Annemarie Mevissen

Annemarie Mevissen (born Annemarie Schmidt: 24 October 1914 – 13 July 2006) was a German politician (SPD). She served between 1951 and 1975 as a Bremen senator. Between 1967 and 1975 she was deputy president (deputy mayor) of the state of Bremen ("Freie Hansestadt Bremen"). That meant that in 1967 she became the first woman to reach that position in any of the eleven states ("Bundesländer") of the German Federal Republic (West Germany).

Life Provenance and early years Annemarie Gesine Schmidt was born in Werderland, a part of Bremen's Burglesum quarter, on the city's northern side, where she grew up alongside her elder brother Hans. She came from a traditionally Social Democratic (SPD) family. Wilhelm Schmidt (1883-1975), her father, was one of the most high-profile SPD politicians in Bremen during the Weimar years. He had been removed from public service in 1933 by the Nazis and later spent several years in a labour camp. Directly after the war Wilhelm Schmidt took a leading role in reconstructing the city's administration, and he was one of the authors of the Bremen constitution which came into force in 1947.

Annemarie Schmidt attended secondary school locally, in 1934 passing her school final exams ("Abitur"), which under more normal circumstances would have opened the way to university-level education. The Nazis had taken power at the beginning of the previous year and little by little transformed the country into a one-party dictatorship. She was blocked from training as a teacher because she was deemed "politically unreliable". That may have been because her father was a known critic of the government.

Politics It would have been conventional for the mother of a new baby to stay at home and care for her child, but Gesine Schmidt, Annemarie's own mother, proved exceptionally able and enthusiastic both in managing the home and as a "hands-on" grandmother. Far from staying at home, Annemarie quickly plunged into public life outside the home, concentrating in the first instance on youth work. She gathered children from the refugee camps and farmsteads in the surrounding countryside and organised sports and drama based activities for them. Sources also place emphasis on the extent to which it was still unusual for SPD members, whose backgrounds were largely working-class, to have completed their schooling up to the level of the "Abitur" (secondary school leaving exam). In parliamentary debates the extent of her education enabled Mevissen to contribute, from the start, on equal terms with older male members of the leftwing parties.

In 1951, still the mother of two pre-school age children, she was appointed to the senate by Mayor Wilhelm Kaisen, taking on the schools and youth portfolio. The senate reflected a grand coalition agreement, but the SPD usually dominated the Bremen senate, at this point holding seven of the fourteen places in it: Mevrissen would continue as the Senator for Youth Affairs till 1975 - with "Welfare" (today "social affairs") transferred to her departmental responsibilities in 1959.

In 1967 Mevrissen was elected to a mayoral position, becoming deputy to the Senate President, fellow SPDS member Hans Koschnick. This made her the first woman to be elected deputy head of any state in West Germany. She retained the position till 1975. That a woman should hold the position gave rise to such am unconventional situation that, at her own request, her official title was always given as "Bürgermeister" - using the male form of the word in German - rather than "Bürgermeisterin", the female form that would be used without hesitation today, now that the unspoken taboo on women reaching top positions in politics has been broken (at least in Germany). There is therefore, in the German language, a pleasingly ironical internal contradiction in the title of a biography that appeared in 2011 as "Frau Bürgermeister Annemarie Mevissen" (and not as "Frau Bürgermeisterin Annemarie Mevissen" "). Background awareness of gender issues is apparent from the way that headline writers (and others) during this period liked to describe her as the "only man in the Bremen senate".

In February 1975, at her own wish, Annemarie Mevissen retired from public office. Despite being only a few months past her sixtieth birthday, she had by this time become the longest serving minister in any of West Germany's federal state governments ("Landesregierungen").

Active retirement After dropping out of politics Mevissen gained recognition locally as an artist. Her pictures featuring Bremen themes regularly appear in exhibitions at the Bremen parliament building and elsewhere. She also wrote various books about the city.

Celebration

In 1975 Mevissen received the Bremen Medal of Honour in gold On 6 May 2005 her name was added to the Schedule of Bremen's honoured citizens The children's home Annemarie Mevissen in Bremen's Martin-Buber-Straße was named in her honour. On 12 November 2014 a hitherto nameless street in Bremen-Wallanlagen has been renamed as the Bürgermeisterin-Mevissen-Weg

Output (selection)

Am Rande der Stadt Bremen: Oberneuland. Hauschild, 1979 Im Herzen der Stadt Bremen: Der Bürgerpark. Hauschild 1980 Erzählte Bilder aus der Provence. Hauschild, 1982 Erlebtes aus der Politik. Hauschild, 1984. Die Bremer Wallanlage. Hauschild, 1988. Hinter den Deichen: Die Wümmeniederung. Hauschild 1989 Die Weser – Begleitet von Sagen, Märchen und Legenden. Hauschild, 1990 Alte Parks am Rande der Stadt Bremen. Hauschild, 1992 Vor den Toren der Stadt Bremen – das Oldenburger Land. Hauschild, 1993 Mit Pinsel und Zeichenstift auf Reisen in Europa. Hauschild, 1994