Bernhard Schnackenburg

Bernhard Schnackenburg, around 1905

Bernhard Schnackenburg (born July 5, 1867 in Schwetz ( Polish : Świecie nad Osą ); † January 27, 1924 in Altona ) was a German politician . From 1909 until his death he was Lord Mayor of the Prussian city ​​of Altona.

Life

The son of a mill owner studied law . After his exams and traineeship training , he embarked on a municipal administration career in the Kingdom of Prussia . He was elected city ​​councilor in Poznan , then in Halle (Saale) and then mayor or mayor of Friedenau (at that time a rural community near Berlin ).

On June 16, 1909, he was elected Lord Mayor of Altona . He also represented the city in the Schleswig-Holstein provincial parliament and in the Prussian manor house . As early as 1910, in a memorandum to the Prussian State Ministry, he outlined the need for this densely populated and densely built-up industrial city with its high proportion of workers to expand. From 1911 he negotiated with the neighboring communities of Eidelstedt , Stellingen , Langenfelde and Lokstedt about their incorporation into Altona; the outbreak of World War I temporarily interrupted these plans. Schnackenburg was in the tradition of its predecessors (especially Franz Adickes ), but did not experience the success of these efforts with the Groß-Altona law of 1927.

From May to August 1919, the administrative specialist Schnackenburg also exercised the office of Chief President of his native province of West Prussia . There he stood by Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe in the Eastern State Plan .

Schnackenburg embodied the type of apolitical Prussian civil servant in the Empire as well as in the Weimar Republic , who repeatedly clashed violently with the social democratic faction in the Altona city council and the magistrate members provided by the SPD .

On the other hand, he countered the threat to the Altona town hall from local sympathizers of the Kapp Putsch and, above all, worked intensively on improving living conditions in the "Red Altona". Despite the chaotic post-war years, the German inflation and the particularly tight city finances, the Magistrate under Schnackenburg created a considerable number of social and health care facilities, including the Altonaer Volkspark as an exemplary recreational area.

In addition to his position at the head of the city administration, he was from 1919 to 1921 for the German Democratic Party (DDP) member of the Prussian Constitutional Assembly .

He also published poems under the pseudonym Bernhard Burg until the end. He died of typhoid at the age of 56 . In Altona the Schnackenburgallee and in Berlin-Friedenau the Schnackenburgstraße reminds of him.

See also : Mayor of Altona

literature

• Helmut Stubbe da Luz : Schnackenburg, Bernhard . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 2 . Christians, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1366-4 , pp. 374-375 .
• Helmut Stubbe da Luz: The Lord Mayors. Heinrich Denicke, Harburg. Bernhard Schnackenburg, Altona. Erich Wasa Rodig, Wandsbek. (Hamburgische Lebensbilder Vol. 6), Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-923356-46-3 .
• Paul Theodor Hoffmann : Neues Altona 1919–1929. E. Diederichs, Jena 1929.
• Hans-Dieter Loose: Altona and the Greater Hamburg Question in: Hartmut Hohlbein: From the four-city area to a unified community . Hamburg 1988 (State Center for Political Education).
• Fabian Krahe: Bernhard Schnackenburg, Mayor. In: Olaf Matthes / Ortwin Pelc : People in the Revolution. Hamburg portraits 1918/19. Husum Verlag, Husum 2018, ISBN 978-3-89876-947-1 , pp. 161-163.
• Holmer Stahncke: 'Altona and the Revolution 1918/19. Departure into local democracy '. Hamburg 2018 (State Center for Civic Education Hamburg).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Herbert Michaelis, Ernst Schraepler (ed.): Schnackenburg, Bernhard. In: From the German collapse in 1918 and 1945 to the state reorganization of Germany in the present. Biographical register, part 2: L to Z , Wendler, Berlin 1979. p. 679.