Anselm Otto Joel

Anselm Otto Joel (born January 2, 1898 in Frankfurt am Main ; † June 21, 1961 in West Berlin ) was a German local politician and journalist and from 1945 to 1946 the first district administrator in the district of Hof after the collapse of the Third Reich .

Anselm Otto Joel was the son of a Jewish father and a mother baptized Protestant from Berlin. Contrary to the parents' wishes to pursue an officer career, Joel chose the profession of journalist and became editor of the Berliner Volks-Zeitung . Open-minded to left-wing ideas, he joined the Communist Party of Germany and took part in street fights against the National Socialists. As early as 1933 he was detained in a labor camp and spent eight years in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . A fellow inmate friend was Odd Nansen . Concentration camp prisoners were transported to southern Germany by train in 1945; he and a friend managed to escape in Hof . They fled to the Moschendorf porcelain factory and were hidden by Anneliese Nusch, the pastor's wife, until the Americans moved in. About a family from Oberkotzau was contact with the American military administration , examined the non-biased people for public service and so he became a non-party appointed the first Chief Executive of the district court after the war. Joel was portrayed in his position as always careful and correct by the long-time chief office manager Karl Rambold. The most urgent tasks were feeding the population, coordinating and accommodating refugees and elementary maintenance work. In the post-war period, the district office was located at Theresienstraße 29 , today a listed residential building in the neo-renaissance style . In the first free elections in 1946 he ran for the newly founded Liberal Democratic Party of Germany and lost to the SPD candidate Paul Weppler . He moved to Schwäbisch Hall and helped the Haller Tagblatt get a fresh start, later he worked for the broadcaster Free Berlin . He lived in West Berlin with a small pension until his death . His son is called Max Joel.

Web links

• Article in the Frankenpost (April 18, 2020) by Elfriede Schneider: The district administrator from the concentration camp .