Arthur Gerlt

Arthur Erich Richard Gerlt (* 13. May 1903 ; † 17th February 1996 ) was a German resistance fighter and mayor in Bemerode , later district of Hannover .

Life

Street signs and legend signs for Friedrich Wulfert and Arthur Gerlt in front of the Bemerode school center

Arthur Gerlt was employed as a locksmith in the ironworks Wülfel in Hanover. After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he joined the resistance group Committee for proletarian unity under the leadership of Eduard Forest at. After treason , Gerlt was arrested in 1935 for “preparation for high treason ”, then suffered 13 months of pre- trial detention and was finally sentenced to a prison sentence of 2 years and 10 months, which he served together with other political prisoners in the Hameln prison.

After the liberation of Hanover by American troops on April 10, 1945, two members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany appealed to the British command office for Arthur Gerlt, who was then appointed mayor of Bemerode on July 1, 1945. Gerlt replaced the mayor who had been in office until then with an NSDAP past. In the first local election in Bemerode after the Second World War , Arthur Gerlt was elected municipal director and thus took on a difficult task:

750 refugees had to be accommodated and fed in the then 900-inhabitant village of Bemerode , partly in a refugee camp , but partly also in the houses of the previous residents. Not all long-established residents were happy to do so; the compulsory billeting in the living space that was still available did not go smoothly. Some residents "are said to have tried all sorts of tricks" to defend themselves against the confiscation of their living space, which caused considerable tension. In addition, the local farmers had to organize food for the refugees, which was also not always voluntary.

In addition, Mayor Gerlt had to take care of the rebuilding of the kindergarten and the school , “in order to satisfy the basic needs for an orderly community ”: The “departure into a democratic state” was by no means always easy.

When Arthur Gerlt was no longer confirmed by the local council at the end of 1947 , he took over the management of the local rest home for those persecuted by National Socialism in Bad Eilsen .

In Bemerode, Gerlt had last lived on Raupertstrasse.

Honors

About a decade after Arthur Gerlt's death in 1996, his great-granddaughter Katharina Langfeldt from Kiel worked on the story of her great-grandfather's life and was honored for this in 2007 by Federal President Horst Köhler . Thereupon the SPD district councilor at the time, Klaus Kaiser, initiated the naming of the street after the former mayor of Bemerode. On June 20, 2012, District Mayor Bernd Rödel and Katharina Langfeldt unveiled the Arthur-Gerlt-Weg sign together in the presence of other family members. It was attached to the lamp post next to a sign for Friedrich-Wulfert-Platz in Bemerode, as Friedrich Wulfert was also employed by the ironworks in Wülfel, was also a member of the resistance and had therefore also been sentenced to prison.

"People who worked against the Nazi dictatorship on a small scale and in secret," said Rödel], especially since they were exposed to physical and mental abuse ( dark confinement and isolation ) - with those for them personally , also belong to the memory of the past deep and lifelong traces always in mind. "

- Bernd Rödel

Web links

Commons : Arthur Gerlt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Petra Stittgen (CDU parliamentary group chairman), Fritz-Joachim Konietzny (SPD parliamentary group chairman), Bettina Lemke (parliamentary group leader B90 / Greens), Jens Albrecht (WfH), Agneta Achterberg (FDP): Application No. 15-1133 / 2012: Legend sign for the Arthur-Gerlt-Weg. ( Memento from December 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) intergroup application in the Kirchrode-Bemerode-Wülferode district council from May 9, 2012, last accessed on October 1, 2012

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} District Mayor Bernd Rödel unveils “Arthur-Gerlt-Weg”. June 20, 2012, accessed May 9, 2019 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Compare the photo with the signs Friedrich Wulfert and Arthur Gerlt
3. ↑ ^{a b} Note: A part of the village was only incorporated into Hanover in 1955 , another part in 1974; compare: Klaus Mlynek: incorporations. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover. P. 153.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Knut Böhme: Proposal to the next meeting of the city district council on March 16, 2011 on the subject of naming a path after Arthur Gerlt . February 28, 2011 ( PDF [accessed May 9, 2019]).
5. ^ Klaus Mlynek : Second World War. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , pp. 694f.