Alex Möller

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Alex Möller (1973)

Alexander Johann Heinrich Friedrich Möller (born April 26, 1903 in Dortmund , † October 2, 1985 in Karlsruhe ) was a German politician ( SPD ). Among other things, he was chairman of the SPD state association in Baden-Württemberg and the first social democratic federal finance minister.

Life

Until 1945

Möller was the son of a Reichsbahn secretary and later co-founder of the Reich Union of German Railway Officials and Candidates . He was a railroad supernumerar by trade. In Halle an der Saale , from January 1923 he became district manager of the German Railway Workers' Association (DEV), which later became the unified association of railway workers in Germany (EdED). At the same time, in 1923 he took over the federal management of the Reich Union of German Railway Officials and Candidates in Berlin. After the Reichsgewerkschaft merged with DEV to form EdED, Möller took on this function until 1933. From 1928 to 1933 he represented the constituency of Halle-Merseburg in the Prussian state parliament as the youngest mandate holder .

When the National Socialists came to power , Möller was persecuted. Since he was close to the idea of ​​a political general strike against the incipient Nazi regime, he was taken from May 3 to May 22, 1933 in so-called protective custody in Halle an der Saale. After that he was under police supervision and subjected to reprisals by the Gestapo. During the Nazi era , he made his living as an insurance agent, first at the German branch of the internationally active "Phoenix", then after it was banned from 1936 to 1944 for the Karlsruher Lebensversicherungs AG. He worked his way up to the position of deputy board member. For a short time he managed an alternative company of the Karlsruher Lebensversicherungs AG in Gotha .

After the war

After the end of the war, his greatest interest was the rebuilding of life insurance, which he took over as chairman of the board in 1945 and held until 1969.

Möller belonged to the constituent state assembly and the state parliament of Württemberg-Baden from 1946 , initially for the electoral district of Karlsruhe-Land, from 1950 for the electoral district of Karlsruhe-Stadt. In 1952, he moved as a state representative in the parliament of Baden-Wuerttemberg one, where he remained until October 5 1,961th Because of his election to the German Bundestag , he resigned from his seat. His successor was Walther Wäldele .

1958 Möller was elected to the federal executive committee of the SPD . In 1960 he traveled to the United States with Klaus Schütz to look at John F. Kennedy's campaign ideas for the presidential elections on November 8, 1960 . He himself did not run for the federal election in the Karlsruhe constituency , but in Heidelberg . He moved into the Bundestag via a secure place on the state list of the SPD Baden-Württemberg .

His goal, the post of Federal Minister of Finance , had gone to Franz Josef Strauss in the grand coalition (1966–1969, Kiesinger cabinet ) . In 1966, after poor election results in the 1965 federal election , Möller had to give up the chairmanship of the SPD state association in Baden-Württemberg because, according to internal party critics, he had not been sufficiently involved in state politics. In the federal election on September 28, 1969 , he won the direct mandate in the Heidelberg constituency for the first time.

Alex Möller's tomb

In the social-liberal coalition , Möller became Federal Minister of Finance in the cabinet under Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt , which crowned his political career. Since Möller did not want to bear the growing expenses of the other ministries in 1971 and saw the stability of the finances in danger, he submitted a resignation request to the Federal Chancellor on May 12, 1971, who accepted it. In 1972 he ran again for the Bundestag and took over the deputy chairmanship of the parliamentary group and the chair of the working group “Public Finance”. He did not run for the SPD board elections in 1973, but remained closely associated with his party as chairman of the control commission until 1979.

In 1976 he did not seek a new Bundestag mandate for reasons of age. Möller remained politically active until the early 1980s. B. on behalf of the Schmidt government as an advisor to the Egyptian government, in other party offices or on the board of directors of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk , which he chaired from 1951 to 1969. In this function he was also the initiator of the Schwetzingen Festival , which has been organized by Süddeutscher Rundfunk or its successor since 1952 .

Because of his work for Karlsruher Lebensversicherung AG , he was nicknamed "Comrade General Director", which he also used as the title of his 1978 memoir.

Alex Möller was buried in Karlsruhe in the Rüppurr cemetery, right next to the grave of the former Lord Mayor of Karlsruhe, Otto Dullenkopf . Alex Möller's tombstone was designed by the sculptor Otto Herbert Hajek .

Honors

Publications

  • Debt through debt? Uses and Limits of Public Debt . Droemer Knaur, Munich a. a. 1981, ISBN 3-426-26048-4 .
  • Crime scene politics. Droemer Knaur, Munich a. a. 1982, ISBN 3-426-26060-3 .
  • Comrade General Manager. Droemer Knaur, Munich a. a. 1978, ISBN 3-426-05610-0 .
  • Reich Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger and his reform work , ( Focus on finances. Information booklets of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Finance, Bonn. Issue 7, ZDB -ID 507154-9 ). Published by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Finance. Wilhelm Stollfuss in commission, Bonn 1971.

literature

  • Walter Henkels : 99 Bonn heads , reviewed and supplemented edition, Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, pp. 185ff.
  • Peter Koch:  Möller, Alex. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 636 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Michael Kitzing: Alex Möller: Director General, Parliamentarians, Ministers. A tribute on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of death . In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine , 158, 2010, pp. 513-538.
  • Gabriele Metzler : Alex Möller . In: Reinhold Weber, Ines Mayer (Hrsg.): Political Heads from Southwest Germany , ( writings on political regional studies of Baden-Württemberg. Vol. 33). State Center for Political Education Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-17-018700-7 , pp. 321–331.
  • Robert Schwebler, Walter Föhrenbach (Hrsg.): Years of change. Announcement for Alex Möller on his 65th birthday. Verlag Versicherungswirtschaft, Karlsruhe 1968.
  • Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) . Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 229, 241 ff., 579 f. (Short biography).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugen Gerstenmaier . In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1966 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Möller, Alex
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Möller, Alexander Johann Heinrich Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdL, MdB
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund
DATE OF DEATH 2nd October 1985
Place of death Karlsruhe