Bernhard Falk (politician)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bernhard Falk (1928)

Bernhard Selmar Falk (born March 26, 1867 in Bergheim ; † December 23, 1944 in Brussels ) was a Cologne lawyer, judiciary and German politician of the DDP .

family

Bernhard Falk was the son of the butcher Salomon Falk and his wife. In 1894 he married Else Wahl (born April 25, 1872), daughter of the banker Hermann Wahl and his wife from Barmen . The family lived in Cologne from 1898. The couple had four sons. The eldest son Alfred died in 1917 as an aviation officer, the second son Fritz Falk (born 1898), a lawyer at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court, committed suicide on September 11, 1933. Son Ernst H. Falk (born August 26, 1901; died 1978) fled with his parents in 1939, initially to Belgium and in 1940 via France to Brazil; his brother Hermann J. (born May 20, 1905) emigrated to Australia in 1932. After 1945 the widowed Else Falk moved to live with her son in Sao Paulo. She died there in January 1956.

Life and work

Bernhard Falk was of Jewish faith and, after graduating from high school in 1885, studied law in Bonn and Munich at the Apostle High School in Cologne . He passed the trainee exam on September 29, 1888. After the second state examination in law, he was appointed court assessor in May 1893. Since July 1893, Bernhard Falk was admitted to the bar at the District and Regional Court in Elberfeld and at the Chamber for Commercial Matters in Barmen . On May 1, 1898, he moved to the Cologne Higher Regional Court . During the First World War he was a captain of the Landwehr and a year adjutant to the district chief of Bastogne . In 1912 he was awarded the title of Counselor .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists and the law on admission to the bar in 1933, Bernhard Falk, as a former combatant and father of a son who died in the World War , was only able to join his Occupation remain. After Hindenburg's death , his license was finally revoked on November 30, 1938, in accordance with the fifth ordinance of September 27, 1938 . During the “ Reichspogromnacht ” his apartment at Agrippastraße 63 was devastated by the SA , whereupon Bernhard Falk emigrated to Brussels with his wife and son Ernst in April 1939 . There they found refuge at 41 rue Beffrai with a befriended judge and officer from Cologne and were long patronized by the German military authorities. Emigration to Switzerland was prevented by the Berlin authorities. Bernhard Falk died in Brussels on December 23, 1944.

In Cologne Longerich was Bernhard Falk street named after him.

CV newspaper, IV year, issue No. 26 from June 26, 1925

Political activity

In his youth, Bernhard Falk was active in the National Liberal Party . In 1918 he became a member of the left-wing liberal DDP . From 1908 to 1930 Falk was a city councilor in Cologne, where he had been chairman of the left-wing liberal parliamentary group from 1916. Since the election to the German National Assembly on January 19, 1919, he was a member of the Weimar National Assembly until the end of 1920. From 1924 to 1932 he was a member of the Prussian state parliament , where he was chairman of the DDP parliamentary group. Bernhard Falk was a member of the board of the Prussian City Council and was the managing director of the Cologne synagogue community . As a patriotic German Jew, he was on the main board of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith . On the occasion of the Cologne Millennium Exhibition in 1925, in the Cologne exhibition halls on the "thousand years that the Rhineland belonged to the German Empire", Bernhard Falk published the leading article in the CV newspaper with the title The German Jew on Rheinischer Erde .

literature

  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Volker Stalmann: Bernhard Falk (1867-1944). Liberal, Jew and German patriot . In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 24 (2012), pp. 161–192.
  • Klaus Luig : ... because he is not of Aryan descent. Jewish lawyers in Cologne during the Nazi era . Publishing house Dr. Schmidt KG, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-504-01012-6 , p. 174-176 .
  • Horst Matzerath , Elfi Pracht , Barbara Becker-Jákli (eds.): Jüdisches Schicksal in Köln 1918–1945 - Catalog for the exhibition of the Historical Archives of the City of Kön / NS Documentation Center (November 8, 1988 to January 22, 1989, in the Cologne City Museum / Alte Wache), City of Cologne 1988, pp. 44–45, 86–87.
  • Monika Grübel and Ursula Reuter in: Kölner Personen Lexikon . Ed .: Ulrich Soénius and Jürgen Wilhelm. Greven, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , pp. 147-148 .
  • Volker Stalmann : Rhenish left liberals in the Weimar Republic. Bernhard Falk and Anton Erkelenz. In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 30 (2018), pp. 177–199.

Web links

Commons : Bernhard Falk (politician)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Image of the obituary notice (PDF)
  2. ↑ Else Falk - Women History Wiki. In: Frauengeschichtsverein.de. Retrieved December 2, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Short biography as a jew. Students at the APG in: Otto Geudtner et alii: I am baptized as a Catholic and Arier Emons, Cologne 1985, p. 161 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Falk, Bernhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Falk, Bernhard Selmar (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cologne lawyer, judiciary and German politician of the DDP
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Bergheim
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1944
Place of death Brussels