August Kirch

August Kirch (probably around 1950)

August Kirch (born November 25, 1879 in Ottensen-Neumühlen , † November 16, 1959 in Hamburg-Altona ) was a social democratic politician who performed various functions within the organizations of the workers' movement during the German Empire , and from 1918 to 1933 senator for the independent city of Altona / Elbe and from 1945 to 1954 was the local or district manager of his place of birth, which was incorporated into Altona in 1889 and Hamburg in 1938 . As the senator responsible for culture and education in the magistrates under Bernhard Schnackenburg and Max Brauer , he pushed ahead with the expansion of workers' education and a wide range of theaters in the industrial city with 230,000 inhabitants (1928).

biography

Childhood and early professional career

August Kirch came from a large family of cigar workers ; As a schoolboy, he took on the role of reader in home work in his parents' house . As a result, despite the restrictions of the Socialist Law , he came into contact with the writings of the labor movement early on . He learned the profession of typesetter , joined the trade union during his apprenticeship and then wandered through Central Europe as a journeyman before returning to Northern Germany. He joined the SPD on March 6, 1898; later he acted as chairman of the workers' education association for Hamburg and Altona. In 1899 Kirch became one of the first members of the Hamburg production cooperative (membership number 9). In 1907 he took a position as executive secretary at the social democratic Auer Druck und Verlag GmbH, which u. a. who made the Hamburger Echo . He held this position until 1919. From 1909 to 1914 he directed the Volksschauspiele in Hamburg, from 1922 the Freie Volksbühne in Altona; During this time a close friendship developed with Leopold Jessner , the senior director of the Thalia Theater . In 1913 August Kirch, who at that time lived in Moortwiete (today: Daimlerstrasse) and was chairman of the Altona SPD, was elected as one of only five SPD members in the 35-member Altona city council. Altona was a working-class town, but due to the local statute with three-class voting rights , dignitaries and bourgeoisie dominated this body.

Political activity in the Weimar Republic

In the course of the German Revolution , Kirch was appointed Acting Senator Altonas in November 1918. In the election on February 28, 1919, he was again a city councilor; under the new electoral law, which for the first time also included women , majority and independent social democrats this time together received 63% of the votes or 42 of the 66 seats. In the municipal elections on September 28, 1919, he succeeded Ernst Heydemann , who had emigrated to Rostock, as a paid, d. H. full-time senator - the second youngest in the magistrate under Lord Mayor Bernhard Schnackenburg  - elected; He was responsible for culture and education, and initially also for social affairs. Kirch held this office even under Schnackenburg's successor, his party friend Max Brauer , and, according to the memoirs of the city archivist Paul Theodor Hoffmann, filled it with "witty wit, quick-wittedness and friendly demeanor [as well as] thorough expertise" he ...

“... was particularly successful in all cultural and folk education tasks. The theater was close to his heart. Kirch endeavored to turn the Altona municipal stage into an exemplary cultural theater with real educational goals. He also took on the artist sustainably ... "

In realizing these goals, he benefited from the improvement of the fiscal situation from 1927 onwards due to the expansion of the city according to the Groß-Altona law , which enabled the municipal authorities to considerably expand municipal services and offers.

The married couples Kirch and Brauer were also close friends in private; August Kirch was usually called “Uncle August” by Brauer's children. As early as 1909, when Brauer spoke to the Ottensen SPD party leadership for the first time, Kirch was amazed by "the young Dachs ... who [wanted] to join the board". After his re-election at the end of 1931, August Kirch remained a senator until he was ousted at the end of the Weimar Republic . He was temporarily responsible for the gardening, labor and welfare offices and from 1929 to 1931 for the police. In addition, he took care of social aspects of the project for his colleague Gustav Oelsner's municipal construction projects, such as the nurses' home of the municipal hospital on the Allee, which was inaugurated in 1927 . Around 1930 he supported Brauer's rigid policy against wild settlements ("Fischkistendörfer") by so-called "Gypsies" who "flood the city" (quote from Kirch) - in fact mostly welfare recipients and families who were impoverished as a result of the global economic crisis and who settled on wasteland in Osdorf and Flottbek had built the poorest dwellings. In the winter of 1931/32, however, this attitude of the magistrate was replaced by urban funding for “simple housing construction in self-help”, for example in Osdorf and Lurup .
In addition, Kirch worked in a number of social and honorary offices, for example on the board of the Altona Children's Hospital and from 1929 as a member of the NORAG cultural advisory board . For a monograph on Altona published in 1928, he wrote the chapter "The Stage Being". In 1930 he took over the treasury of the Altona Artists' Association .

