Bernard Povel

Bernard Povel on a 1949 federal election poster

Bernardus Povel , called Bernard or Ben (born August 28, 1897 in Amsterdam , † October 21, 1952 in Munich ) was a German politician ( CDU ) and industrialist.

Origin and occupation

His father, Hermann Povel, as a Catholic-Guelph opponent of Prussia, had evaded shortly before being drafted into the Prussian army in Amsterdam. Bernard Povel attended the Catholic elementary school in Heemstede near Haarlem until 1910, where the family moved in 1904. In 1907 Povel received Dutch citizenship . Since the family business Ludwig Povel & Co , a leading textile factory in Nordhorn , expanded strongly, his father should return and join the management. His applied for re-naturalization was initially rejected because he had not completed military service, but after a petition from the Dutch mother to Kaiser Wilhelm II , the application was granted. In 1908 the family moved to Nordhorn, where Bernard Povel attended elementary school until 1910, then the principal school. Since there was no possibility of taking the Abitur in the county of Bentheim , he switched to a school in Münster. Povel volunteered as a war volunteer, losing his Dutch citizenship, and graduated from high school in 1915 . Until 1918 he took part in the First World War.

After the war, he studied economics and social sciences and a PhD from the University of Cologne Dr. rer. pole. There he became a member of the KDSt.V. in 1919 . Rappoltstein in the CV . In 1922 he joined the family company, which was still expanding rapidly, and in 1923 became a partner in the limited partnership Povel in Nordhorn. In August 1927, the company had 1,513 employees and was the city's second largest textile company, a center of the German textile industry.

Povel was very interested in economics and social sciences, theology and history and built up a sizable private library. Politically he supported the Catholic Center Party until 1933 . In 1933 he joined the Stahlhelm , whose local leader, Friedrich Illies , was the head of a conservative resistance group. When the Stahlhelm was forced to join the National Socialist SA in 1935, he resigned from the latter. From 1939 to 1942 Povel was drafted and took part in the war mainly as an interpreter, first in the Netherlands, later in Belgium and France. During the Nazi era, Povel made it possible for some Jewish employees and business friends he knew, such as Carl Joel, Franz and Rose Laqueur, William Aleksandrowicz, Walter Salomonson, Rudolf Harburger and H. Grabowski, to flee Germany. In some cases, even by being a well-known manufacturer, chauffeuring them across the Dutch border in the hope of not being checked. He also contributed to the fact that the Nordhorn textile industry survived the invasion of the Allies in 1945 unscathed and was not, as ordered, destroyed before the German withdrawal.

His company quickly resumed production after 1945 and employed a good 2,200 people at the beginning of the 1950s.

Political activity

The British appointed the entrepreneur to the first appointed Grafschafter Kreisag in 1945 , to which he belonged again from 1948. At the same time, Povel was active on the Nordhorn city ​​council from 1946 to 1948 . Povel was one of the founders of the CDU in the county of Bentheim in 1946 and was its district chairman from 1949 to 1950. In the election to the first Bundestag in 1949 , Povel won the mandate of the Emsland constituency . In the Bundestag he was committed to promoting the long-neglected Emsland and founded a secretariat Emsland , which he financed from his own resources. At the same time he supported efforts to reject Dutch territorial claims, which ultimately contributed to the adoption of the Emsland Plan by the Bundestag in May 1950.

He also campaigned for the Works Constitution Act , of which he had introduced essential parts in his company as early as 1947.

Works

• The Nordhorn textile industry. Diss. Phil. Cologne 1922.
• Some newspaper articles on Nordhorn's textile history.

literature

• Christof Haverkamp: The development of the Emsland in the 20th century as an example of state regional economic development. Edited by the Emsland landscape (= Emsland / Bentheim. Contributions to history, vol. 7), Sögel 1991.
• Gerhard Plasger: Art. Povel, Bernardus, in: Emsländische Geschichte. Vol. 6. Ed. By the Study Society for Emsland Regional History, Dohren 1997, pp. 278–282.
• Gerhard Plasger: Dr. Ben Povel, the first member of the Grafschaft Bentheim and the districts of Meppen and Aschendorf-Hümmling in the German Bundestag. In: Bentheimer Jahrbuch 1998 (= Das Bentheimer Land vol. 143), Bad Bentheim 1997, pp. 235–250.
• Aloys Schaefer / Erhard Müller / Klemens Tietmeyer: 40 years CDU Grafschaft Bentheim. Published by the CDU Grafschaft Bentheim, Nordhorn 1986.

Web links

Commons : Bernard Povel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Bernard Povel in the catalog of the German National Library