Stöffler, Friedrich

Philologist, local politician

Born: 03.06.1894 in Wiesbaden

died: 01.01.1982 in Wiesbaden

Stöffler studied history, Romance studies, English and German studies in Munich, Frankfurt and Marburg. He dedicated his dissertation to the novels of the baroque author Andreas Heinrich Bucholtz.

After two years of teaching at the Oberrealschule in Wiesbaden and the municipal lyceum in Biebrich, Stöffler moved to the Wiesbaden district municipal association in 1921, where he was responsible for the state youth welfare office and educational institutions in the Wiesbaden administrative district (province of Hesse-Nassau). As a Catholic with close political ties to the Center, Stöffler was forced into retirement in 1934. He subsequently taught at various private schools. After the end of the war, he held a teaching position in Koblenz.

In 1947, he rejoined the Wiesbaden local government to head the State Welfare Association (now the State Social Welfare Office), the Institution Department and finally the Department for Welfare Education again. When the State Welfare Association of Hesse was founded in 1953 as a new municipal association with social responsibilities for the whole of Hesse, the association's assembly elected him deputy state director. Until the end of his term of office in 1959, Stöffler was committed to building up the new association and its more than 50 social institutions.

It is also thanks to Stöffler, who was a frequent publicist, that the history of the murder of the sick under National Socialism became known in Hesse relatively early on. While still in the service of the Wiesbaden municipal association, he had a relief erected in the spring of 1952 to commemorate the victims of "euthanasia" in Hadamar.

On his 40th anniversary of service, Stöffler received the Freiherr-vom-Stein plaque from the state of Hesse; on the occasion of his retirement in 1959, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.