Career break in the "Third Reich"

After the National Socialist " seizure of power " in Altona on the night of March 10th to 11th, 1933, Kirch was not spared from persecution either. Alongside Max Brauer, he had long been the target of a campaign in which the NSDAP party newspaper Hamburger Tageblatt accused him of receiving money from the director Max Ellen from 1927 - according to Ellen 8,000  RM , which Kirch had returned in 1931 - and accepted gifts and that To have subsidized Altonaer Schillertheater with high payments from the city budget. Kirch had therefore already been questioned by the public prosecutor on February 28, 1933 and had admitted that he had distributed 4,000 RM of it to artists in need, but could not fully prove this. Disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him, and the Schleswig-Holstein district president Wallroth ( DNVP ), who was appointed only after the “ Prussian strike ”, removed him from his office on March 1st. A commission of inquiry set up by the new Lord Mayor Emil Brix (NSDAP) came to the conclusion in a report on March 27th that Kirch, along with Brauer, Oelsner and Friedrich Schöning, was one of the main people responsible for the alleged financial disaster of Altona local politics.

He was later sentenced to a year and a half in prison. In August 1934, Kirch was released early , presumably because of the amnesty after Hindenburg's death. Afterwards August Kirch, who already had a “delicate constitution” in his childhood, apparently lived withdrawn in Altona. This is also supported by Brauer's retrospective suggestion ...

“Today it is still… a miracle that August Kirch got through this time alive. But the calumnies hurled against him have darkened his life for many years. ... To leave [Altona] would have been an exile and an uprooting for him. "

In 1935 Kirch worked there in the coal merchant Willy Hilse and supported a Social Democrat with money ( US $ 25  ) and tips (including a Brussels address for Brauer's) who wanted to travel to Switzerland to make contact with local socialists. The writings that he repeatedly smuggled into Germany were "distributed via Kirch". Kirch was not charged with a high treason trial against 16 members of the Altona SPD in November 1935, which the 3rd Criminal Senate of the Berlin Chamber Court negotiated in the building of the Altona Special Court . In August 1944 - presumably in connection with the massive arrests following the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20  - he was imprisoned again for 14 days; Nothing more is known about the circumstances. Apparently, however, there was no correspondence between the Brauer and Kirch in these twelve years.

Return to local politics from 1945

Soon after the end of the war , the British occupation forces appointed him as head of the local office, i.e. as head of the municipal administration of Altona, which has now been incorporated into Hamburg. At the same time he resumed his work in the SPD; In 1945 he became a member of a party commission under Friedrich Frank , which was supposed to coordinate local political work in Hamburg. Over the question of greater autonomy for the districts, in particular the cities of Altona, Harburg-Wilhelmsburg and Wandsbek , which were independent until 1938 , he clashed with Max Brauer, who had meanwhile returned to Germany and was elected First Mayor of Hamburg in 1946. underlined the need for decentralized management ”. In 1949 he became district (official) manager, until 1950 provisional, and remained so until April 1954. In this position, he proposed at the turn of the year 1949/50 that at least Altona's borders be restored to the extent of the beginning of 1937, including Eidelstedt and Stellingen ; in this he was supported by the district committee - as the district assemblies were initially called . With this concern, however, he failed in the so-called state committee, in which representatives of all newly created districts sat, and again he did not receive any support from Brauer. The main focus of his administrative work was the reconstruction of the city , which was badly damaged by the war , in particular the Altona old town , in which 60% of the housing stock had fallen victim to the bombs. The Neu-Altona-Plan was only tackled under Kirch's successor, Walther Kunze .
Even during this time, Kirch continued to be involved in the cultural field. As head of the Hamburg Volkskulturbund, he was one of the founders of Union Verlag (from 1949: Hammonia-Verlag) in 1946 and remained one of its partners until 1951.

