Heinrich Kuhr

Heinrich Kuhr (born June 28, 1892 in Bramhar , Meppen district ; † December 22, 1971 in Lingen (Ems) ) was a hiring man , settler, association official and politician ( MdL Lower Saxony, Hanover provincial parliament).

Life

After serving in the First World War from 1914 to 1918, where he was seriously wounded, the eldest son of a hayman with many children took up a job as a hayman himself. In 1923 he acquired eleven hectares of wasteland in the Bienerfeld, today Geeste , Emsland district, which he gradually cultivated until 1927 and provided with residential and farm buildings in order to then work there as a new farmer.

Political and public work until 1945

Kuhr entered public life immediately after the end of the First World War when he became a member of the Bramhar Farmers ' Council in Bramhar, which was formed with official support . In view of the particularly violent disputes between farmers and hirers after the war, Kuhr immediately joined the “ Association of Christian hirers , small farmers and tenants” (VCH), which was set up in June 1919 . The conflicts over the employment contracts led to a considerable influx of VCH, which then decided to hire a full-time manager in early 1920.

Immediately advanced to a leading position in the VCH, Heinrich Kuhr represented the association as early as 1919 in negotiations with Berlin ministries, in which better legal protection for hirers and small tenants was to be achieved. As early as 1920, a lease protection law was passed in favor of the hirers. When VCH founder Joseph Deters from Handrup became the full-time managing director of this most influential organization in the Emsland / Bentheim region after the “Emsland Farmers' Association”, Heinrich Kuhr was elected chairman of this hiring organization. He stayed that way until the National Socialists brought this organization into line. The VCH gained a foothold in the entire Emsland , the county of Bentheim and in the Catholic regions of the Bersenbrück district . In addition to the "Emsland Farmers Association", the VCH became the most important economic and political interest organization in the Emsland / Grafschaft Bentheim area during the Weimar Republic. At the end of 1923, a good 3,000 people were organized in it.

As a representative of the small farmers, Kuhr was a member of the Lingen district council for the Catholic Center Party from 1921 to 1933 and, after the party was dissolved, remained in the district committee until 1937, to which he had been elected in 1925. After 1920, the Emsland hiring workers felt politically neglected by the Center Party due to the strong presence of large farmers in the regional management bodies. Under the leadership of VCH founder and managing director Joseph Deters, in the Reichstag elections of May 1924, they went in droves to the left Catholic splinter party Christian-Social People's Community , which became the second largest party in the Emsland.

An agreement between the hiring workers' organization and the center party ensured that its chairman Heinrich Kuhr could move into the Hanoverian provincial parliament as a member of the Hanoverian provincial parliament from 1925 to 1933 . At the same time, he became a member of the "Emsland" center association, the party's leadership body for the Emsland / Grafschaft Bentheim region, and its delegate at the Nazi party rally in Cologne in 1928. Kuhr's great importance in binding the numerous hirers, small farmers and the Emsland workers to the Center Party This was also reflected in the fact that he was a member of the board of the Prussian Center Party from 1930 to 1933.

As a sought-after speaker at the center's assembly, he appeared at numerous party rallies in the region and resolutely fought against communism and National Socialism. From 1926 to 1933, that is for the entire period of its existence as an independent association, he headed the VCH's very successful settlement cooperative "Emsland".

In 1927 the hiring workers and small farmers in the Aschendorf district elected Heinrich Kuhr to the Hanover Chamber of Agriculture . The settler Kuhr was a friend of the later Federal President Heinrich Lübke (1894–1972). Lübke owed him the position of chairman of the “Reich Association of Small and Medium-Sized Agricultural Enterprises”, whose founders in 1922 included the VCH and the allied “Northwest German Employees' Association” from the Osnabrück region. As a representative of the VCH, the Biener belonged to the Reich Executive Committee of the German Peasantry in Berlin from 1927 to 1933, in which in 1927 the “ Reich Association of Small and Medium-Sized Farms ” joined forces with other democratically oriented agricultural organizations from across the Reich.

Heinrich Kuhr's main work in 1932 was the purchase of the Geeste estate for the “Emsland” settlement cooperative. The village of Osterbrock was created there . The “Association of Christian Wage Employees” remained loyal to the Weimar Republic and the Center Party until the National Socialists came to power. National Socialist attempts at infiltration did not find any approval in his ranks. Heinrich Kuhr was also involved in the “ People's Association for Catholic Germany ”. Due to his commitment and his political position, he was elected to the Reich Executive Committee of this association in December 1928, which was strongly represented in the Emsland.

