Paul Hegelmaier

Paul Hegelmaier around 1900

Paul Hegelmaier (born July 1, 1847 in Tübingen ; † April 27, 1912 in Stuttgart ) was a public prosecutor , Lord Mayor of Heilbronn from 1884 to 1904 and a member of the Reichstag from 1898 to 1903 . He is considered a controversial figure in Heilbronn's city history . On the one hand, important building projects go back to him, on the other hand he was temporarily relieved of his office from 1892 to 1894 due to legal disputes and doubts about his state of mind . When he left office in 1904, he recommended himself several times with the well-known Swabian greeting to Heilbronn , which he called the town of shopkeepers .

origin

Hegelmaier was born in Tübingen in 1847. He was related to the respected Heilbronn families (Richard) Rümelin , (Friedrich) Closs and (Robert) Mayer . After attending the Heilbronn grammar school , he studied law at the University of Tübingen from 1865 to 1869 . During his studies in 1865 he became a member of the Germania Tübingen fraternity . In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 he served as porter ensign and was awarded the Iron Cross . He then went to the Württemberg judicial service and became a public prosecutor in Heilbronn. Hegelmaier was married to Marie Emilie Friederike Ganzhorn (1858–1928), the daughter of the chief magistrate and poet Wilhelm Ganzhorn .

Work in Heilbronn

Elected mayor in 1884

After the surprisingly early death of Heilbronn's mayor Karl Wüst in 1884, the city ​​council had to elect a new city ​​school . One of Wüst's legacies was that "the town hall officials had achieved a freedom of action which the citizens did not like in many cases", so that the broad mass of citizens had high hopes for Hegelmaier, who was known as a "sharp public prosecutor" and "consistent lawyer". Son-in-law of the Neckarsulm chief magistrate Ganzhorn, sat. From the 36-year Hegelmaier were promised a late here Vetterleswirtschaft ( nepotism ) mentioned corruption , and he was elected on June 10, 1884 2040 output by 2723 votes against three rival candidates in the city office of mayor, appointed by the King on July 22 and sworn in on August 4th.

Hegelmaier initially fulfilled the expectations placed in him. He showed himself to be an early riser and a quick worker, who also checked the offices personally on horseback. Before his election he had promised political neutrality, but in the autumn of 1884 he stood up for the largely unknown conservative candidate for the Reichstag, Baron Joseph von Ellrichshausen , who ran against Georg Härle from Heilbronn , but was defeated in the runoff election. With his support for Ellrichshausen, Hegelmaier brought the citizens against him for the first time. Hegelmaier, who received the title of Lord Mayor on March 6, 1885, is described in the following period as a dazzling, autocratic figure in the city's history who avoided any conflicts with the municipal council and citizens. Hegelmaier, himself a lawyer, often took legal action even for minor private disputes. Local councilor Huber became one of his long-term opponents, and in 1886 he threatened him with "removal from office"; In 1886, the district government and the ministry also dealt with a disciplinary punishment imposed on him.

Scandalous baths trip 1888

In October 1887, Hegelmaier put together a municipal bathroom construction commission, which consisted of him, two local councilors, city builder Wenzel, city caretaker Füger and foreman Kraft, and which visited the bathroom facilities in Mainz, Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig and Munich in 1888 without consulting civic bodies . On the grounds that “such a facility will soon be necessary in Heilbronn”, Hegelmaier demanded to see brothels on the first day of travel . There he is said to have "conversed with prostitutes with obvious inner comfort" and in Berlin even tried to dance "in a hilarious manner" with a delighted girl, which his political opponents, including Huber, took the cause of a mud battle.

Flood of advertisements and complaints

By 1890, Hegelmaier had filed 47 criminal charges against others, and up to February 1892 he was sentenced 31 times to fines for inappropriateness, disobedience, administrative offenses, false notifications or, for example, for unauthorized riding across meadows and fields. Within three years, the Stuttgart Ministry of the Interior received around 30 complaints about Hegelmaier. In 1890, at the urging of the liberal citizens, the municipal council and citizens' committee demanded Hegelmaier's removal from office. On June 6, 1890, the ministry recognized the complaints against Hegelmaier as justified, but refused to impeach them. The district government in Ludwigsburg then initiated disciplinary proceedings against the mayor, who, however, did not even appear on August 4, 1890 for a subpoena in question, but instead covered the district government with a flood of around 80 service complaints. In the meantime there was a so-called “hospital war” in Heilbronn due to unpleasant conditions in the hospital with further lawsuits, including an insult by the nurse Anna Weiß against Hegelmaier. He employed an extra assistant in the Heilbronn town hall for his litigation matters; at the state government, several employees took care of the Hegelmaier files. On September 8, 1890, Hegelmaier from St. Moritz offered his resignation for a lifelong annual pension of 5,000 marks, but on September 10, the municipal council refused and again applied for his removal from office.

