Wilhelm Wetzel was born in Oberhausen. He studied law in Giessen and became a government councillor at the Harburg tax office in 1922. On 1 August 1931, he became a member of the NSDAP and made a career in the party. In 1933, he was promoted to Senator for Harburg-Wilhelmsburg and became head of the Office for Local Politics. In 1936, he successfully ran for the office of Lord Mayor of Lüneburg. After the Gauleitung moved to Lüneburg, he and Gauleiter Telschow formed a dual leadership from 1937 and ran the city’s affairs until the end of the war. Wetzel returned from captivity as a prisoner of war in 1951 and from then on sat on the city council for the FDP, from 1957 as parliamentary group leader. In addition to his political office, Wetzel worked as a lawyer from 1952 and continued to hold right-wing conservative views in his private life. He died in 1976.
