Heinrich Hellwege

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 when he joined the family business for six years. During World War II, he served with the Luftwaffe. After the war, Hellwege 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. 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). When the DP started to fade away, Hellwege joined the Christian Democratic Union (1961–79) without ever being a candidate for that party.