Margarethe Nimsch

Margarethe Nimsch (born 19 January 1940 in Lippe) is a Hessian politician (Die Grünen). She was Frankfurt am Main’s councillor for women and health from 1989 to 1995 and Hessian State Minister for the Environment, Energy, Youth, Family and Health from 1995 to 1998.

Life and education

Margarethe Nimsch completed an agricultural apprenticeship and then worked as a secretary and flight attendant. She lived in Frankfurt am Main from 1963. After her husband died in a plane crash, she obtained her Abitur through a nontraditional route and then studied law at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. She later worked as a lawyer and, in 1977, founded Frankfurt’s first all-women law firm. She is widowed and has one son.

Municipal political work in Frankfurt

Margarethe Nimsch (first from left) at the women’s city discussion on 28 February 1991
Photo: Ursula Hillmann

In the 1985 local elections in Hesse, she was elected to Frankfurt am Main’s city council as an independent representative of the autonomous women’s movement on the Greens’ list (she joined the party in 1993). She was re-elected in 1989.

Frankfurt’s first red-green coalition elected Nimsch to the Frankfurt city executive as councillor for women and health in June 1989.¹ Her office manager during the first year was Dörthe Jung.² Nimsch held the office for six years.

At the municipal level, Nimsch worked to improve women’s living and working conditions in various areas: by promoting women and gender equality in labour market and social policy, urban planning and design, public transport, childcare, the prevention of sexual violence, and questions of safety.³ The councillor held a series of public “women’s city discussions” on these topics.⁴⁵

In 1994, Nimsch presented the Gemeinnützige Frankfurter Frauenbeschäftigungsgesellschaft mbH (GFFB) to the public. Funded with public money, the GFFB was initially intended primarily to help women who had been unemployed for a long time.⁶⁷ The municipal counselling and educational institution, now active both regionally and beyond the region, offers training and continuing education programmes that prepare women and men alike for the labour market.⁸

Nimsch attracted attention through her drug policy. In particular, establishing supervised drug consumption rooms broke new ground and proved polarising. The so-called Frankfurt approach to drug policy, initiated by the health department in the 1990s, became a model for municipalities in Germany and abroad.⁹¹⁰¹¹

On 13 March 1995, Nimsch failed to win re-election because of opposing votes from within her own political camp.¹² This electoral defeat led to the end of the red-green coalition in the city parliament (the Greens had terminated the coalition on 15 March 1995) and to a new mayoral election, in which Andreas von Schoeler (SPD) lost to Petra Roth (CDU). After Nimsch’s defeat, responsibility for women’s affairs was attached to the department of law, sport and housing, led until 2001 by Sylvia Schenk (SPD).¹³

Hessian State Minister

In 1995, Nimsch succeeded Iris Blaul. In Eichel’s second cabinet, she served as Minister for the Environment, Energy, Youth, Family and Health from 10 October 1995 until her resignation on 24 March 1998.

Her resignation followed allegations that she had awarded contracts worth around DM 500,000 for a youth training project to an acquaintance and fellow party member without a tender process. The opposition and parts of the media described this as “Cousinenwirtschaft” (cronyism). Margarethe Nimsch disputed the allegation that tenders had been omitted, but resigned after support from her own parliamentary group failed to materialise. In 1998, an investigation by the State Court of Audit found no contracts awarded without a required tender, although in some cases the principles of economy and efficiency had not been observed. Priska Hinz succeeded her as minister.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

Publications

Nimsch, Margarethe (ed.) (1993): Heroin auf Krankenschein? Frankfurt/Basel: Stroemfeld, ISBN 978-3-86109-114-1.
Nimsch, Margarethe (ed.) (1994): Im Rausch der Zeit: 1200 Jahre Drogen in Frankfurt am Main. Exhibition catalogue. Gasche, Christian/Zielonka, Christoph (text). Frankfurt/M.: Dezernat für Frauen und Gesundheit, Drogenreferat.

External links

Literature by and about Margarethe Nimsch in the German National Library catalogue
Margarethe Nimsch in the Munzinger Archive

Machine translation: This article was translated automatically from the German original.

