Albrecht Ege

Albrecht Jakob Friedrich Ege (born January 31, 1878 in Frankfurt am Main ; † January 23, 1943 in the Preungesheim prison ) was a German carpenter, trade unionist and politician ( SPD ). He was a member of the Landtag of the People's State of Hesse and a victim of Nazi war justice.

Stumbling block for Albrecht Ege.

Memorial event in Frankfurt
Newspaper clipping, FRI August 1, 1945

Live and act

Ege learned the carpentry trade. In 1904 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1905 he became union secretary.

From 1913 to 1921 Ege held the post of district chairman of the carpenters' association. In the 1920s, Ege began to work in the building works movement, the Association of Social Construction Companies (VsB). In 1921 he became head of the section of the VsB in Hessen-Nassau . In his various positions as a representative of the interests of the workers in the building trade, he campaigned in particular for wage increases and working time reductions.

In 1924 he took over the post of managing director of the building company "Gemeinnützigen Wohnungsbau AG" (GEWOBAG) in Frankfurt and became city councilor of the city of Frankfurt am Main. In this capacity, as well as in his additional function as a member of the supervisory board of the Aktienbaugesellschaft für kleinewohnungen (ABG), he supported the activities of the architect and urban planner Ernst May , who implemented far-reaching settlement concepts in the Frankfurt area between 1925 and 1930, including on a large scale The new housing construction that was taking place was based in particular on social efforts to improve the living conditions of the socially disadvantaged social classes. For this reason, Ege has often been referred to as a pioneer of social housing during the Weimar Republic . The IG Bau seen him today as one of its founding fathers.

A few weeks after the coming to power of the Nazis in the spring of 1933 moved Ege for the SPD in Hesse state parliament one, which of course a few weeks already late in the course of the DC circuit of the Nazi dictatorship was forcibly dissolved the political life in Germany as part of consolidation.

On June 26, 1933, Ege was arrested for a week and taken to the wild concentration camp of the Frankfurt SA in the pearl factory. He was badly mistreated there. At the same time he was dismissed as managing director of the VsB.

On charges of having participated in illegal attempts as a member of the circle around Paul Apel to rebuild the SPD, which was banned in 1933, Ege was arrested again in 1935 and on April 1, 1936 by the Higher Regional Court of Kassel for preparation for high treason for a year and two Sentenced to months in prison. After serving his imprisonment in the Preungesheim prison and in Frankfurt-Höchst , he was released on January 4, 1937.

Ege was arrested again on June 22, 1942, together with some sympathetic friends in the Bender-Schuch inn in Frankfurt, due to listening to foreign radio stations and the spread of their reports, which portrayed the war situation in a way that was unfortunate for the German government. In November 1942 he was charged before the Higher Regional Court in Kassel on charges of preparing to commit high treason, degrading military strength and violating the ordinance on extraordinary broadcasting measures of September 1, 1939. In the judgment of November 18, 1942, he was found guilty and sentenced to death . The execution was carried out in January 1943 in Preungesheim prison. The corpse was given to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Giessen.

In Frankfurt am Main today the Egestraße named after Ege and a small memorial next to the grave of Ege's wife Anni in the Frankfurt cemetery Westhausen (a kneeling figure with hands tied behind his back, inscription "The Frankfurt workers' movement is commemorating him"), the 2012 has been restored. Since 2014 there has also been a stumbling block in front of Ege's last house at Am Treutengraben 3 in Frankfurt.

literature

• Board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century. Schüren, Marburg 2000, ISBN 978-3-89472-173-2 , p. 86.
• Gerhard Beier : Labor movement in Hessen. On the history of the Hessian labor movement through one hundred and fifty years (1834–1984). Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-458-14213-4 , p. 406.
• GEWOBAG (ed.): Albrecht Ege in memory. Frankfurt am Main 1954.
• Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . First volume. A – L (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 1 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7829-0444-3 , p. 172 .

Web links

• Albrecht Ege at par.frankfurt.de , the former website of the City of Frankfurt am Main