Max Michel (politician)

Max Michel (born October 22, 1888 in Frankfurt am Main , † September 11, 1941 in New York City ) was a German lawyer and economist. From October 1927 to March 1933 he was head of culture for the city of Frankfurt. Forced to resign when the National Socialists came to power and persecuted as a Jew, he emigrated to the USA in November 1938.

Life

Michel came from a Jewish family. He attended the philanthropist and model school . From 1906 to 1909 he studied law and economics at the Universities of Lausanne, Munich, Berlin and Marburg. In 1910 he received his doctorate. After a time as a court assessor at the Frankfurt am Main regional court , he joined the city administration in 1914. He had been a member of the SPD and a city councilor since 1925 . The city council elected him in October 1927 to the full-time city council under Lord Mayor Ludwig Landmann with responsibility for the culture, personnel and auditing office.

As head of the cultural department, he was responsible, among other things, for the organization of the Goethe year 1932. Despite adverse financial circumstances during the global economic crisis , the Goethe year was a complete success for the city of Frankfurt. Michel received awards from the city of Frankfurt, the Free German Hochstift , the Goethe Society and the Reich government. Together with the acting director Alwin Kronacher he founded the Römerberg Festival . Michel was a lecturer in labor law and social policy at the Frankfurt University, which, with his support, was named Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main in the Goethe year .

On March 13, 1933, one day after the local elections, in which the NSDAP had become the strongest party in Frankfurt with 47.9 percent of the vote, Michel was dismissed along with other SPD politicians. From 1936 to 1938 he worked as a consultant at the Aid Association of German Jews in Berlin. In October 1938 he emigrated to the USA.

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 2: Social politicians in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism 1919 to 1945. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 , S. # ( Online , PDF; 3.9 MB).
• Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 , p. 53 f .

Web links

• Michel, Max Friedrich. Hessian biography. (As of February 26, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Michel, Max in the Frankfurt Personal Lexicon