Helene_Weber

Helene Weber (born 17 March 1881 in Elberfeld, now Wuppertal, Rhine Province, died 25 July 1962 in Bonn) was a German politician and was known as a women's rights activist. In the Weimar Republic she rose to prominence in the Catholic Centre Party. In 1945 she was among the founders of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In 1948 she was a co-founder of the CDU Women's Task Force, a precursor of the party's Women's Union, which she chaired from 1951 to 1958. Weber is one of four women who, alongside 61 men, drafted Germany's constitution, the Basic Law, in 1948-49. After initial hesitation, she closed ranks with the women delegates of the Social Democratic Party to successfully fight for the inclusion of the sentence "Men and women shall have equal rights" in Article 3 of the Basic Law. She is often cited for her anti-war statement: "The entirely male-run state is the ruin of nations" ("Der reine Männerstaat ist das Verderben der Völker").