1. Herbert Wehner served as Federal Minister of Intra-German Relations from 1966 to 1969 and thereafter as chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag until 1983.
13 Facts About Herbert Wehner
1. 2.
Herbert Wehner holds the record for official censures handed down by the presiding officer.
3.
Herbert Wehner was born in Dresden, the son of a shoemaker.
4.
Herbert Wehner's father was active in his trade union and a member of the Social Democratic Party.
5.
Herbert Wehner fell out with Muhsam, whose pacifist manners he rejected and was accused of stealing money by him, which Wehner never denied.
6.
Herbert Wehner finally joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1927, becoming an official of the party's Rote Hilfe organisation the same year.
7.
Herbert Wehner rose quickly and was elected to the Landtag state legislature of Saxony in 1930.
8.
Herbert Wehner was instrumental in the party's adoption of the Godesberg Program in which the Social Democrats repudiated a fixation on Marxist ideology and broadened its appeal.
9.
The cooperation between the ex-communist and the former member of the Nazi Party went well; Herbert Wehner even promised the CDU partners to stabilize the coalition by backing the implementation of a plurality voting system, which he later denoted as "nonsense".
10.
Herbert Wehner was known as a hard disciplinarian who kept his members in line.
11.
Already Father of the House from 1980, Herbert Wehner did not seek re-election in 1983, after the social-liberal coalition had finally broken up.
12.
Herbert Wehner retired to Bonn, where he died in 1990 at the age of 83 after a long illness, suffering from Diabetes mellitus and Binswanger's disease.
13.
Herbert Wehner held an infamous reputation among members of the Bundestag for his sharp, and often insulting, rhetoric towards MPs that disagreed with him.