Alexander Coppel

Tomb of the Gustav Coppel family, Alexander's grave on the left remained empty

Alexander Otto Coppel (born September 18, 1865 in Solingen ; † August 4, 1942 in the Theresienstadt ghetto ) was a German entrepreneur .

Youth and education

Alexander Coppel was the youngest of five children of the entrepreneur Gustav Coppel and his wife Fanny.

Up to the Obertertia he attended the higher middle school in Solingen and in 1880 switched to a high school in Wuppertal. From 1882 he attended the Hohenzollern High School in Düsseldorf, where he passed his Abitur on March 15, 1886.

After school he studied law and probably graduated in 1890 with the legal state examination. In 1891 he went to Aachen and in the summer semester of 1896 submitted his dissertation on the subject of 'Lien and right of retention of the carrier' at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg . He then joined the family company Alexander Coppel Solingen , which produced steel goods, edged weapons and, in the Hilden branch, Röhrenwerk Coppel, steel tubes.

Local politics

After the death of his father, who had been active in the top administration of the city of Solingen, Alexander Coppel was elected (by the voters of the 1st class or department) to the city ​​councilor of Solingen in November 1914 and in the first meeting of 1915 by the then Mayor August Dicke introduced. He worked on the debt repayment, gas and waterworks and income tax assessment committees and was obliged to work on the board of trustees of the Gambrinus Foundation of the Wirteverein. Immediately after the end of the war he was also a member of the "Committee for dealing with war damage matters".

On November 2, 1919, the first city council elections took place under the new proportional representation. Alexander Coppel, who had meanwhile turned his back on monarchist national liberalism and joined the German Democratic Party (DDP), moved into the city parliament with number 3 of the DDP. With his vote, August Dicke was re-elected as mayor for a third term.

In the following years, Coppel repeatedly warned against an increase in business tax, but his civic bloc was repeatedly defeated in votes. It was not until 1922 that a compromise proposal from Coppel and Lord Mayor Dicke prevailed and it was decided to form a twelve-member trade tax committee to which Coppel belonged, even after this was reduced to six members.

In the next election on May 5, 1924, Coppel took third place on the list for the “Bürgerblock”, an amalgamation of DDP, Center , DNVP and DVP , directly behind the top candidates from DNVP and DVP. The “citizens' bloc” won an absolute majority with 21 of 41 mandates and was thus able to prevail over and over again in the following years against the “left-wing parties”, especially on the issue of luxury taxes. However, in 1926 Coppel was on the question of the capital tax u. a. outvoted by August Dicke. The “alliance of the bourgeoisie” broke up in 1927 and August Dicke left office in the same year. In 1929 Solingen was united with the cities of Ohligs, Wald, Gräfrath and Höhscheid to form the city of Solingen. Alexander Coppel was no longer a member of the next Groß-Solingen city parliament.

Social Commitment

Like his parents, Coppel was involved in social issues in the city of Solingen, for example as curator of the Coppelstift , a foundation with an infant home and a recreation center for adults, which his family set up in 1912. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the company's founding, the Alexander Coppel company donated two million marks for social purposes in 1921 . From 1914 to 1929 Alexander Coppel was a city councilor of the German Democratic Party (DDP), was a member of the supervisory board of the savings and construction association until 1933 and was a member of the board of the synagogue community from 1915 to 1942.

'Aryanization' of the Solingen parent plant and last years of life

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, the Jewish Coppel family was harassed and persecuted by the National Socialists. Alexander Coppels sister Sophie (1875-1951) emigrated in 1934 with her son, Heinz (1898-1947) and his family in the Switzerland . In 1936 the company was “ Aryanized ”: On March 1st, the Hilden plant was merged with Kronprinz AG , and in April the Solingen branch was taken over by “Aryan” shareholders. Alexander's eldest brother Carl Gustav (* 1857), who had lived in Düsseldorf since 1920, committed suicide on September 25, 1941; his daughter Anna was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in April 1942 and died in the Bernburg killing center in 1942 . Her sister Martha was admitted to the Jewish sanctuary and nursing home in Sayn-Bendorf, then deported to the Sobibor extermination camp on June 15, 1942 , nothing is known about her further fate.

Alexander Coppel had to bear the new first name "Gideon" from November 1938, in the Solingen birth register 377/1865 and the entry from November 21, 1938: The person notarized here leads according to the order of the Police President in Wuppertal, Police Office Solingen, from November 19 1938 instead of the previous name 'Gideon' . From 1941 he was the “representative” of the synagogue community, which received its instructions from the district office of the “ Reich Association of Jews in Germany ” in Cologne , which was under the supervision of the Gestapo . On July 21, 1942 he was together with other Solinger Jews from Dusseldorf in the Theresienstadt ghetto deported , where he died three weeks later.

There are two different representations of the last days of his life:
The first comes from Wilhelmina Leven, a nurse from Solingen who was with him until the last moment, and reports that he died calmly and without pain, quiet and content. On the exhausting journey, he got pneumonia.
The second comes from fellow inmate Dr. Emil Kronenberg . He witnessed his collapse from hunger and exhaustion. Coppel's body was burned and the ashes thrown in a box in the Eger , Kronenberg said.

Alexander Coppel remained unmarried.

Commemoration

Stolperstein in Solingen, Werwolf 3

In Solingen a street was named after Alexander Coppel and in 2005 a stumbling stone was laid in front of his former house Werwolf 3 as well as for his nieces Anna and Martha at Kurfürstenstraße 8. For a long time the date of death in the archive of the city of Solingen was August 5, 1942 , that led to a wrong date on the stumbling block. The death report from the Theresienstadt ghetto shows August 4, 1942 with the diagnosis of a stroke.

Since the 2015/2016 school year, the Solingen Municipal Comprehensive School has been known as the Alexander Coppel Comprehensive School .

See also

• List of Nazi victims from Solingen

literature

• Wilhelm Bramann: Coppel - story of a Jewish family in Solingen. 1770-1942. 2nd edition, Solingen 2012.
• Wilhelm Bramann: The Coppel family - committed to the common good. In: Manfred Krause / Solinger Geschichtswerkstatt (ed.): "... that I had to leave the place of happiness before my death". Contributions to the history of Jewish life in Solingen. Leverkusen 2000, pp. 89-93.

Web links

• Dr. jur. Alexander Coppel on solingen.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death report Alexander / Gideon Coppel ( Memento from July 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Wilhelm Bramann: Coppel - history of a Jewish family in Solingen. 1770-1942. Solingen 2012, p. 245 f.
3. ^ Wilhelm Bramann: Coppel - history of a Jewish family in Solingen. 1770-1942. Solingen 2012, pp. 246-251.
4. ↑ Anna Reiche in the memorial book of the Federal Archives
5. ↑ Martha Fanny Coppel in the memorial book of the Federal Archives
6. ↑ Alexander Coppel in the memorial book of the Federal Archives
7. ^ Wilhelm Bramann: Coppel - history of a Jewish family in Solingen. 1770-1942. Solingen 2012, p. 281.
8. ^ Wilhelm Bramann: Family Coppel - committed to the common good. in: ... that I had to leave the place of happiness before my death. P. 92.
9. ↑ Current school information on the Alexander-Coppel-Gesamtschule website