Eduard Hamm

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Eduard Hamm 1929

Eduard Hamm (born October 16, 1879 in Passau , † September 23, 1944 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and politician ( DDP ) as well as an opponent and victim of National Socialism.

Life and work

Memorial plaque on the house, Otto-Suhr-Allee 143, in Berlin-Charlottenburg

The son of a higher regional judge attended the grammar schools in Metten and Deggendorf and passed his Abitur at the grammar school near Sankt Stephan in Augsburg . He then began studying law at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , which he completed in 1902 with the first state examination and in 1905 with the second state examination. Hamm received a scholarship from the Maximilianeum Foundation and was a member of the Academic Choral Society in Munich .

After graduating, Hamm entered the Bavarian civil service and had initially worked as an unskilled worker in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice from 1906, then worked as a third public prosecutor at the Munich II district court , in 1908/09 as a legal advisor in Lindau (Lake Constance) and as an assessor in the Memmingen district office . In 1911 he was appointed to the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior and in 1916 he was delegated to the Central Purchasing Company as a board member . In the following period he worked as a councilor in the Berlin War Food Office until he returned to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior in 1917 . At the beginning of 1918 he was appointed counselor in the trade department of the Bavarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs .

After the November Revolution and the end of the Munich Soviet Republic , Hamm was a member of the Bavarian State Parliament from July 15 to October 14, 1920 . He resigned his state parliament mandate after he had been elected to the German Reichstag in the Reichstag election in June 1920 , of which he was a member until 1924.

From May 31, 1919 to July 24, 1922, Hamm was Minister for Trade, Industry and Commerce in the governments of the Free State of Bavaria led by Prime Ministers Hoffmann , von Kahr and Lerchenfeld-Köfering . In 1922/1923 he was State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery under Wilhelm Cuno , and from November 30, 1923 to January 15, 1925, he was Reich Economics Minister under Reich Chancellor Wilhelm Marx .

After leaving the Reich government, Hamm was an executive member of the Presidium of the German Industry and Trade Congress from 1925 to 1933 , a member of the Provisional Reich Economic Council and editor of the German Business Newspaper , in which he criticized the NSDAP's economic program , among other things .

As early as 1920/1921 Hamm had denounced the "anti-Semitic agitation" of the National Socialists in the Bavarian cabinet and applied for a ban on the Völkischer Beobachter . After the Nazi regime came to power , Hamm was retired in 1933. He withdrew from active political life and worked as a lawyer in Berlin and Munich in the following years . He maintained his contacts, especially with the resistance group around Otto Geßler , Franz Sperr and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler . In the event of an overthrow, he was designated as state administrator for Bavaria in the Beck / Goerdeler shadow cabinet .

After the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Hamm was arrested by the Gestapo on September 2 as part of the “Grid” campaign and taken to the Lehrter Strasse cell prison , where he died under circumstances that have not yet been clarified. According to a Gestapo officer, he is said to have thrown himself out of the window during an interrogation and succumbed to the consequences of the fall. The suicide thesis was later taken up repeatedly in the literature and interpreted in such a way that Eduard Hamm wanted to avoid revealing the names of those who knew about it.

Eduard Hamm had been married to Maria von Merz since 1907 , with whom he had two daughters and a son.

Honorary grave at the forest cemetery in Munich .

He is buried in the Munich forest cemetery; his grave was declared an honorary grave by Lord Mayor Christian Ude . Part of his estate has been in the Passau City Archives since 2017.

Honors

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag

"Dr. hc Eduard Hamm, born October 16, 1879 in Passau, † September 23, 1944 in Berlin, Reich Minister of Economics from November 30, 1923 to January 15, 1925 in the Weimar Republic, important economic politician and staunch advocate of a social and liberal democracy. Member of the Reichstag of the German Democratic Party (DDP) from 1920 to 1924. Eduard Hamm gave an early warning of Nazi agitation. In 1933 the National Socialists removed him from civil service. Because of his involvement in the conspiracy against Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, he was arrested and lost his life during interrogations in Gestapo custody under circumstances that have not yet been clarified. Eduard Hamm died for his democratic and liberal convictions. "

  • On October 14, 2016, a memorial plaque for Eduard Hamm was unveiled in Passauer Bahnhofstrasse 10.
  • Eduard-Hamm-Straße in Passau is named after him, as is Hammstraße in Munich.

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Hardtwig : The Weimar Democrat Eduard Hamm 1879-1944. Personal profile and political action between the empire and the resistance . In: ders .: German historical culture in the 19th and 20th centuries . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-72461-5 , pp. 313-356.
  • Ders .: Freedom of the bourgeoisie in Germany. The Weimar Democrat Eduard Hamm between the Empire and the Resistance . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2018 (= Zeithistorische Impulse , Volume 14), ISBN 978-3-515-12094-4 .
  • Manuel Limbach: Eduard Hamm - A Weimar Liberal in the resistance against National Socialism . In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 23 (2011), pp. 241–255.
  • Ders .: Citizens against Hitler. Prehistory, structure and work of the Bavarian »Sperr-Kreis« . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2019 (= series of publications by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , Volume 102), ISBN 978-3-525-31071-7 .
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , p. 344 f. (Short biography).
  • Karlheinrich Rieker:  Hamm, Eduard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 586 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • 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 .
  • Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 647.

Web links

Commons : Eduard Hamm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book. Membership directory of all old men. As of October 1, 1937. Hanover 1937, p. 153.
  2. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hardtwig , Manuel Limbach: Citizens against Hitler. On the 70th commemoration of July 20, 1944, the Bavarian resistance group around Franz Sperr must also be remembered . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 18, 2014, p. 12, online .
  3. ↑ Elke Fischer: A valuable piece of history. In: Passauer Neue Presse . July 20, 2017, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Oberbayerisches Volksblatt , Chiemgau edition, September 27, 2011: Eduard Hamm died 67 years ago. Memory of a Nazi opponent .
  5. ^ BMWi, press release, September 24, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Unveiling of the Dr. hc Eduard Hamm | PASSAU. Retrieved January 25, 2017 .
  7. ^ Daniela Pledl: Monument for a real democrat. In: Passauer Neue Presse . October 15, 2016, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  8. ^ Bernhard Brunner: Illuminated figure against the Nazi regime. In: Passauer Neue Presse . October 17, 2019, accessed July 1, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Hamm, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (DDP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Passau
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1944
Place of death Berlin