Wilhelm Söllmann Papers

Friedrich Wilhelm Sollmann (1881-1951), German labor leader, journalist, and Reichminister, was born in Coburg, Germany. Exiled from Germany in 1933, Sollmann sought refuge in the United States and eventually became an American citizen, adopting William F. Sollmann as his preferred form of address. Sollmann, who is credited with the co-founding of the University of Cologne in 1919, became editor-in-chief of the Rheinische Zeitung that same year and served in this post until 1933. In 1919 he was a member of the German delegation to the Versailles Peace Treaty conference and he served as a representative to the Constitutional National Assembly at Weimar. In 1920 Sollmann was elected to the first of his eight terms in the Reichstag where he was to be a prominent member of the committee on foreign affairs. Sollmann was also the Secretary of the Interior in two cabinets under Chancellor Gustav Stresemann. Attacked and nearly beaten to death by Nazi storm troopers in 1933, Sollmann, became a German exile, and took up the editorship of the Deutsche Freiheit, a daily paper of the Saar territory. Sollmann emigrated to the United States, where he became an associate staff member of Pendle Hill, a Quaker study center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Sollmann's views on the then-current world tension showed his deep confidence that the only solution would be conciliation and mutual adjustments by the nations concerned. His final advice was: "Maintain an equilibrium, however precarious, for 50, if necessary for 100 years. The deep changes which are required in society today cannot be hurriedly accomplished. Insist that high officials of the opposing governments and responsible persons of wide influence from both sides confer constantly in private, outside the orbit of the newspapers. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate." Sollmann's career as a lecturer and advisor on Germany and international affairs commenced in 1937 and continued until the time of his death.