Adolf Otto (social reformer)

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Franz Georg Adolf Otto (born November 19, 1872 in Berlin ; † January 12, 1943 there ) was a German social reformer. He was a co-founder and general secretary of the German Garden City Society and chairman of the Reich Association of German Building Cooperatives, Berlin and Brandenburg districts. He is one of the most important housing and social reformers of the early 20th century.

Life

Born in Berlin-Kreuzberg into a middle-class family, he completed a commercial apprenticeship after graduating from secondary school and worked as a commercial manager in Berlin companies. He took courses at Berlin University and was influenced by ideas of social reform, including those of Franz Oppenheimer . He became friends with Bernhard Kampffmeyer and Gustav Landauer and joined the SPD and temporarily the Socialist Federation founded in 1908 . With Kampffmeyer and Robert Tautz, he founded the German Garden City Society (DGG) in 1902, to which Wilhelm Bölsche , Adolf Damaschke and Franz Oppenheimer joined a little later . Even Heinrich Albrecht , the architect Theodor Goecke , Pastor Gustav von Bodelschwingh and of urban reformers Rudolph Eberstadt belonged to the board of the DGG. Adolf Otto was first treasurer and from 1911 general secretary of the society. In 1924 he also took over the chairmanship of the Reich Association of German Building Cooperatives, Berlin and Brandenburg districts. Numerous cooperative projects have been implemented in Berlin and the surrounding area.

After the Nazis came to power, Otto was ousted. He left Germany, first moved to England and then to Paris, where he worked as a freelancer in urban planning matters and was involved in the anti-fascist Bund Neues Deutschland . His Jewish wife emigrated to the USA and then to Buenos Aires. After the occupation of France by the Wehrmacht, he was monitored by the military government and finally instructed to return to Berlin in October 1942, where at the age of 70 he was placed as a commercial clerk at the former non-profit housing company GEHAG . On the way to work, he collapsed in the S-Bahn on January 12, 1943 and died.

Otto married the teacher Jenny Rosenfeld in 1898; the marriage was divorced in 1907. In his second marriage he was married to the teacher Franziska Lachmann, a sister of Hedwig Lachmann , from 1907 .

literature

personal data
SURNAME Otto, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Otto, Franz Georg Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social reformer
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1943
Place of death Berlin