persecution as enemy aliens and arresting them. Hansen was one of those interned in June 1940 and transported to Australia where he remained till November 1941 when he was permitted to return. He spent the rest of the war in England, politically active with other exiled German socialist activists, working closely with Willi Eichler, like him the son of a postal worker. War ended formally in May 1945, but with the help of the British military Hansen was able to return to Germany in March 1945. One of the first of the political exiles to return, he made his way to Cologne, designated as part of the British occupation zone following a full invasion of Germany, and met up with fellow trades unionist Hans Böckler. During the next few years, supported by the occupying forces, he set about reconstructing the trades union structure in the historically industrial Rhineland region. At Bielefeld in 1947, at the founding congress of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB / "Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund") for the British occupation zone, Böckler was elected the organisation's first chairman while Hansen took over from him at the head of the DGB's Nordrhein-Westfalen region. He presided over the DGB in the Nordrhein-Westfalen region between 1947 and 1956, unanimously elected to the position on four successive occasions. After, until his retirement in 1969, he served of the DGB's national executive. Hansen was a secularist who believed, in the words of one Christian contemporary, that the DGB should operate as "the extended arm of the Social Democratic Party (SPD)". Between 1953 and 1957 he sat in the West German Bundestag as an SPD member representing the Nordrhein-Westfalen electoral district. References 1905 births 1972 deaths Members of the Bundestag for North Rhine-Westphalia Members of the Bundestag 1953–1957 German trade unionists German opinion journalists Exiles from Nazi Germany German resistance members Members of the Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party of Germany