Schwarzhaupt, Elisabeth

Lawyer, Federal Minister of Health

Born: 07.01.1901 in Frankfurt am Main

died: 29.10.1986 in Frankfurt am Main

Schwarzhaupt studied law in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, became a court assessor at the "Municipal Legal Information Office for Women" in Frankfurt and was actively involved in the German People's Party (DVP) from 1931/32. With her text "What can German women expect from National Socialism?" (1932), she protested against the misogynistic Nazi world view. After 1933, she lost her position as a judge in Dortmund, returned to Frankfurt and completed her doctorate in 1935.

In 1934-36, she worked in Berlin as a legal assistant at the "Reichsbund der Kapital- und Kleinrentner" (Reich Association of Capital and Small Pensioners), moved to the office of the German Protestant Church (DEK) as a "legal assistant" and joined the Bund Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Juristen (from 1936 "NS-Rechtswahrerbund") in 1934 and the NS-Volkswohlfahrt in 1935. In Berlin, she made a remarkable career in the church chancellery: she was the first woman ever to be appointed consistorial councillor in April 1939 and senior consistorial councillor in April 1944. After the end of the war, she began to rebuild the Protestant women's associations in Frankfurt.

In 1953, she ran for a direct mandate for the CDU in the Wiesbaden constituency in the Bundestag election, but was unable to prevail against Victor-Emanuel Preusker (FDP), which is why she eventually entered the Bundestag via the Hesse state list. In 1957, she succeeded in winning a direct mandate in Wiesbaden. She then entered the 4th and 5th Bundestag (1961 and 1965) again via the state list.

On November 14, 1961, Schwarzhaupt was the first woman to be appointed a minister. She took over the health portfolio, which she held until the end of the Erhard government in 1966. She remained in the Bundestag as an "ordinary member of parliament" until 1969.

She was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1966 and the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal in 1976.