August Kirch died a few days before his 80th birthday. The commemorative speech at his funeral at the Altona main cemetery at the Volkspark was given by his long-time political companion Max Brauer. In 1974 a street in the Bahrenfeld district was named after him. The Senator-Kirch-Stiftung has existed since 1954 from the legacy of an Altona woman who emigrated to the USA . Its sole purpose is to “help needy children and old people in the Altona district”, and its board of directors continues to this day four (former) district politicians and one member of the Kirch family - this was August Kirch himself until his death.

swell

• Max Brauer: August Kirch in memory. Commemorative speech of November 21, 1959 on the occasion of August Kirch's funeral, published by the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, State Press Office (without page numbering)
• District assembly Altona (Hrsg.): Chronicle of the district assembly Altona. From the minutes of 1949–2009. Self-published, HH-Altona 2009
• Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung - Archive of Social Democracy: Holdings SPD regional organization Hamburg, church documents:
  • a) Questionnaire for the members of the party executive committee (undated, 2nd half of 1945?)
  • b) British Military Government Personnel Questionnaire (November 17, 1945)
• Christa Fladhammer, Michael Wildt: Max Brauer in exile. Letters and speeches 1933–1946. Christians, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-7672-1219-6
• Paul Th. Hoffmann: Neues Altona 1919–1929. Ten years of building a major German city. 2 vol., E. Diederichs, Jena 1929
• Paul Th. Hoffmann: With the pointer of the world clock. Pictures and memories. A. Springer, Hamburg 1949

literature

• Anthony McElligott: Contested City. Municipal Politics and the Rise of Nazism in Altona 1917–1937. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1998, ISBN 0-472-10929-4
• Axel Schildt : Max Brauer. Ellert & Richter, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8319-0093-0
• SPD Altona (ed.): Nazi time in Altona. Brochure (1980)
• Christoph Timm: Gustav Oelsner and the New Altona. Municipal architecture and urban planning in the Weimar Republic. E. Kabel, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-921909-27-9
• Wolfgang Vacano / Kurt Dohrmann (eds.): Altona. Hamburg's historical gem with a future. Self-published, HH-Altona 1989