1
Harting, Mechthild (2014): „Der Wind weht den Frauen in die Segel“. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Artikel vom 28.11. Online unter: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/frauenreferat-in-frankfurt-besteht-seit-25-jahren-13286751.html (Zugriff am 19.07.2021). ↩︎
2
Willführ, Corinna (2011): Ohne Aufbruch keine Veränderung. Ob als Studentin oder Unternehmensberaterin: Dörthe Jung setzt sich seit vier Jahrzehnten für Geschlechterdemokratie ein. In: frankfurt.de. Online unter: https://frankfurt.de/service-und-rathaus/verwaltung/aemter-und-institutionen/frauenreferat/tony-sender-preis/preistraegerin-2011 (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
3
Frauenreferat der Stadt Frankfurt am Main (1990): Prostitution als Dienstleistungsbranche und Wirtschaftsfaktor in Frankfurt. Öffentliche Anhörung, vom 27.09. Online unter: https://frankfurt.de/service-und-rathaus/verwaltung/publikationen/frauenreferat/dokumentation-prostitution-als-dienstleistungsbranche-und-wirtschaftsfaktor-in-frankfurt (Zugriff am 11.08.2021). ↩︎
4
Jergas, Karin (1989): Männer planen für Männer. In: Die Zeit, Artikel vom 12.12. Online unter: https://www.zeit.de/1989/52/maenner-planen-fuer-maenner (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
5
Jung, Dörthe (2017): Wie die Frauenbewegung Frankfurt bewegte. Aufbruch und Rebellion: Die neue Frauenbewegung in Frankfurt 1968–1990. Vortrag im Deutschen Architekturmuseum Frankfurt am Main. In: Vortragsreihe „STADTplus. Die Stadt und der Feminismus“ sowie der Ausstellung „Frau Architekt“, 04.10. Online unter: http://www.doerthejung-consult.com/WEB/content/texte/Doerthe%20Jung%20im%20 Deutschen%20Architekturmuseum%202017.pdf (Zugriff am 09.12.2019). ↩︎
6
Institut für Stadtgeschichte (Hg.) (o. J.): 28. Juli 1994. In: Stadtchronik. Online unter: https://www.stadtgeschichte-ffm.de/de/info-und-service/frankfurter-geschichte/stadtchronik/1994 (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
7
o. A. (1994): „Arbeit für 100 Frauen“ Beschäftigungsgesellschaft gegründet. In: Rhein-Main-Zeitung, Artikel vom 01.06. ↩︎
8
Gemeinnützige Frankfurter Frauen-Beschäftigungsgesellschaft (o. J.): Wir über uns. In: Webseite der GFFB. Online unter: https://www.gffb.de/wir-ueber-uns.html (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
9
Kleine-Brockhoff, Thomas (1995): Der Zweikampf. In: Die Zeit, Artikel vom 31.03. Online unter: https://www.zeit.de/1995/14/Der_Zweikampf (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
10
Drogenreferat der Stadt Frankfurt (o. J.): Der Frankfurter Weg in der Drogenpolitik. In: frankfurt.de. Online unter: https://frankfurt.de/service-und-rathaus/verwaltung/aemter-und-institutionen/drogenreferat/der-frankfurter-weg-in-der-drogenpolitik (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
11
o. A. (2015): Delegationen aus der ganzen Welt informierten sich über den “Frankfurter Weg”. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Artikel vom 16.11. Online unter: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/drogen-in-frankfurt-der-frankfurter-weg-ist-gefaehrdet-1.2739250-2 (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
12
o. A. (1995): Reine Seilschaften. In: Der Spiegel, Artikel vom 19.03. Online unter: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/reine-seilschaften-a-9d7fe77b-0002-0001-0000-000009158611?context=issue (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
13
Lorenc, Anne (2001): Wenn sich die Frauenfrage in allen Ämtern stellt – „Gender Mainstreaming“ heißt das neue Zauberwort der Frauenpolitik. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. Artikel vom 07.02. ↩︎
14
Biermann, Michael (1999): Hessens Umweltministerium hatte viele Köpfe und Zuschnitte. In: Allgemeine Zeitung, Artikel vom 27.02. ↩︎
15
Klingelschmitt, Klaus-Peter (1998): Grüne Ministerin tritt ab. In: die tageszeitung, Artikel vom 23.02. Online unter: https://taz.de/!1357442/ (Zugriff am 12.08.2021). ↩︎
16
o. A. (1998): Auftragsvergabe durch Blaul und Nimsch gerügt. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Artikel vom 06.08., S. 35, Nr. 180. ↩︎

Politician

Empfohlene Zitierweise

: Margarethe Nimsch. In: Equalpedia.

Online unter:

https://www.equalpedia.org/en/margarethe-nimsch-2/

(Zugriff am 26. September 2026).

Erstellt am: 22. September 2026
Zuletzt bearbeitet am: 24. September 2026
Biographies, Law, Politics
Politician