Bruno Mann

Lord Mayor Bruno Mann

Bruno Mann (born October 16, 1874 in Frankfurt (Oder) ; †  June 3, 1938 in Eisenach ) was a German politician and Lord Mayor of Erfurt from 1919 to 1933 .

Live and act

Bruno Mann studied a. a. Law and Political Sciences at the University of Leipzig . In 1895 he became a member of the Leipzig University Choir at St. Pauli . After graduating as Dr. jur. and various career stations in June 1918 he rose to the position of second mayor of the then still independent Neukölln .

On October 11, 1919, the Erfurt city council elected him unanimously as mayor. This made him the first to be appointed to office by a freely elected city council. He was considered an “old school” liberal expert.

Mann took over his office in a very troubled time. The city of Erfurt had been shaken by strikes and unrest since the November Revolution of 1918. The Kapp Putsch of the spring of 1920 was the climax of the civil war-like clashes between left workers on the one hand, vigilante groups, police and military on the other. Eight dead and numerous injured were to be mourned. The efforts of Mayor Mann and representatives of the moderate parties in the city council to defuse the situation were unsuccessful.

It was not until 1924 that the situation calmed down again, which was associated with the relative economic upswing of the “Roaring Twenties”, which actually only lasted five years. Under Mann and his building authority manager Johannes Klass, the city ​​of Erfurt implemented large-scale municipal projects such as the construction of the airport , the gas supply, the Nordbad (1925/28), the Mitteldeutsche Kampfbahn stadium (1927/31) and the surgical clinic of the municipal hospital (1928/29 ). The municipal Angermuseum became a center of modern art with the support of Mann, who was chairman of the art association according to the statutes. In 1929 it even succeeded in making Erfurt a university town again with a pedagogical academy . The old Erfurt academy of non-profit sciences was reactivated. On December 1, 1929, the “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung” wrote about Bruno Mann: “ The citizens have to thank him deeply for the fact that, despite the post-war and inflationary hardship, Erfurt has enjoyed an upswing that only a few German cities can record. "

In the local elections in 1929, the NSDAP-affiliated “ Greater German Freedom Movement ” won 10 out of 52 city council mandates with 17.8 percent, which attracted attention across the Reich. Bruno Mann now had to deal with their leader Adolf Schmalix and at times led four libel trials against him at the same time.

At the end of 1929, numerous companies in Erfurt had to close or lay off employees as a result of the global economic crisis. Public life largely collapsed, and even the Pedagogical Academy was closed again in 1932. In the summer of 1932, more than one in three Erfurt residents was unemployed, and the city had long since lost its balance. In the Reichstag elections of July 1932 , the NSDAP received 42.2 percent in Erfurt.

In 1933, at the age of 59, Bruno Mann was pushed into retirement by the National Socialists and on March 31, 1933, he spoke to the city council that he wanted to " solemnly let the new national spirit enter our town hall ". His successor was the National Socialist Theodor Pichier (1933–1935).

Bruno Mann was the grandfather of the jazz musician Klaus Doldinger .

literature

• Steffen Raßloff : Civil War and the Roaring Twenties. Erfurt in the Weimar Republic . Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86680-338-1 .
• Steffen Raßloff: The Lord Mayor of Erfurt since 1872 . In: City and History. Magazine for Erfurt. Vol. 35 (2007), pp. 25-27.
• Friedrich Henning: Bruno Mann. Lord Mayor of Erfurt from 1919 to 1933 . In: Erfurt home letter. No. 8, June 5, 1964, p. 53 f.
• District Office Neukölln (Ed.): Rixdorf Town Hall - Neukölln Town Hall: On the occasion of the 100th anniversary. Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-026396-5 .

Web links

• Bruno Mann on www.erfurt-web.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Directory of the members of the Association of the Old Paulines in Leipzig 1937, ed. by Walter Seidel and Willmar Sichler, p. 32.