Hegelmaier and the city finances

The Kaiserstraße was broken into an avenue under Hegelmaier in 1897 and thus became a real traffic axis

During Hegelmaier's tenure from 1884 to 1904, a time of economic growth, the city of Heilbronn carried out numerous large building projects, most of which were based on the general building plan drawn up by Professor Reinhard Baumeister from 1873 and later shaped the face of the city. The industrial area, the Karlshafen, the railway line from the salt works and to the Neckarsulm train station and the Bottwartalbahn with the Südbahnhof and Lerchenberg tunnel were created. Under Hegelmaier, Heilbronn was re-channeled, connected to the remote supply of electricity from Lauffen , the Heilbronn electric tram went into operation and the first streets were electrically illuminated. In addition, the Kilian's Church was renovated during Hegelmaier's tenure , the town hall was rebuilt in the neo-Renaissance style, the Schweinsberg tower was built, and the public baths on Wollhausplatz and the public library in Kirchhöfle were opened.

The fact that all these construction projects drove the debt level of the city of Heilbronn from 2.2 million marks in 1884 to 7.9 million marks at the end of his term of office certainly also contributed to making Hegelmaier a controversial person. Even in the period before his impeachment, particularly expensive projects had been financed through frequent loans from the state: the monumental fountain on the station square had cost 10,000 marks, the municipal slaughterhouse completed in 1890 around 230,000 marks and the construction of the first 10,000 meters of the planned 60,000 alone Meters of public sewerage devoured around 460,000 marks by December 1891.

Impeachment in 1892/1894

In February 1892 the application for removal from office was granted and Hegelmaier was temporarily suspended from his offices on February 26th. Municipal councilors Gustav Hauck and Gustav Kiess took over the official business . The Württemberg State Minister of the Interior, von Schmid, wrote a report to the Württemberg king in which he certified Hegelmaier as having "habitual contentiousness". On September 27, 1892, the Royal Württemberg Medical College certified him after an assessment of his mental state as "typical troublemaker madness " and declared him mentally ill. However, since the Medical College had drawn up the report solely on the basis of the files, the Heilbronn regional court sent Hegelmaier in spring 1893 to the Illenau state insane asylum in Baden for observation for six weeks .

On August 10, 1893, the Heilbronn criminal chamber negotiated against Hegelmaier and Stadtpfleger Füger for false authentication. She recognized him as sane and sentenced Hegelmaier to a three-month prison term. On January 5, 1894, the judgment was overturned and the criminal case was handed over to the Hall District Court, where Hegelmaier and Füger were acquitted on April 17.

As early as April 23, 1894, the main trial against Hegelmaier followed before the disciplinary court for corporate officials in Stuttgart unreasonable and intolerable behavior. The process went into particular again on the brothel visits of the bath trip of 1888. Hegelmaier's opponents brought in Wilhelmine Bertsch-Burkert, a former Heilbronn prostitute, as a witness, with whom Hegelmaier is said to have associated five times before banning her from the city. After a three-week trial, the Stuttgart Disciplinary Court sentenced Hegelmaier to a small fine of 100 marks on May 21. The reasons for the judgment stated that "neither side nor in any case could he be accused of behavior that was harmful to the good of the city". He was then reinstated in office on May 23, 1894.

Hegelmaier's return to office led, among other things, to the resignation of Paul Mayer, Robert Mayer's son and Hegelmaier 's brother-in-law, as head of the Heilbronn hospital. Mayer and the nurse Anna Weiß were involved in some of the many lawsuits against Hegelmeier for defamation. Hegelmaier then appointed the surgeon Gustav Mandry as Mayer's successor. The Heilbronn hospital thus became the third hospital in Württemberg under specialist management.

A highlight of his tenure: art and trade exhibition in Heilbronn in 1897

Exhibition postcard with Paul Hegelmaier

Return to office

At the first parish council meeting after his return to office, the majority of council members announced on May 31, 1894 to seek their dismissal. Hegelmaier then offered his own resignation on June 2 in return for a pension. After the Oberamt rejected the municipal council's request for dismissal on June 8, Hegelmaier withdrew his offer of resignation on June 14. In February 1895 he ran for the state parliament, but was narrowly defeated in the runoff election by the liberal opposing candidate Carl Betz .

In 1897, with the breakthrough of Kramstraße ( Kaiserstraße ) to Allee , the expansion of Oststraße, the construction of the Bottwarbahn with Lerchenberg tunnel and the construction of the Heilbronn tram, expensive projects were faced again, which increased the city's debt level to 4.6 million marks. As early as 1898, another loan from the state in the amount of two million marks was necessary, and in 1901 another loan of three million. The money received was quickly consumed by the immense construction projects.

