Andreas Gayk

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Andreas Gayk 1948

Andreas Gayk (born October 11, 1893 in Kiel ; † October 1, 1954 there ) was a German social democrat . After the Second World War, he was Lord Mayor of Kiel and worked to rebuild the destroyed city.

Life

Andreas Gayk was born in Gaarden, which at that time was not part of Kiel. His father worked as a carpenter in a shipyard. After attending elementary school, Gayk first began a commercial apprenticeship, which he broke off to work as a journalist for an SPD party newspaper in Lüdenscheid . After participating in the First World War , he returned to Kiel. In 1919 he was a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council . He joined the editorial team of the Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung , whose local editor he was from 1926. He was Schleswig-Holstein's state chairman of the Reich Association of Child Friends . In 1927 he organized the first children's republic of the "Children's Friends" on the municipal estate of Seekamp , in which 2,000 children took part. A documentation of the “Red Children's Republic” was published in 1929. During the Nazi era , the People's Daily was banned and Gayk was briefly imprisoned. He escaped further persecution by moving to Berlin . Here he worked as an editor at the publishing house Dr. A. Ristow, who from June 1933 to August 1935 published the weekly magazine Blick in die Zeit , which is critical of the regime . The management had Kurt Exner adopted. The magazine was also banned in 1935. Until his arrest, Gayk also worked with Rudolf Küstermeier at Blick in die Zeit . This led with others in 1933 the left-wing socialist resistance group Red Shock Troop . On behalf of Küstermeier, Gayk is said to have distributed the illegal newspaper Red Shock Troop in Kiel in 1933. In 1936, Gayk took over from Otto Suhr's freelance scientific research, which Suhr used for his articles in the Frankfurter Zeitung and in the magazine Deutscher Volkswirt . In January 1937, Gayk began working in the pharmaceutical industry, from April 1, 1939 as a sales representative for Chemische Werke Albert-Wiesbaden-Biebrich. On July 26, 1943, Gayk was drafted into the Berlin auxiliary police. In 1946 he took over the editor-in-chief of the re-established Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung in Kiel .

Gayk was married to Frieda Gayk. The marriage resulted in two sons who died in World War II . After the war, the couple lived in a cooperative apartment building (Virchowstraße 2 / 1st floor on the right / corner of Westring). In 1954 it moved into an apartment on Eichendorffstrasse.

politics

Since 1911 Andreas Gayk was a member of the SPD Schleswig-Holstein . After the day of liberation he was one of the re-founders of the party organization. In preparation for the first district conference, an organizational group was set up in Kiel in the summer of 1945, to which Andreas Gayk, Karl Ratz , Heinrich Fischer and Wilhelm Kuklinski also belonged. Contrary to a ban by the British military government , a first district conference was held in Kiel on October 27 and 28, 1945.

At the 1st district party conference (today the state party conference) of the SPD Schleswig-Holstein on March 10, 1946 in Neumünster , Gayk was elected third chairman of the district organization. Since the 2nd District Party Congress, which took place on June 7, 1947 in Bad Segeberg, Gayk was a member of the extended district executive. In May 1948 he was elected chairman of the district organization. In this capacity he witnessed the merger with the Social Democratic Party of Flensburg (SPF), split off in 1946, at the district party congress in July 1954 .

On May 11, 1946, the delegates to the party congress in Hanover elected Andreas Gayk to the party executive. His first re-election as an assessor took place at the Nuremberg party congress (June 29 to July 2, 1947). He remained a member of the board until his death. At the Düsseldorf party congress (September 11-14, 1948), Gayk read out his programmatic speech for the sick Kurt Schumacher . Some delegates saw Gayk as the party's “crown prince”. After Schumacher's death in 1952, speculation repeated that Gayk would be elected party chairman.

MP

From 1945 to 1950 Gayk was a member of the Kiel Council. He had been a city councilor in the Weimar Republic since 1927. From February 26, 1946 to April 9, 1947, he was a member of the Appointed State Parliament in both terms . On April 20, 1947, he was elected to the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament . In the state elections in Schleswig-Holstein in 1947, the SPD received an absolute majority with 43 seats thanks to the electoral law, so that Hermann Lüdemann (SPD) could be elected Prime Minister. From 1947 to 1950, the SPD provided the state government. From February 26 to November 11, 1946 Gayk was chairman of the parliamentary committee for regional planning and from April 11, 1946 to October 10, 1950 chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Gayk was always drawn into the state parliament as a directly elected member of the state electoral district of Kiel-Ost . Gayk was a member of the Parliamentary Council that had been in Bonn since September 1, 1948, to draw up the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (for the Trizone ). Gayk was a member of the parliamentary group executive committee, whose chairman the SPD parliamentary group chose Carlo Schmid .

Public offices

On March 11, 1946, the council assembly appointed by the British occupation forces elected the newspaper publisher Willi Koch as Lord Mayor and Andreas Gayk as Mayor, who in this capacity took over the office of town planning and reconstruction.

