Albert Mansfeld

Albert Mansfeld (born August 10, 1901 in Hamburg ; † September 7, 1995 there ) was a German high school councilor and politician .

Live and act

Albert Mansfeld grew up in Rothenburgsort and attended an elementary school with Selekta in Louisenweg in Hamburg-Hamm . From 1916 to 1922 he completed the teachers' seminar at Hohen Weide 18. He then taught at the Strelowstraße school in Rothenburgsort from 1922. From 1931 to 1933 he acted as an elected member of the Nazi party in the Hamburg Parliament . When the Hamburg National Socialist Teachers' Association was founded on May 28, 1931, he took part in the general assembly . After the National Socialists came to power , he rose to become deputy head of the state and district manager of the teachers' association behind Wilhelm Schulz . He fulfilled the task given by Schulz to install a new management committee in the teachers' association. He took no account of the merits of former founding members. On behalf of the NSLB management committee, Mansfeld set up a National Socialist form of school protection, which he directed himself and which existed for several years. He also collected documents for personnel policy decisions that reached him via the NSLB. Mansfeld handed the material over to the decisive departments in the school administration. He also set up a working group for border and eastern work at the NSLB .

For a few months in 1933/34 Mansfeld took over the management of the elementary school Eilbektal 35–37, which at the time was called "Adolf Hitler School". In March 1934 this activity ended with the appointment to the school board in the school administration. A short time later he took over the management of the department for elementary schools as a high school councilor. Mansfeld appeared as a convinced and aggressive National Socialist. He called for the creation of a “cohesive living space” for the Germans, for the “foreign policy liberation” to be initiated and for the focus again on the importance of belonging to the “German race”. Since, from his point of view, “Volkserzieher” should profess to the “Volksgemeinschaft”, in 1937 he unequivocally called on Hamburg teachers to become NSDAP members. He also tried to prevent traditional religious instruction and, in particular, to stop teaching the Old Testament , which he regarded as "Jewish".

As the head of the school inspectorate, to which the auxiliary schools were also subordinate, Mansfeld promoted campaigns in which “hereditary children” were examined and then forcibly sterilized. He considered state-run “racial and hereditary hygiene measures” at auxiliary schools to be helpful in making the children suitable members of a “national community”. He was in close contact with obersturmbannführer Heinrich Thole, who for the Race and Settlement Office of the SS worked. Mansfeld supported Thole in 1939 in his request to subject fourth grade elementary school pupils to serial examinations, which should serve "anthropological surveys". In 1938, Mansfeld pushed ahead with efforts to exclude Jewish children from public schools.

In addition to these measures to support the National Socialists, he opposed the system in other places. He tried to protect the students from far-reaching efforts by the Hitler Youth . Mansfeld was critical of the State Youth Day and, against the will of the Reich Ministry of Education , established Spanish classes together with Wilhelm Schulz in the superstructure of the adult education centers . Mansfeld had language schools built in districts that expanded the urban area due to the Greater Hamburg Act in 1937 .

During the Second World War , Mansfeld did military service as a soldier in the Wehrmacht from April 6, 1940 . He fought in Poland, Belgium and France and in 1941 was made a private and non-commissioned officer. In 1942 he went to Russia with his unit and was taken prisoner by the British. After the end of the war, he returned to Hamburg in June 1945, where the British military government had already dismissed him from school and denied his civil service. Mansfeld accepted an assigned position as a bricklayer at a construction company in Hamburg-Lokstedt . On September 3, 1947, he passed the journeyman's examination. At the same time he tried until 1952 to be allowed to work again in the school service, which the denazification committees objected to several times. Mansfeld himself stated that he only suggested that teachers join the NSDAP because of an order from Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann . In addition, Friedrich Heinrich Koehne and Gustav Schmidt, who had worked with Mansfeld, spoke out in favor of him. Landesschulrat Ernst Matthewes reinstated Mansfeld on November 30, 1950. The reason he gave was that Mansfeld was a decent, thorough and correct working person who was committed to persecuted people. In addition, he was no longer able to work as a bricklayer due to a broken bone. The teachers' works council directly approved Matthewe's decision. Since the debtor's deputation initially refused to be reinstated, Mansfeld called on deputation member Richard Ballerstädt . He then taught from 1953 to 1964 at the school at Christian-Förster-Strasse 21 in Hoheluft-West .

Albert Mansfeld died in September 1995 in his hometown. How he spent the years in retirement is not known.

literature

• Uwe Schmidt: Mansfeld, Albert . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 223-224 .