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} Hamburger Abendblatt ( memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) from December 16, 1969
2. ^ Brauer, 2nd page; also Hans-Kai Möller: Altona-Ottensen: blue haze and red flags. in: Urs-Justus Diederichs (Hrsg.): Schleswig-Holstein's way into the industrial age. H. Christians, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-7672-0965-9 , p. 34f.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Brauer, 3rd page
4. ↑ ^{a b} Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Doc. A)
5. ↑ Hoffmann (1929), Volume 1, p. 44
6. ↑ Fladhammer / Wildt, p. 84
7. ^ Wolfgang Vacano: Theater history in Altona. in: Vacano / Dohrmann, p. 135
8. ↑ according to the Altona city calendar 1916
9. ↑ McElligott, pp. 12 and 19; According to this, only about a quarter of the adults in Altona were eligible to vote in this election, a total of 35,652 people, of whom 32,246 (90.4%) belonged to the third class.
10. ↑ Hoffmann (1929), Volume 1, pp. 49f .; McElligott, pp. 23ff.
11. ↑ McElligott, p. 21; Fladhammer / Wildt, p. 18
12. ↑ Hoffmann (1929), Volume 1, p. 626; Christoph Timm: Building for the workers? New architecture 1919–1932. in: Exhibition group Ottensen / Altonaer Museum (Ed.): Ottensen. On the history of a district. Self-published, Hamburg 1982, p. 169
13. ↑ Hoffmann (1949), p. 258
14. ↑ Brauer, 1st page
15. ↑ Fladhammer / Wildt, p. 235
16. ↑ Die Welt of September 2, 1952, quoted in at Fladhammer / Wildt, p. 16
17. ↑ Timm, p. 151f.
18. ↑ District Assembly Altona, p. 13
19. ↑ Timm, p. 14
20. ↑ On this policy of the brewing magistrate in the crisis, see Schildt, p. 38f.
21. ↑ McElligott, pp. 76f.
22. ↑ A photo of the brewery magistrate around 1929 can be found in Timm, p. 23.
23. ↑ Timm, p. 148ff .; similar also this: A kind of wild west. The Altona unemployment settlements in Lurup and Osdorf from 1932. in: Arnold Sywottek (Hrsg.): The other Altona. Contributions to everyday history. results, Hamburg 1984, p. 159ff.
24. ↑ Dietrich Schacht: The Altona Children's Hospital and its work. in: Vacano / Dohrmann, p. 112; also on the website of the children's hospital ( memento of the original dated February 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
25. ↑ to Low German broadcasting district (PDF) from the website of the German Broadcasting Archive
26. ↑ Matthäus Becker (ed.): The city of Altona. Deutscher Kommunal-Verlag, Berlin 1928 (series “Monographs of German Cities”), p. 76ff.
27. ↑ For details, see this article .
28. ↑ After the speech excerpts from Hamburg's Second Mayor Edgar Engelhard at Kirch's official farewell in 1954, printed in the Altona district assembly, p. 13, there were even several stays in concentration camps, but no further details were given. Kirch's endangerment from 1933 can also be found in McElligott, p. 204, and Hoffmann (1949), p. 309, albeit only in general formulations.
29. ↑ Fladhammer / Wildt, pp. 24-27; according to Kirch's own memory (in Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Doc. b), this removal did not take place until March 5th; on the Hamburger Tageblatt campaign also Schildt, p. 44
30. ^ Timm, p. 160
31. ↑ based on a letter from Brauer dated May 16, 1934 from exile in China to a former administrative employee living in Los Angeles - Fladhammer / Wildt, p. 196
32. ↑ according to a letter from Max Brauer's son Werner to his father, August 23, dated 1934 (Fladhammer / Wildt, S. 235), and an exchange of letters Max Brauer with Rudolf Katz from early September of the same year (Fladhammer / Wildt, S. 238f .)
33. ↑ Brauer, 4th page
34. ↑ ^{a b} Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Doc. B)
35. ^ Rudolf Stobbe: One against (almost) all: Willi Opitz. in: SPD Altona, p. 29
36. ↑ Facsimile of the indictment in: SPD Altona, p. 24
37. ↑ The author Christa Fladhammer (see literature) at least does not recall having found such letters in the archives, and considers the clarification of the question of why this issue to be a desideratum (conversation with the main author of this article on February 9, 2010). Overall, the source situation regarding Kirch's for the period between 1934 and 1945 is almost a “blind spot”; Inquiries to the Altona SPD and the archives of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung also revealed only a few facts beyond the texts mentioned under sources . In regional passenger Archive FES Kirch also missing. After the war, Louise Schroeder reported to her niece Karla Seyfarth, who was an SPD district member of the SPD in the 1970s / 80s, of her "contacts with Kirch" in the later 1930s (written communication from Hans-Peter Strenge , 1984–1995 Altona district office manager, from 17 February 2010 to the lead author of this article).
38. ^ Holger Martens : Hamburg's way to the metropolis. From the Greater Hamburg Question to the District Administration Act. Association for Hamburg History, Hamburg 2004 ISBN 3-935413-08-4 , pp. 178 and 220f.
39. ^ Altona district assembly, p. 8ff.
40. ^ Hans-Peter Strenge : Altona - 50 years of Hamburg's district. in: Hartmut Hohlbein (Ed.): From the four-city area to the unified community. Altona Harburg-Wilhelmsburg Wandsbek go on in Greater Hamburg. State Center for Political Education, Hamburg 1988, p. 64f.
41. ^ District assembly Altona, pp. 8–13; on p. 8 there is also a photo of Kirch from the post-war period.
42. ^ Arthur Dähn (on behalf of the Hamburg building authority): Neu-Altona. Development plan of a war-torn city center area. Hammonia, Hamburg 1958, pp. 28-37; The legal basis for Kirch's work in this regard was the Hamburg development plan from 1950.
43. ↑ to the website of the Hammonia-Verlag ( Memento of the original from June 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
44. ↑ Horst Beckershaus: The Hamburg street names. Where do they come from and what they mean. E. Kabel / Hamburger Abendblatt, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-8225-0421-1 , p. 33
45. ^ Foundation statutes of April 24, 1954, §§ 3.1 and 5.2; In the spring of 2018, Gesche Boehlich , Mika Kirch, Stefan Krappa , Peter Wenzel and Olaf Wuttke (chairman) form the board. For more information on the foundation, see their website .

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 25, 2010 .