Albert Grzesinski

Albert Grzesinski (1926)

Albert Karl Wilhelm Grzesinski (born July 28, 1879 in Treptow an der Tollense as Albert Ehlert , † December 31, 1947 in New York City ) was from 1926 to 1930, as a member of the Braun III cabinet , Minister of the Interior of the Free State of Prussia .

Life

Family and education

Grzesinski was the illegitimate son of the Berlin maid Berta Ehlert and the journeyman butcher Albert Lehmann. Until his mother's marriage to the Spandau wheelwright Thomas Grzesinski in 1884, he grew up with his grandparents in Treptow, then with his mother and stepfather, who adopted him in 1892 , in Spandau. Albert Grzesinski attended an elementary school there until 1893. Then he learned the trade of metal pusher in Berlin .

In 1897 he became a member of the German Metal Workers' Association (DMV) in the ADGB . He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1898. As a union official he came to Offenbach am Main , where he was chairman of the local SPD from 1903 to 1907.

Trade union official, council chairman and state parliament

In 1906 he became secretary of the DMV in Offenbach. In 1907 he moved to Kassel , where he was secretary of the DMV until 1919 and chairman of a trade union cartel from 1918 to 1919 . He also organized the merger of various consumer associations here. During the war years he achieved a certain reputation and recognition with his socio-political work. Thus, after the end of the First World War , he was elected to the Kassel workers ', peasants and soldiers' council and its chairman, with which he gained a certain influence in Kassel and northern Hesse.

During the November Revolution, Grzesinski took sides early on for the representatives of the old order. So on November 14th he arranged for Paul von Hindenburg and his Supreme Army Command to be accommodated, protected and celebratory received in Kassel and assured in a welcome message published by the local press that “the bourgeois and soldier population of Kassel gave him only feelings of admiration and respect and he is safe from any harassment ”. In order not to upset Hindenburg, the members of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council had exchanged their red armbands for black and white on this occasion.

In the subsequent council movement, Grzesinski unreservedly supported the council of people's representatives . He was thus elected to the Central Council, which was formed at the 1st Reichsrätekongress (December 16-21, 1918) and 2nd Reichsrätekongress (April 3-14, 1919). At the beginning of January 1919, Grzesinski spoke out in favor of the military suppression of the Berlin Spartacus uprising . In Kassel he held a mandate in the city council from 1919 to 1924, first as city councilor, then as chairman of the assembly. He was also a member of the Prussian state assembly from 1919 to 1921 , and then from 1921 to 1933 of the Prussian state parliament .

Career in the Prussian state

His career as a state official began on June 16, 1919, when he was appointed Undersecretary of State in the Prussian War Ministry . He held this position until November 10, 1919. When he had put forward the proposal for a quick demobilization , whereby he offered himself as the executor, he was appointed Reich Commissioner of the Reichsabwicklungsamt . He held this position from November 1919 to March 1921.

In 1920, he turned down the post of Reichswehr Minister because he knew the spirit of the Reichswehr and its effects. Therefore, he stayed as a trainee lawyer in the Reich Labor Ministry from 1921 to 1922 . From November 1922 to March 1924 he was President of the Prussian State Police Office. When this office was dissolved, he took over the office of Police President of Berlin from May 16, 1925 to October 6, 1926 . When a right-wing coup threatened the republic from April to May 1926, he publicly reported this danger.

Interior minister

When the Prussian Interior Minister Carl Severing resigned for health reasons on October 6, 1926 during the Great Berlin Police Exhibition, which he was instrumental in initiating , Grzesinski was appointed as his successor. He enforced the resignation of State Secretary Friedrich Meister ( DVP ) in the Ministry of the Interior and replaced him with the head of the police department, Dr. Wilhelm Abegg . Ministerialrat Erich Klausener took the post of Abegg . Karl Zörgiebel became the new police chief in Berlin . His official term began on January 7, 1926 and ended on February 28, 1930.

As Minister of the Interior, he tried to bring the idea of ​​democracy into the management of the ministry. To this end, he also promoted the appointment of public officials by Social Democrats. Furthermore, with the law of December 27, 1927, he enforced the abolition of manor districts in East Germany. This relic from the feudal system had until then given the landowners administrative sovereignty over their lands, so that the rural population resident there had no right to vote in local elections and no say in the self-government of their community.

As head of the Prussian state police office, as police president of Berlin and as Prussian interior minister, Grzesinski and his state secretary Wilhelm Abegg tried hard to democratize the administration and police. In the foreword to a book on the occasion of the Berlin International Police Exhibition in 1926, while still serving as police chief, he speaks of the motto of the police, being a friend, helper and comrade of the population . Grzesinski is one of the authors of the slogan The Police - your friend and helper , alongside the Berlin detective Erich Liebermann von Sonnenberg and Carl Severing himself . The slogan served as the motto of said exhibition ("The police, your friend and helper - please come closer!"), But was also found, in a modified form, in Carl Severing's opening speech. In 1937 Heinrich Himmler then used the slogan in a preface to the book "The Police - once different" (Franz-Eher-Verlag, Munich), by Helmuth Koschorke .

In March 1927, at the urging of Paul Löbe , he lifted the ban on speaking for Adolf Hitler, which only existed in Prussia, because of the "ineffectiveness of regionally limited measures" . When the SPD called for the dissolution of Prussia on February 14, 1928 at the Prussian Day, he resolutely opposed it, because this demand was only intended to eliminate the uncomfortable republican Prussia .

In October 1928 Grzesinski was a passenger of the airship LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin” on its first transatlantic voyage.