One of the highlights of Hegelmaier's tenure in Heilbronn was the art and trade exhibition of 1897, the preparations for which began in 1895 and which was intended to underline the importance of Heilbronn as the largest industrial city in Württemberg after Stuttgart. As a representative of the city and operator of its change, Hegelmaier opened tram operations in a modernized cityscape during the exhibition in the summer of 1897 and received prominent guests such as the Württemberg royal couple.

Hegelmaier also became chairman of the new trade court on November 1, 1897. From late summer 1898 he was in charge of the committee for the erection of the Bismarck monument . On November 11, 1899, a cargo ship named after him was launched in the Siebert shipyard.

Reichstag election 1898

Tumult on the Heilbronn market square after the Reichstag elections on June 24, 1898

In 1898 the national liberal Hegelmaier ran for the farmers' union in the Reichstag election in the Württemberg 3 constituency ( Heilbronn , Besigheim , Brackenheim , Neckarsulm ) ; there was a runoff election against the "red Kittler" Gustav Kittler , who in 1886 had become the first social democratic member of a city parliament in Württemberg. Hegelmaier won the election. On the night of June 25, 1898, riots broke out. After the victory celebration in Harmonie , Hegelmaier supporters moved to the market square, where the Social Democrats had gathered and the first scuffles soon began. Hegelmaier tried to have the market square cleared with water sprays, but a street battle developed in the course of which paving stones were also thrown. Hegelmaier himself fought in a drunken state with the mayor of Abstatt . The summoned military arrested 30 to 40 citizens, of whom 22 workers had been in custody for over four months and 13 had to serve additional months of imprisonment. After the tumult, Hegelmaier ordered a ban on meetings in public places and had the meeting place of the Heilbronn trade unions, the “Rose” restaurant, temporarily closed. In the Reichstag, Hegelmaier joined the Reich Party , but did not appear conspicuously in Berlin.

More controversy

In 1901, local councilor Betz filed a lawsuit against Hegelmaier in Heilbronn, who did not want to put the grain tariffs on the agenda of the council meeting. The lawsuit was dismissed on July 23, 1901 by the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior. On September 7, 1901, Hegelmaier once again announced his resignation in the newspaper for health reasons. On September 12, 1901, he turned the local council against him because, without its participation, he had the popular “Sunday autumns” banned for gross nonsense. After the Heilbronner Zeitung reported on his conduct of office, he filed a criminal complaint on September 28 for insult. In January 1902, the ban on Sunday autumns also preoccupied the district government, which confirmed the ban, and later also the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior. The popular events were only allowed again in limited numbers in September 1902.

On October 28, 1902, Hegelmaier ran for the Württemberg state parliament in a by -election required by the death of MP Robert Münzing , but was defeated by the social democratic candidate Wilhelm Schäffler in the runoff on November 10 . In May 1903 he announced that he would no longer run for the next Reichstag election on June 16, 1903.

On June 9, 1903, Hegelmaier and his wife celebrated their silver wedding anniversary at Lake Lucerne . The town council decided not to send a congratulations.

In autumn 1903, Hegelmaier made himself unpopular with the Handelsverein and the Harmoniegesellschaft when he wanted to close the messenger hall in the old slaughterhouse and the Harmonietheater, which was about to open, due to the risk of fire. The messenger service was finally relocated until December, and the structure of the Harmonietheater was improved. In December 1903 the insulting process against the Heilbronner Zeitung came to an end. The newspaper failed and had to pay a fine of 50 marks.

Resignation from office

Hegelmaier's farewell poem in his handwriting

After the municipal council election of December 14, 1903, on December 15, Hegelmaier asked the council for at least four months' sick leave due to severe heart disease. On December 17, 1903, he offered his immediate resignation for an annual pension of 6,000 marks. The council accepted this offer unanimously, unlike the previous ones of the same kind. The last municipal council and citizens' committee meeting under Hegelmaier's chairmanship took place on December 29, 1903.

When he left, Hegelmaier left the following poem:

"Lick me in the A ..., you city of shopkeepers,
I'll blow my farewell march out of you today.
You will never lack foolish pranks,
but more light. Licks me in the A ...
My welcome once was almost too exuberant,
the parting may seem a bit too harsh.
This is because we knew each other too little,
but only too well now. Lick me in the A ... "

Immediately after his official resignation, Hegelmaier moved with his family to Stuttgart at the beginning of 1904 and, in a letter dated February 24, renounced his Heilbronn citizenship "in consideration of the denigrations he received after his resignation". He later revoked the resignation, but the revocation was no longer granted. The official business was temporarily taken over by Gustav Binder on January 4 , 1904, Paul Göbel was elected as his successor in February 1904 and sworn in on April 23, 1904.

