Wilhelm Sollmann - Overview

Overview

Wilhelm was born on April 1, 1881 in Oberlind, Saxe-Meiningen (today a part of Sonneberg, Thuringia) and grew up in Coburg, Germany. His father was in the brewery business, and his mother ran an inn. In 1897, at the age of 16, his family moved to Kalk, a suburb of Cologne. There, he began work as a business apprentice. From 1901 until 1903 he attended, as a night student, lectures at the Cologne College of Business Administration. Later in life Sollmann would play a major role, along with Konrad Adenauer, mayor of Cologne, in transforming this school (in 1919) into the University of Cologne.

He became involved in the German temperance movement, becoming a member of the International Order of Good Templars in 1903 and of the Workers' Abstinence Union ("Arbeiter Abstinentenbund") in 1906. His political career began in 1906, when he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1911, at the age of 30, he abandoned his business career and became city editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. By 1920 he was chief editor of that newspaper, a position first held by Karl Marx. He bid to become a member of the German parliament in 1914, when he was the SPD candidate for the Cologne district, but failed. In 1918 Sollmann was one of the first members of the SPD ever elected to the Cologne municipal government, and remained chairman of that fraction until 1924.