Wittgen, Wilhelm
Teacher, writer
Born: October 16, 1868 in Weyer
Died: January 15, 1943 in Wiesbaden

Wilhelm Wittgen was born in Weyer in the Oberlahn district as the son of the farmer Georg Wittgen. After attending elementary school in Weyer, Wittgen transferred to the preparatory school and then to the teacher training college in Usingen, which he completed in 1889 by passing his first teacher's examination.

After his military service, Wilhelm Wittgen took up a position as a teacher at the elementary school in Heringen in the district of Limburg. Here he passed his second teacher's examination.

In 1893, Wittgen moved to the elementary school in Holzappel in the Palatinate. In 1898, he finally applied for a transfer to Wiesbaden, where his brother Philipp was already working as a teacher.590 Wilhelm Wittgen was given a position at the elementary school on Lehrstraße, where he was appointed vice principal on January 1, 1923.
was appointed vice principal. He held this position until his retirement in 1930.

In addition to his work as a primary school teacher, Wittgen was also an author and publicist. He published a large number of stories about the past and present of Nassau. His writings appeared in various regional newspapers, among others. The texts, which always focused on his homeland, had nationalistic undertones,
anti-Semitic tendencies.

From 1901, Wittgen took over the editorship of the "Nassauischer Allgemeiner Landeskalender" and, after the death of Wiesbaden city archive director Christian Spielmann, also took over the publication of the magazine "Nassovia".

Wittgen welcomed the Nazi movement and Hitler's "seizure of power". He joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933. From 1938, he was also a member of the Reichsschrifttumskammer. The retired teacher also became a member of the Nazi Teachers' Association.

A positive attitude towards National Socialism was also reflected in his publishing activities. At its core, the annual "Nassauische Allgemeine Landeskalender" was a medium for stories and historical essays. Nevertheless, during the Nazi era, several annual issues contained editorial contributions entitled "Heil Hitler", which consisted of declarations of support for Hitler and the Nazi movement. In the 1938 issue, the article was marked with the abbreviation "W.W.". Its author Wilhelm Wittgen made the following tribute to the "Führer":

"Heil Hitler! With this greeting, the German people have for four years been paying tribute to the man who saved us from hardship and tribulation, whom God gave us in difficult days [...]. And then our Führer abolished unemployment [...]. He placed the worker in the ranks of respected people [...]. Adolf Hitler eagerly endeavored to free him from the back house and attic, to build him a home of his own, where he could enjoy his life with his wife and child in contact with his nature. [...] The German farmer is paid according to the value of his produce; he need not fear that a usurer will depress prices. [...] It will be unforgettable that he liberated the brothers on the Saar and brought them back to the heart of Mother Germania. The German soldier has been back in the Rhineland since March 1936, keeping loyal watch after universal conscription was introduced a year earlier, and no enemy will dare to attack us. Adolf Hitler has thus become the savior of the whole world, for a protective wall has been erected against the Bolshevism that threatens from the east and west. [...] It is a pleasure to live, even for us old people who grudgingly endured the disgrace, who saw how foreign nations trampled on our seeds and blasphemed the German name. [...] No one believed in such a rise. It has become the truth, and the man who accomplished it on God's behalf is Adolf Hitler. We therefore offer him our heartfelt thanks and greetings and pray to the Almighty that he may continue to be with him. Heil Hitler!"

In addition to his journalistic activities, Wittgen was also involved in the Wiesbadener Baugenossenschaft Eigenheim eGmbH, which was founded in 1903. This building association acquired building plots in Wiesbaden-Sonnenberg to create living space for civil servants, officers and merchants. This initiative developed into the
expansion of the estate, the Eigenheim district developed. Wittgen died in Wiesbaden on January 15, 1943.

By resolution of the city council on May 23, 1951, a traffic area was named after the brothers Philipp and Wilhelm Wittgen in the Sonnenberg (opens in a new tab) district.

The Historical Expert Commission appointed by the City Council in 2020 to review traffic areas, buildings and facilities named after people in the state capital of Wiesbaden recommended the contextualization of Wittgenweg due to Wittgen's memberships in several National Socialist organizations (NNSDAP, Reichsschrifttumskammer, NSLB). Due to his work as editor of the "Nassauischer Allgemeiner Landeskalender", Wittgen was responsible for several articles that glorified Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Wittgen wrote at least one of these articles himself. In doing so, he made a visible commitment to National Socialism and publicly articulated National Socialist ideology. No further activist behavior or ideological proximity to National Socialism could be proven from the available sources.