In 1904, Hegelmaier demanded the payment of 8,152 marks from the city of Heilbronn, which had been withheld from him during his suspension from 1892 to 1894. The claim went to the Higher Regional Court, which awarded it to him on March 16, 1905. Hegelmaier also requested that his family coat of arms be removed from the staircase window of the Heilbronn town hall, as he no longer wanted to have any relationship with the city. Hegelmaier died in Stuttgart on April 27, 1912 and was buried two days later in the Prague cemetery there.

Appreciation

During his lifetime, the many legal disputes shaped the image of the public figure of Hegelmaier. The Wuerttemberg interior minister wrote in 1892: “Not one of the local heads of the state will take the sad precedence over Hegelmaier with regard to the number of criminal records, but none of his closest colleagues will be found with even a criminal record of this kind would have drawn. "

The trials against Hegelmaier were also taken up in the satirical magazine Der Wahre Jacob .

However, after his death, recognition began. The Heilbronner Generalanzeiger wrote in an obituary in 1912: “Judges who think justly do not deny the deceased recognition any more than those of a highly gifted, far-sighted, just man who has made himself well in his office ... Heilbronn will not forget its Lord Mayor and to keep his memory faithfully ” . Although he was seen more and more as the important urban redeveloper and creator of the later townscape, his memory was initially only sparingly cared for. As long as his former opponents were still alive, neither a street nor a bridge was named after him. In 1922 the city chronicle only mentions him in connection with trials and quarrels.

In the meantime, however, when looking at Hegelmaier, one primarily takes into account his urban planning work. The image of old Heilbronn before it was destroyed in 1944, as can be seen in photographs, is largely determined by buildings, traffic routes and means of transport from around 1900 that were created under Hegelmaier.

It was not until 1968 that Hegelmaierstrasse in the elegant Heilbronn residential area of ​​Rampachertal was named after Paul Hegelmaier. His predecessor Karl Wüst and his successor Paul Göbel had been honored with street names decades earlier, and even in 1968 there was still a slight protest against this name in the local council. A cabaret group from Heilbronn, founded in 1996, is called Die Hegelmaiers, based on Paul Hegelmaier and his disparaging remarks about the "city of shopkeepers" .

literature

• Siegfried Schilling: Paul Hegelmaier - Controversial Mayor of Heilbronn . In: Heilbronn - they made history. Twelve portraits from the life and work of famous Heilbronn residents . Heilbronn printing and publishing house, Heilbronn 1977 ( series on Heilbronn. Book 7), DNB 780156021 , pp. 71–79

References and comments

1. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I Politicians, Part 2: F – H. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0809-X , p. 273.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Quote from the Hegelmaier report from Interior Minister Schmid to the King of Württemberg from February 1892, quoted from Schilling (see literature)
3. ^ Hegelmaier was next to Dean Weitbrecht chairman of a board of trustees for the procurement of the funds needed for the neo-Gothic renovation.
4. ^ Wilhelm Steinhilber : Gustav Mandry and his time , in Schwaben and Franken 4, Heilbronn 1963, p. 2/3.
5. ↑ Susanne Stickel-Pieper (arrangement): Trau! Look! Whom? Documents on the history of the labor movement in the Heilbronn / Neckarsulm area 1844–1949 . Distel-Verlag, Heilbronn 1994, ISBN 3-929348-09-8 , in the book ISBN 3-923348-09-8 . Facsimile of the ban on assembly p. 128, memoirs by Gustav Kittler p. 181 ff.
6. ^ Friedrich Dürr: Chronicle of the city of Heilbronn . Volume 2: 1896-1921. Unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1922. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1986 (Publications of the Heilbronn City Archives, 28), ISBN 3-928990-13-6 . P. 55 (Hegelmaier is defeated in the 1902 state election) and p. 61 (Hegelmaier no longer runs in the 1903 Reichstag election)
7. ↑ Uwe Jacobi : Heilbronn as it was . Droste, Düsseldorf 1987, p. 83, spelling adapted from the printed version in Hegelmaier's handwriting, see web links
8. ↑ For an illustration of the grave, see Heilbronn City Archives , Contemporary History Collection, signature ZS-10166, entry on Paul Hegelmaier in the HEUSS database (accessed on December 28, 2012)
9. ↑ U. a. No. 9, 1892 and No. 16, 1899
10. ^ Gerhard Schwinghammer and Reiner Makowski: The Heilbronner street names . Edited by the city of Heilbronn. 1st edition. Silberburg-Verlag , Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-87407-677-6 , pp. 99-100
11. ↑ Heilbronn City Archives, Contemporary History Collection, signature ZS-5293, entry on Die Hegelmaiers in the HEUSS database (accessed on December 28, 2012)

Web links

Commons : Paul Hegelmaier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hegelmaier's farewell to the Heilbronn city archive
• Paul Hegelmaier in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Paul Hegelmaier's biography . In: Heinrich Best : database of the members of the Reichstag of the Empire 1867/71 to 1918 (Biorab - Kaiserreich)

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 20, 2007 .