswehr.*
Sollmann developed considerable expertise in the areas of defense, education,
and foreign affairs. He opposed Rhenish separatism in the early 1920s, promoted
a Great Coalition* in the crisis year of 1923, and served during August–November
1923 as Interior Minister under Gustav Stresemann,* but he was foiled
in his effort at resolving the crisis with Saxony.* For the balance of the Weimar
era he worked to broaden the base of support for the Republic and challenged
the SPD to extend its appeal beyond the working classes. With deputies from
other parties, he served on the Arbeitsausschuss Deutscher Verba¨nde (Action
Committee of German Associations) and the Interparlamentarische Union (Inter-
Parliamentary Union).
An outspoken critic of the NSDAP (he maligned Joseph Goebbels* in the
Reichstag), Sollmann was savagely beaten by Nazis on 9 March 1933. In May
he fled to the Saar,* where he founded and edited Deutsche Freiheit. He moved
to Luxemburg in February 1935 and then emigrated to the United States in
January 1937. The Quakers secured him a position at Swarthmore.
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