Friedrich Ablass

Friedrich Robert Heinrich Ablass (born May 22, 1895 in Mulhouse in Alsace ; † July 3, 1949 in Hamburg-Lemsahl-Mellingstedt ) was a German politician ( DDP , FDP ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life and work

Ablass, the nephew of the liberal member of the Reichstag, Bruno Ablaß , studied law after graduating from high school and settled as a lawyer in Hamburg after completing his doctorate. After his house on the Uhlenhorst was destroyed in a bomb attack in July 1943, he temporarily moved with his family (wife and daughter) to his relatives in Hirschberg in Silesia, but returned to Hamburg during the war. He died in mid-1949 after a long illness.

Party and resistance

During the German Empire, Ablass belonged to the United Liberals in Hamburg, a left-wing liberal group. With this he came to the DDP in 1918 and from 1930 to the German State Party that had emerged from it . He was chairman of the district associations Hohenfelde and Freihafen, in the latter the members dealing with the port industry met, and in the 1930s also belonged to the state executive committee of the state party in Hamburg. He was also editor-in-chief of the party newspaper Der Demokratie an der Wasserkante . Since around 1930 he was considered the leading head of the left wing of the party in the Hanseatic city.

When State Party Senator Walter Matthaei remained in office in the newly formed Senate of NSDAP Mayor Carl Vincent Krogmann , Ablass called on the Reich Chairman of the State Party, Hermann Dietrich, on March 9, 1933, to distance himself from Matthaei. 

In the time of National Socialism organized drain a bourgeois-liberal resistance group in Hamburg, under the name Q group was active. In addition to Ablass u. a. also Alfred Johann Levy , Harald Abatz , Walter Jacobsen , Paul Heile , Richard Archilles , Max Dibbern , Martin Plat , Carl Stephan , Bruno Schmachtel and Eduard Sussmann . The group met as a gentlemen's group in cafes in Hamburg and, in addition to exchanging information, provided concrete help for threatened and arrested friends. At the end of 1933 the “Verein der Hafenfreunde eV” was formally founded in order to better camouflage the group. Other liberal citizens such as Willy Max Rademacher , Cäsar Oehding and Walter Brosius joined this association, and later also Eduard Wilkening . Also in 1933, a cabaret bar was created with the bronze cellar in Neustadt , which until 1943 served as an exchange for opponents of the regime. There was contact to the Robinsohn-Strassmann group through Jacobsen . In the 1940s, the circle was programmatically just Free Hamburg .

From this group, the Bund Free Hamburg was founded on May 5, 1945 , whose deputy chairman was Ablass. The Bund saw itself as a non-partisan grouping that wanted to participate in building a democratic Germany. As early as June 11, 1945, the military government approved the BFH and allowed it to discuss political questions in internal circles, which was not a matter of course because the Germans were still prohibited from any political activity. On August 16, 1945, at the request of Ablass, Harald Abatz and Eduard Wilkening , the general assembly of the BFH decided to found a liberal democratic party. This was finally launched on September 20, 1945 under the name of the Free Democrats Party . Indulgence was elected to the board of the new party, which would later become the Hamburg FDP regional association . In the 1946 state elections, he ran in vain in constituency 16 Harvestehude - Rotherbaum .

Remarks

1. ↑ Birth register of the StA Mulhouse, No. 1108/1895
2. ↑ Death register StA Hamburg-Bergstedt, No. 24/1949
3. ↑ The letter is in the Federal Archives in the estate of Hermann Dietrich.

literature

• Brauers, Christof: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953. Start as a bourgeois left party , Volume 3 of the studies on party criticism and party history, Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89975-569-5 .