Alexander Müller (politician, 1885)

Alexander Alex Müller (born December 4, 1885 in Kaiserslautern ; † August 29, 1959 there ) was a German Social Democrat and long-time Lord Mayor of Kaiserslautern.

Life

Müller, who is known by the nickname Alex, was born in December 1885 as one of five children of the carpenter Johannes Müller in Kaiserslautern. After attending elementary school, he graduated from the humanistic grammar school in Kaiserslautern by 1903. He then learned the profession of banker at the Kaiserslautern banking house Leo Kehr until 1906. He then moved to the Bavarian Bodencreditbank in Würzburg , where he worked for five years. During this time, Müller became a member of the SPD . In 1911, Müller moved to Berlin, where he worked for Deutsche Bank for a short time . In May 1912 he returned to his hometown and initially found a job as an office assistant in the Kaiserslautern city administration. Within the administration he was appointed chief inspector over the years. In 1915, Müller was called up for military service. In the course of the war he was first taken prisoner in Romania and later in Russia.

After returning to Kaiserslautern from this, Müller became politically active from 1919 onwards. This year he was elected to the Kaiserslautern city council for the first time and was subsequently appointed honorary 3rd mayor. It should be noted that at that time, as a result of the Versailles Treaty, Kaiserslautern was in an area administered by the Inter-Allied Rhineland Commission. In fact, the Palatinate city was occupied by the French. When the German government called for passive resistance in the occupied territories as a result of the occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, including work stoppages by state employees, the French authorities reacted with reprisals. In Kaiserslautern on March 24, 1923, they arrested the incumbent mayor, Franz Baumann, among others . Since the second mayor Adam Relle had also been arrested, Müller took over the position of mayor as third mayor until Baummann returned to his official duties on November 24, 1924. He then worked again in the city administration until 1933.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in Bavaria on March 9, 1933, Müller was removed from his post as a social democrat and his title of chief inspector was revoked. He was taken into so-called protective custody on March 10, 1933, and imprisoned from March 17 to April 7, 1933 in what was then the Turenne barracks in Neustadt . From March 10, 1933, this was where a so-called protective custody and labor camp was located, making it one of the early National Socialist concentration camps. It was also called the Rheinpfalz protective custody camp. After his return from Neustadt, Müller initially remained unemployed for years, but at the initiative of the then Mayor Hans Weisbrod , he received a pension. Müller was only able to take up a job in 1939; he managed the dairy there in St. Wendel until the end of the war .

After Kaiserslautern had been liberated by American troops on March 20, 1945 , the city employees, Rudolf Reeber and Emil Pfleger, who had been burdened by the Nazi regime , directed the fortunes of the city. On May 11, 1945, Alex Müller took their place as Lord Mayor. As a result, he directed the fortunes of the city, initially under the French occupation that followed shortly thereafter . After the first local elections on September 15, 1946, he remained mayor, as the top candidate of the SPD, the strongest city council faction, Eugen Hertel , resigned from office. As a result, Müller's work consisted primarily of guiding the construction of Kaiserslautern, which was partly badly damaged. To make matters worse, the American armed forces in the wake of the worsening East-West conflict again significantly increased their troop presence in West Germany and chose Kaiserslautern as the headquarters of their armed forces stationed in Europe (USAEUR). Over the years, this has developed into the largest military community outside of Europe.

At the age of 70, Müller retired in 1956 and was replaced by Walter Sommer . A few years later, Müller died in August 1959. His grave of honor is in the main cemetery in Kaiserslautern .

In honor of Müller, a street and a nursing home of the AWO in Kaiserslautern were later named after him.

literature

• Heinz Friedel: Kaiserslautern. From the imperial era to the founding of the university. Siblings Schmidt-Verlag Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern 1998, ISBN 3980398617 .
• Melitta Rinnert: Mr. Karcher and Fraulein Benzino as well as other Kaiserslautern personalities archer. 4th edition, Kaiserslautern 2015, ISBN 9783981618624 , p. 243 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry on the camp memorial site