Street fighting and resignation

Albert Grzesinski at the constitution ceremony in 1929

In his capacity as Minister of the Interior, he was increasingly involved in the internal political disputes between the KPD , NSDAP and the Stahlhelm . When street fighting broke out in Berlin on May 1, 1929, he and Reich Minister of the Interior Severing supported Police President Zörgiebel. These days went down in history as the Berlin Blutmai . On May 3, 1929, he pronounced a ban on the Red Front Fighters Union (RFB) for Prussia .

Because of a personal affair, he had to resign on February 28, 1930 from the office of Minister of the Interior. Heinrich Waentig was his successor . When he resigned on October 22, 1930, Grzesinski was appointed police chief of Berlin on November 6, 1930. He held this office until July 20, 1932. He drew the scorn and criticism of the National Socialists because, in the words of Joseph Goebbels in the Reichstag on February 23, 1932, “the leader of our movement, who today embodies around 15 million Germans, [offered] the affront that he was in publicly stated that he could not understand that Adolf Hitler was not chased out of Germany with the dog whip. "

In the course of the Prussian strike , he was taken into protective custody and only released when he had signed a commitment not to undertake any official acts. The acting government of Papen appointed the former Essen police chief Kurt Melcher as his successor .

Emigration to the USA

Grzesinski fled from the National Socialists in March 1933, first to Switzerland , then to France . His name was on the first expatriation list of the German Reich in August 1933, along with 32 others . Under the impression of the consequences of the Nazi dictatorship, he began to change his political stance. So he made himself available in London from September 14th to 18th, 1933, which tried to clarify the background to the Reichstag fire. In 1934 he published his memoirs under the title La Tragi-Comédie de la République Allemande . With another book from 1939 entitled Inside Germany , he regretted that he had not fought the enemies of the Weimar Republic decisively enough.

In the Lutetia district (1935–1937) in Paris he was involved in the attempt to create a popular front against the Hitler dictatorship. From August 1936 to July 1937 he was President of the Consultative Committee for German Political Refugees in the French Ministry of the Interior. In July 1937 he emigrated to the USA and went to New York , where he again worked as a metal pusher. Here he became president of the German Labor Delegation émigré association in 1938 and was a founding member of the Council for a Democratic Germany on May 2, 1944 , for which he was violently attacked by right-wing members of the German Labor delegation. Albert Grzesinski died in New York City in 1947.

Fonts

• Albert Grzesinski: In the fight for the German republic. Memories of a German Social Democrat (= series of publications by the Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte Foundation. Vol. 9). Edited by Eberhard Kolb . Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56591-5 .

literature

• Siegfried Bahne:  Grzesinski, Albert Karl Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 246 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Weimar Republic. Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32988-8 .
• Kurt Pätzold u. a. (Ed.): Lexicon biographies on German history from the beginnings to 1945. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-326-00479-6 .
• Thomas Albrecht: For a defensive democracy. Albert Grzesinski and Prussian Politics in the Weimar Republic . Dietz, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-8012-4094-0 .
• Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar: Albert Grzesinski and the Kassel workers and soldiers council . In: Martina Lüdicke u. a. (Ed.): 1918. Between defeat and new beginnings , Petersberg: Imhof 2019, ISBN 978-3-7319-0886-9 , pp. 44–57.

Web links

• Literature by and about Albert Grzesinski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Albert Grzesinski  in the German Digital Library
• Newspaper article about Albert Grzesinski in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Article from the International Institute of Social History , which looks after his estate.
• Curriculum vitae in the Prussian Chronicle of the RBB
• Albert Grzesinski . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)
• Albert Grzesinski in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Edition Files. Weimar Republic

Individual evidence

1. ^ Albert Grzesinski: In the struggle for the German republic. Memories of a German Social Democrat (= series of publications by the Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte Foundation. Vol. 9). Edited by Eberhard Kolb. Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56591-5 , p. 12 f.
2. ↑ quoted from Hans-Joachim Bieber: The German trade unions 1914-1920. Labor movement, industry, state and military in the First World War and in the November Revolution . Christians, Hamburg 1981, p. 707.
3. ^ Hans-Joachim Bieber: The German trade unions 1914-1920. Labor movement, industry, the state and the military in the First World War, Hamburg 1981, p. 721.
4. ↑ October 6, 1926: Grzesinski successor Serverings In: Vorwärts . October 6, 1926, evening edition No. 471, p. 1, accessed on September 3, 2019.
5. ↑ Albert Grzesinski . In: Ostdeutsche Biographie (Kulturportal West-Ost).
6. ↑ Götz Aly , Karl Heinz Roth : The complete collection: census, identification, sorting out in National Socialism , Rotbuch, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88022-282-7 .
7. ↑ Wolf Dieter Lüddecke: How times change: Police history in the mirror of caricature and satire , Verlag Deutsche Polizeiliteratur GmbH, Hilden 1988, ISBN 3801101568 , p. 7.
8. ↑ Marion Bremsteller: Friends and helpers in front of empty petrol cans - On the benefits and disadvantages of labeling for the police professional life , in: Carsten Star (Ed.): Sociology and Police: For sociological occupation with and for the police , series administrative sociology volume 4, Norderstedt 2015, ISBN 978-3-7386-1997-3 , pp. 71-92, p. 74.
9. ↑ Albrecht (lit.), p. 260 refuted with reference to Arnold Brecht : Prelude To Silence: The End of the German Republic . Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 1948, p. 180 Wilhelm Abeggs accused Grzesinski of political carelessness in 1946.
10. ↑ Wolfgang Meighörner (ed.): Giants of the air . K. Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1998, ISBN 3-86070-595-4 .
11. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 3 (reprinted 2010).
12. ↑ Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933–1945, p. 252.