Adolf Wermuth

Adolf Wermuth (1893)

Adolf Wermuth (born March 23, 1855 in Hanover ; † October 11, 1927 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer , civil servant, politician and mayor of Berlin. Wermuth made Berlin a cosmopolitan city through the founding of Greater Berlin in 1920. It made the German capital the third largest city in terms of population and the second largest city in terms of area.

Life and work

Wermuth was born the son of the police director Karl Wermuth into a middle-class family with a monarchist outlook. After graduating from high school Andreanum in Hildesheim , he began studying law at the universities of Leipzig , Heidelberg and Göttingen , which he completed with two state examinations and a doctorate in Dr. jur. finished. He then entered the Prussian civil service as a government assessor, initially working as a district judge in Peine and later working in Opole . In 1883 he moved to the Reich Office of the Interior . There he participated in the establishment of the Reich Weather Service and, after the conclusion of the Helgoland-Sansibar Treaty in 1890/91, acted as an interim administrator for the island of Helgoland . In addition, in the role of Reich Commissioner , he took over the management of the German contributions to the world exhibitions in Melbourne ( Centennial Exhibition of Melbourne , 1888) and Chicago ( World Columbian Exposition , 1893). In 1908 he was appointed to the Real Secret Council .

MP

Wermuth was a member of the Prussian mansion from 1912 to 1918 .

Public offices

Wermuth had been Undersecretary of State in the Reich Treasury from 1904 and was appointed State Secretary in the government of the German Empire led by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg on July 14, 1909 . After his demand for an increase in inheritance tax was rejected by the Reich Chancellor, he announced his resignation on March 15, 1912 and left the Reich government a day later.

In May 1912, Wermuth was elected Lord Mayor of Berlin by the city council to succeed Martin Kirschner . He held this office from September 1, 1912 to November 25, 1920, and from October 1920 as Lord Mayor of the greater Berlin community, which he himself had largely restructured . He was also chairman of the German Association of Cities from 1912 to 1921 . During his term of office, among other things, the founding of the city ​​archive , the introduction of the Golden Book and the planning for the incorporation of the surrounding villages. His particular merit was in supplying the population with food during and after the First World War . By getting the Reich leadership to introduce food ration cards, rationing them could bring about a reasonably balanced food distribution.

End of life

Grave of Adolf Wermuth in the churchyard of the Schlosskirche in Berlin-Buch

In November 1920 Adolf Wermuth, who was re-elected Lord Mayor that year, resigned from his position. The bourgeois parties had used a strike by the Berlin electricity workers to attack him, and parts of the Social Democrats also dropped the politician who was not part of the party. He gave up his official residence in Buch Castle and moved to Berlin-Lichterfelde . Wermuth died in 1927 at the age of 72, four years after his wife Marie. His grave is in the churchyard of the Schlosskirche in Berlin-Buch .

On March 24, 2020, the Berlin Senate decided to designate Wermuth's grave as an honorary grave .

Honors

• In Berlin-Gropiusstadt there is the Wermuthweg, which is named after Adolf Wermuth.
• Applications for an honorary grave for wormwood have been rejected twice by the Senate Chancellery of the Governing Mayor of Berlin.

Publications

• Official report on the world exhibition in Chicago in 1893 by the Reich Commissioner (Adolf Wermuth) . 2 volumes printed in the Reichsdruckerei, Berlin 1894
• Stock Exchange Act of June 22, 1896 together with the implementing provisions issued for it. Text output with comments and subject index . Edited by A. Wermuth and H. Brendel. J. Guttentag, Berlin 1897
• German-American sympathy rally in the Berlin City Hall on August 11, 1914. German-American Meeting of Sympathy in the Berlin City Hall, August 11, 1914 . Liebheit & Thiesen, Berlin 1914
• Ceremonial speech (at the Kaiser’s birthday party on Jan. 27, 1918) . Berlin 1918
• An official life. Memories of Adolf Wermuth, former Reich Treasury Secretary, then Lord Mayor of Berlin . August Scherl, Berlin 1922

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , pp. 170 f. ( Online , PDF; 2.2 MB).

Web links

Commons : Adolf Wermuth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Zweckverband Groß-Berlin 1912–1921. Mayor's Gallery. In: Berlin.de - The official capital city portal. Retrieved January 23, 2019 . 
• Dr. Adolf Wermuth. In: www.luise-berlin.de. Archived from the original on June 21, 2017 ; accessed on January 23, 2019 . 
• Christian Hönicke, Lars Spannagel: How Greater Berlin came about: Berlin's forgotten father. In: tagesspiegel.de . January 17, 2019, accessed November 14, 2019 . 
• Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 384 online
• Literature by and about Adolf Wermuth in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Adolf Wermuth in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

supporting documents

1. ^ ^{A b c} Christian Hönicke, Lars Spannagel: How Greater Berlin came about: Berlin's forgotten father . In: Der Tagesspiegel . January 13, 2019 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed January 23, 2019]).
2. ↑ World War I: Exhibition in book at: pankower-allgemeine-zeitung.de, accessed on January 18, 2019
3. ↑ Loriot and Günter Pfitzmann receive an honor grave. Senate Chancellery Berlin, March 24, 2020, accessed on March 25, 2020 (German).