Wilhelm Hoegner

Wilhelm Hoegner
Minister of Justice of Bavaria
In office 28 September 1945 – 20 September 1947
Preceded by	Hans Ehard
Succeeded by	Josef Müller
Personal details
Born	(1887-09-23)23 September 1887 Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Died	5 March 1980(1980-03-05) (aged 92) Munich, Bavaria, West Germany
Political party	Social Democratic Party
Spouse	Anna Woock ​ (m. 1918)​
Children	2
Alma mater	University of Erlangen–Nuremberg
Occupation	Lawyer

Wilhelm Johann Harald Hoegner (23 September 1887 – 5 March 1980) was the second Bavarian minister-president after World War II (1945–1946 and 1954–1957), and the father of the Bavarian constitution. He has been the only Social Democrat to hold this office since 1920.

Wilhelm Hoegner was born in

. In 1919 he became a member of the SPD. He married Anna Woock in 1918, with whom he had two children.

Interwar politics and exile

From 1924 to 1930, Hoegner was a Social Democratic member of the

, where he worked as a freelance writer. He was in contact there with other German refugees from the Nazis and worked with them in an organisation called Demokratisches Deutschland, aimed against the Nazis.

Postwar politics

Upon his return to Bavaria in June 1945, he served at the court in Munich. He became minister-president of Bavaria from 1945 to 1946, after the sudden dismissal of

Christian Social Union

(CSU), he opposed this move and temporarily lost influence within the SPD, resigning from his ministerial post.

From 1946 to 1970, he was again a member of the Bavarian Landtag (parliament), leading the SPD faction there from 1958 to 1962. He held the post of Minister of the Interior from 1950 to 1954, when Bavaria was ruled by a CSU-SPD coalition. During this time, he devoted a great deal of effort towards the reunification of the Palatinate with the rest of Bavaria, but ultimately failed, as only 7.6 percent of all eligible voters in the Palatinate voted for reunification.^[3]

He became minister-president of Bavaria for a second time in 1954, when he led a four-party grand coalition government until 1957. The coalition fell apart before the end of its term after the

and, as of 2018, Wilhelm Hoegner is still the last non-CSU minister-president of Bavaria.

He was also a member of the German Bundestag from 1961 to 1962.

While a social democrat, Hoegner was not a doctrinaire socialist, and he always preferred a common-sense approach to politics and the economy, rather than radical theories. He considered being a social democrat to be wholly compatible with Christian ethics and values—an important factor in the traditionally conservative and Catholic-dominated state of Bavaria.^[4]

Hoegner died, aged 92, almost blind but mentally still in full capacity, on 5 March 1980 in Munich.^[5]

• Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1953)
• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1956)
• Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver with Sash for Services to the Republic of Austria (1957)^[6]
• Honorary doctorate at the
  University of Munich

• Die verratene Republik (in German), by Wilhelm Hoegner, Munich, 1979.
• Der Volksbetrug der Nationalsozialisten (in German), by Wilhelm Hoegner
• Der Schwierige Außenseiter: Erinnerungen eines Abgeordneten, Emigranten und Ministerpräsidenten (in German), by Wilhelm Hoegner, Munich, publisher: Isar Verlag, 1959

• List of minister-presidents of Bavaria
• Walter Kolbenhoff

• Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg - Boisls bayrische Biography - Wilhelm Hoegner pp. 356–357 (in German)
• Institut für Zeitgeschichte - Wilhelm Hoegner (in German)
• Wilhelm Hoeger biography Official Bavarian government website (in German)

• Newspaper clippings about Wilhelm Hoegner in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Political offices
Preceded by Fritz Schäffer	Minister-President of Bavaria 1945 – 1946	Succeeded by Hans Ehard
Preceded by Hans Ehard	Minister-President of Bavaria 1954 – 1957	Succeeded by Hanns Seidel