Wiesbaden administrative district

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The Wiesbaden administrative district in 1905

The Wiesbaden administrative district was, along with Darmstadt and Kassel, one of the three Prussian administrative districts that made up the State of Hesse in 1945. It existed from 1867 to 1968.

history

Seal of the Royal Prussian Government - Wiesbaden

The Wiesbaden administrative district was created by a Prussian ordinance of March 22, 1867 from the former Duchy of Nassau , the Free City of Frankfurt , the Homburg vor der Höhe district , the Biedenkopf district , the northwestern part of the Gießen district (Bieber, Fellinghausen, Frankenbach, Haina, Hermannstein, Königsberg, Krumbach, Naunheim, Rodheim, Waldgirmes), the district of Rödelheim and the previously Grand Ducal Hessian part of Niederursel after the German War of 1866 , when the Duchy of Nassau was annexed by Prussia and together with the Electorate of Hesse and the Free City of Frankfurt and parts of Hessen-Darmstadt was united to form the province of Hessen-Nassau . Immediately after the war, Robert von Patow was civil governor for Nassau and Frankfurt as well as for Upper Hesse from August 11, 1866 . The first district president Gustav von Diest took office on March 2, 1867. Before that, he had been district administrator of the Prussian district of Wetzlar since 1858 and civil commissioner in Nassau since July 31, 1866. The administration of the administrative district began its work in full on October 1, 1867.

The administrative district initially retained the old division of the Nassau offices and the local officials employed there. At the same time, the following districts were created as a superordinate administrative level, each of which summarized a few administrative districts and included the areas of Hessen-Homburg, Hessen-Darmstadt and Frankfurt and only left out the city of Wiesbaden:

In 1886, with the new district order of the province of Hessen-Nassau, the offices were dissolved as an administrative level. At the same time, the existing circles were made smaller and new circles created. The district administration itself consisted of a little more than half of officials from Old Prussian areas. The official staff of the district president took over the Nassau ministerial building at Luisenstrasse 13 in Wiesbaden . After the turn of the century, individual departments were housed in an authority building on Rheinstrasse .

Gustav von Diest was transferred to Danzig in 1869 because, as a conservative, he had fought violent arguments with the liberal Karl Braun . Otto von Bismarck wanted to keep Braun, who was one of the leaders of the national liberal parliamentary group, well balanced and therefore promoted Diests transfer. His successor, Botho zu Eulenburg , who was quite young at the age of 37 , only stayed in the administrative district for a short time and in 1872 took over the position of head of administration as President of the Lorraine district, which had just become part of Germany . His successor Lothar von Wurmb was to complete the longest term of office of a Wiesbaden district president as a quiet, inconspicuous administrative officer at the age of 18 and died in service in 1890.

Viktor von Tepper-Laski , government president from 1890 to 1897, was noticed, among other things, because he influenced the state elections in the Biedenkopf district and thereby won the mandate there. When he complained in 1897 that the war clubs were given bad seats at an imperial parade in Bad Homburg, Wilhelm II had him transferred to Pomerania as a punishment. His two successors only used the regional president's office as a transit station for higher administrative offices. With Karl Wilhelm von Meister from Frankfurt , who was a personal confidante of Wilhelm II, someone who did not come from the old Prussian heartland took over this office for the first time in 1905. Meister resigned from office in 1919 because of the so-called Dorten putsch .

In the years after the war, administrative work was severely hampered by the Allied occupation of the Rhineland with the bridgeheads at Mainz and Koblenz, by separatist movements and the war in the Ruhr .

Only under Fritz Ehrler did a creative administrative work begin again, especially with the reorganization of the districts and independent cities from 1926 to 1928. On August 1, 1932, the district of Wetzlar, which had previously been part of the Koblenz administrative district, was incorporated. On July 1, 1944, the districts of Gelnhausen , Hanau and Schlüchtern were assigned to the administrative district of Wiesbaden from the Kassel administrative district in order to prepare the planned division of the empire into "Gaue", which was never implemented due to the rapidly advancing war. These structures remained unchanged until the regional reform in Hesse in 1974 and are largely preserved today.

