Bruno Kurowski

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Bruno Kurowski (born January 12, 1879 in Marienburg , † 1944 in Danzig ) was a German lawyer and politician ( center ) in Danzig.

Live and act

Kurowski was born in Marienburg as the son of a Catholic master tailor. After graduating from high school, he studied law at the Albertina in Königsberg . As a student he became an active member of the Catholic student union Borussia-Königsberg in the KV . Following his work as an assessor at the Gdansk District Court, he settled down as a lawyer and notary in the Hanseatic city.

In January 1919 Kurowski was elected as a candidate for the center in the Weimar National Assembly, in which he represented the constituency of Danzig. After the city of Danzig was separated from the German Reich due to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles , Kurowski left the National Assembly. Instead, he became head of the Center Party in the now free city of Danzig and a member and faction leader of the Center in the Danzig People's Day . In 1920 he also became the city's parliamentary senator . Kurowski also served as Consul General and Honorary Consul in Gdansk for the Austrian state . Kurowski had married the lawyer Aenne Schmitz as early as 1920 , with whom he ran a joint legal practice. Through Maria Schmitz, his wife's sister, he was related by marriage to Maria's husband, the metallurgist, Krupp board member and Speer employee Eduard Houdremont .

Kurowski caused a certain stir when, in his capacity as legal representative of the center, he documented cases in which elections were publicly (instead of secretly) or in other ways freedom of choice was restricted in Gdansk .

Because of his work as Austrian consul general, Kurowski was arrested in October 1937 and charged with high treason . After the self-dissolution of the Danzig section of the Center Party and the abandonment of the Center to a protest at the League of Nations responsible for Danzig in Geneva, the trial against Kurowski was suppressed by the authorities as a "consideration" (League of Nations Commissioner was Carl Jacob Burckhardt ). Kurowski was released from custody and expelled from Gdansk on the condition that he would no longer be allowed to enter Gdansk in the future. While his wife stayed in Gdansk until 1945 as a lawyer, Kurowski first went to Austria, but then - after the Nazi annexation - moved to Italy in early 1938. Since he could not find permanent accommodation in Italy, Kurowski made his way to St. Tönis . There he hid in his wife's parents' house until it was badly damaged by an aerial bomb during the Second World War . Kurowski then went to Pomerania, where his wife had found him legal representation. When the owner of the firm was released from military service, Kurowski had to vacate the firm.

In March 1940 Kurowski was arrested again, this time by the Gestapo . Kurowski's brother-in-law Eduard Houdremont , since 1942 the Reich's special representative for the metal conversion to savings materials, went to Hermann Göring , among others , in order to obtain his release. After consulting with the Reich Security Main Office , Houdremont at least managed to ensure that Kurowski was not sent to a concentration camp. Kurowski was later released again. With the help of his wife, Kurowski managed to find a new hiding place in the convent of the Gray Sisters in Danzig-Oliva . But when his health deteriorated so that a hospital stay became necessary, he had to give up this hiding place in order to seek treatment: Kurowski's wife turned to the Gdańsk police chief for this purpose and demanded that her husband be banned from living in Gdańsk canceled so that he could legally seek medical treatment. After this happened, Kurowski was admitted to a Gdańsk hospital, where he died in 1944.

Kurowski's wife continued to work as a lawyer in Gdansk until the city was occupied by the Red Army in 1945 . She then went to Krefeld, where she was one of the first women in Germany to take on the post of government commissioner before joining the Foreign Office in 1952.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Place and date of birth according to Arnold Dreyblatt, Jan Faktor and Heiko Idensen: Bruno Who's Who in Central and East Europe, 1933. ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dreyblatt.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Eine Reise in den Text , 1995, p. 125. Year of death according to Elke Seefried: Reich and Stands , 2006, p. 581. The place of death [but not the year of death] can be found in Martin Schumacher: Mdl Das Ende der Parliaments 1933 and the members of parliament der Landtag , 1995, p. 89.
  2. ^ Siegfried Koß in Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon des KV. 7th part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 9). Akadpress, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-939413-12-7 , p. 84.
  3. ^ Wilhelm Kosch and Eugen Kuri: Biographisches Staatshandbuch. Lexicon of Politics, Press and Journalism , 1963, p. 724
  4. ↑ Ulrich Kalkmann: The Technical University of Aachen in the Third Reich (1933-1945) , 2003, p. 531.
  5. ↑ Ernst Sodeikat, "National Socialism and the Danzig Opposition" (PDF; 6.4 MB) in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 1966, p. 157.
  6. ↑ Ludwig Biewer and Udo Arnold: Between the World Wars , 1986, p. 87.
  7. ↑ Wolfhard Weber: Engineers in the Ruhr Area , 1999, p. 545.
  8. ↑ Ulrich Kalkmann: The Technical University of Aachen in the Third Reich (1933-1945) , 2003, p. 531.
  9. ^ Society of Exile Studies: Exilforschung. An international yearbook , 2000, p. 144.
  10. ^ Kurt Forstreuter and Fritz Gause: Old Prussian Biography . 1961, p. 1847.
personal data
SURNAME Kurowski, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (center)
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Marienburg
DATE OF DEATH 1944
Place of death Danzig