In the spring of 1933, the National Socialist efforts to bring things into line finally resulted in a search of his private house by the Gestapo and the VCH business premises in Lingen by the SA. He had to give up his position as chairman of the association due to strong Nazi pressure and the VCH was dissolved.

Political and public activity after 1945

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the British occupation authorities appointed him to the Lingen district assembly and the district state assembly for the administrative district of Osnabrück. There the Heuerleut representative was chairman of the Committee on Food, Agriculture and Agricultural Settlements. Kuhr was one of the founders of the CDU in the Lingen district. However, only part of the hiring workers followed him, many of whom were loyal to the Center Party. The Lingen district remained a stronghold of the center until well into the 1950s. As one of the first CDU members in the district, Heinrich Kuhr sat from 1945 to 1948 and from 1954 to 1964, initially as an appointed and later as an elected or succeeded member of the Lingen district assembly. Kuhr also represented the Lingen-Bersenbrück constituency from 1955 to 1959 in the 3rd Lower Saxony State Parliament. With the decline of the center, many hiring families did not change politically to the SPD, which made various efforts to win them over, but to the CDU, to which Kuhr's position in 1955 made a significant contribution. Kuhr also held numerous offices in the CDU. In addition, since 1947 he was the deputy chairman of the " Association of the Emsland Country People ". In addition, Kuhr was involved in his parish, for example in the church council.

Honors

Due to his services to the modernization and cultivation of the Emsland, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class on June 18, 1962 . He also became an honorary citizen of Osterbrocker.

literature

• Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996, pp. 223–224.
• Walter Bien: The trainee system in Emsland and its termination after the Second World War using the example of the municipality of Stavern. In: JbEHB Vol. 41/1995, Sögel 1994, pp. 55-79.
• The CDU Osnabrück-Emsland from its foundation to spring 1962. For the district party conference on March 17, 1962 in Osnabrück. Published by the CDU district association Osnabrück-Emsland, Osnabrück 1962, in particular pp. 11, 16, 32.
• Werner Fritsch: German peasantry (DBs) 1927–1933. In: Dieter Fricke (Ed.), Lexicon on the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany 1789–1945. Vol. 1, Leipzig / Cologne 1983, pp. 570-573.
• Josef Grave: hiring people - West-East settlers - return migrants. In the footsteps of Emsland families in Western Pomerania and Eastern Brandenburg. In: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbund, Vol. 41/1995, Sögel 1994, pp. 330–342.
• Handbook of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. III. Electoral term. As of October 1, 1955. Published by the administration of the Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1956, p. 308.
• Christof Haverkamp: The development of the Emsland in the 20th century as an example of state regional economic development. Edited by the Emsland landscape (= Emsland / Bentheim. Contributions to the story, Vol. 7), Sögel 1991, pp. 42, 99, 301, 302.
• Christof Haverkamp: The labor movement in the 20th century in the Osnabrück administrative district. In: Emsländische Geschichte Vol. 6. Ed. By the Study Society for Emsländische Regionalgeschichte, Dohren 1997, pp. 89–107.
• Helmut Lensing: The National Socialist conformity of agriculture in Emsland and the county of Bentheim. In: Emsländische Geschichte Vol. 4. Ed. By the Study Society for Emsländische Regionalgeschichte, Bremen 1994, pp. 43–123.
• Helmut Lensing: The rural people in need movement of 1928 in Emsland. In: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbund, vol. 40/1994, Sögel 1993, pp. 44–63.
• Helmut Lensing: Art. Kuhr, Heinrich. In: Emsländische Geschichte Vol. 6. Ed. By the Study Society for Emsländische Regionalgeschichte, Dohren 1997, pp. 238–245 (with a detailed curriculum vitae and catalog raisonné).
• Helmut Lensing: The “Association of Christian Wage Employees” 1919 to 1933 - An important interest organization of rural lower classes in the north-west of Germany. In: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbund vol. 53/2007, Sögel 2006, pp. 45–90.
• Martin Löning: The implementation of National Socialist rule in the Emsland (1933-1935). In: Emsland / Bentheim. Contributions to the history of Vol. 12. Ed. Of the Emsland landscape for the districts of Emsland and Grafschaft Bentheim, Sögel 1996, pp. 7–353.
• Rudolf Morsey : Heinrich Lübke. A political biography . Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich 1996, p. 39.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Office of the Federal President