After the end of the Second World War , the western part of the administrative district of Wiesbaden with the four districts of Oberwesterwaldkreis , Sankt Goarshausen , Unterlahnkreis and Unterwesterwaldkreis was placed under French occupation . In 1946 they became part of the newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate as the administrative district of Montabaur .

The main part of the administrative district of Wiesbaden came under American administration and thus became part of the state of Hesse. It comprised the city ​​districts of Frankfurt am Main , Hanau and Wiesbaden as well as the districts of Biedenkopf , Dillkreis , Gelnhausen , Hanau , Limburg , Main-Taunus-Kreis , Oberlahnkreis , Obertaunuskreis , Rheingaukreis , Schlüchtern , Untertaunuskreis , Usingen and Wetzlar .

The American occupation administration again resorted to the old administrative districts and on May 1, 1945 appointed Hans Bredow as president. Until the Greater Hesse state government began its work in Wiesbaden on October 15, the regional council was the highest German authority under the occupation administration and was responsible for almost all civil tasks. The old building of the regional council was the seat of the command of the American Air Force in Europe until 1953 , so that the presidential administration was initially housed in three former hotels in Taunusstrasse. Gradually, it expanded to include up to fourteen official seats scattered across Wiesbaden city center. On July 1, 1964, construction began on a new administrative building for the administration of the regional council opposite Wiesbaden's main train station , which is now the Hessian Ministry of the Interior and Sports .

On May 6, 1968, the Wiesbaden administrative district was dissolved and its area was assigned to the Darmstadt administrative district.

During the district reform, which was essentially carried out in Hesse between 1972 and 1977, in the Central Hesse area partially until 1979, the districts were merged into larger administrative units and the independent city of Hanau was integrated into the Main-Kinzig district . Since the completion of the district reform in Hesse in 1979 and after the formation of the new administrative district of Gießen in 1981, the area of ​​the former administrative district of Wiesbaden now extends to the two administrative districts of Darmstadt and Gießen.

District President

District Association Wiesbaden

The Wiesbaden district association, also known as Nassau district association, was created as a higher municipal association through the administrative reform of 1885/1886 . He combined the districts of the administrative district into a self-governing body , which fulfilled the tasks that a provincial association would otherwise take over. The representative body was the Wiesbaden Municipal Parliament , which existed from 1868. The district association was responsible for economic and social policy, for cultural promotion and transport planning. In 1953 its tasks and facilities were transferred to the new State Welfare Association of Hesse .

State Director and Governors

Country Director:

Governor :

District level institutions

Just five years after the creation of the Wiesbaden administrative district, the Fire Brigade Association for the Wiesbaden administrative district was founded on July 27, 1872 (renamed the Nassau Fire Brigade Association after the First World War ) in the Römersaal in Wiesbaden. Fire director Karl-Hermann Scheurer from Wiesbaden was elected chairman at this inaugural meeting. The protocol shows that Kaiser Wilhelm I was also present.

literature

  • Karl Müller: Prussian Eagle and Hessian Lion - One Hundred Years of Wiesbaden Government 1866–1966 . Wiesbaden 1966.
  • Andreas Anderhub: Administration in the Wiesbaden district 1866 - 1885 . Historical commission for Nassau , Wiesbaden 1977.
  • Eckhart G. Franz : The Chronicle of Hesse . Chronik Verlag, Dortmund 1991, ISBN 3-611-00192-9 .
  • Franz-Josef Sehr : The foundation of the Nassau Fire Brigade Association . In: Yearbook for the Limburg-Weilburg district 2012 . The district committee of the district of Limburg-Weilburg, Limburg-Weilburg 2011, ISBN 3-927006-48-3 , p. 65-67 .
  • Nassau parliamentarians. A biographical manual. Part 2: The municipal parliament of the administrative district of Wiesbaden 1868–1933. Arranged by Barbara Burkardt and Manfred Pult. Historical commission for Nassau : Wiesbaden 2003. ISBN 978-3-930221-11-0 .

Lore

Sources on the history of the Prussian administrative district of Wiesbaden can be found in the Hessian Main State Archives in Wiesbaden.

Web links

Commons : Wiesbaden District  - Collection of images, videos and audio files