Students at the Hebbelschule (Kiel) planting young trees (1948)

On October 13, 1946 - for the first time in the post-war period in Germany - the council assembly was freely elected. In their first meeting on October 18, 1946, they elected Gayk Mayor of Kiel . At that time, the local regulations decreed by the occupying power were still valid: the mayor was the political representative and chairman of the city council, while an upper city director was in charge of administration. Gayk appointed journalist Friedrich Wendel to head the press office .

After the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament had revised the local order, there were new elections in the districts and cities on October 24, 1948. The new Kiel Council Assembly again elected Andreas Gayk Mayor. Another revision of the municipal regulations finally introduced the municipal constitution, so that the council elected Andreas Gayk on May 20, 1950 as mayor with a term of office of nine years.

In this office, Gayk achieved a great reputation in the state capital, which was particularly hard hit by the air raids on Kiel . He opposed the dismantling (reparation) planned by the British of the industrial facilities on the east bank. Under the slogan “ Citizens build a city”, Gayk pushed for the clean-up work and the reconstruction of the city, which was 80% destroyed. Cleared debris, which could not be built on immediately, were planted with trees according to his idea. Even today there are some remains of these so-called Gayk forests in Kiel. He also took care of the reissue of the Kiel Week .

Honors

Bust of Andreas Gayk in the town hall

literature

  • Wilhelm Ludwig Christiansen : My story of the social democratic party Flensburg. Social Democrats between German and Danish 1945–1954 . Editor: Johann Runge. Publisher: Studieafdelingen at the Dansk Centralbibliotek for Sydslesvig, Flensburg 1993, ISBN 87-89178-12-2 .
  • Jürgen Jensen, Karl Rickers (Ed.): Andreas Gayk and his time. 1893-1954. Memories of the Lord Mayor of Kiel. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1974.
  • Ida Hinz : The children's republic Seekamp , in: Christa Geckeler (ed.): Memories of Kiel between the world wars 1918/1939 . (Vol. 58 of the Ges. Für Kieler Stadtgeschichte). Husum Verlag, Husum 2007, ISBN 978-3-89876-342-4 .
  • Wilhelm Knelangen , Birte Meinschien (Ed.): »Dear Gayk! Dear friend! «The correspondence between Andreas Gayk and Michael Freund from 1944 to 1954. Ludwig, Kiel 2015, ISBN 978-3-86935-269-5 .
  • Frank Lubowitz: Kiel is fighting for its livelihood. Reconstruction and dismantling as central issues of local self-government . In: Working Group Democratic History (ed.): We are the building people. Kiel 1945 to 1950 . Neuer Malik, Kiel 1985, ISBN 3-89029-950-4 , pp. 73-93.
  • Franz Osterroth : 100 years of social democracy in Schleswig-Holstein . Publisher: Schleswig-Holstein State Association of the SPD. Kiel no year (probably 1963).
  • Johannes Rempel : Andreas Gayk , in: ders.,: Jump over the wall with God. From Mennonite farm boy in the Urals to pastor in Kiel . Edited by Hans-Joachim Ramm, Husum: Matthiesen 2013, pp. 448–450.
  • Hans-Ulrich Schilf: The structure of the Kiel SPD 1945-1949 . In: Working Group Democratic History (ed.): We are the building people. Kiel 1945 to 1950 . Neuer Malik, Kiel 1985, ISBN 3-89029-950-4 .

Historical sound document

  • Development of the city of Kiel . Interview with Andreas Gayk on August 22, 1952 (10:30 min.) In: Christa Geckeler, Jürgen Jensen (Ed.): Historical sound documents . Vol. 1: Citizens build a new city . (CD 73:00 min.) Society for Kiel City History 2002.

Web links

Commons : Andreas Gayk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to research by the Kiel City Archives in 2015, the family of the carpenter Julius Gayk did not live in Gaarden in 1893, but at Annenstraße 66 in Kiel. See the address book of the city of Kiel and the localities of Gaarden and Ellerbek for the year 1893, p. 263
  2. ↑ Uwe Danker , Astrid Schwabe: Films tell stories. Schleswig-Holstein in the 20th century . Wachholtz, Neumünster 2010, p. 27.
  3. ↑ 2017 on the 90th anniversary of the Seekamp Children's Republic, newly published by the Society for Kiel City History .
  4. ↑ Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: The Red Strike Squad. An early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism. Lukas Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-86732-274-4 , p. 572.
  5. ↑ Jensen u. Rickers: Andreas Gayk . Neumünster 1974, p. 196f.
  6. ^ WL Christiansen : My story . P. 26f.
  7. ^ Documentary part, in: Jensen u. Rickers: Andreas Gayk . P. 249 (SPF) and 219-222.
  8. ^ Petra Weber : Carlo Schmid . Munich 1996, p. 353.
  9. ↑ Holders of the Andreas Gayk Medal
  10. ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: without page title )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kiel.de
personal data
SURNAME Gayk, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Gaarden
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 1954
Place of death Kiel