Emil Franke (Mayor)

District Mayor Dr. jur. Emil Franke with his wife Charlotte and the children Waltraud and Eberhard, car and chauffeur 1927

Emil Franke (born March 2, 1880 in Oranienburg , † April 28, 1945 in Königs Wusterhausen ) was a German national politician of the DNVP . From 1924 to 1936 he was district mayor of Berlin-Wilmersdorf .

Life

Emil Franke was born in Oranienburg in 1880 as the son of an innkeeper. In 1883 the family moved to Berlin. After attending the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin, Franke studied law and political science at the universities of Marburg, Munich and Berlin and then embarked on a legal career. He put 1904 his first state examination at the Regional Court of Berlin, and was supported by the University of Leipzig Dr. jur. PhD. In 1909 the major state examination followed and then Franke was judge of civil proceedings and land registry at the district courts of Köpenick and Charlottenburg . In 1910 he married Charlotte Prasse, the daughter of the owner of the Patzenhofer brewery. He took onFirst World War as Rittmeister of the Reserve and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class .

District Mayor of Berlin-Wilmersdorf

In October 1910 he came to the municipal administration of the then independent city of Deutsch-Wilmersdorf , where he was appointed legal assistant in June 1911. On April 1, 1913, he was appointed magistrate and on October 1, 1919 as a magistrate. In February 1920 the city council elected him a paid city councilor. Shortly after the local elections in 1920 were declared invalid, he joined the DNVP in April 1921 and was appointed first deputy to the district mayor Karl Augustin of the newly founded district of Wilmersdorf in March 1921 .

When he had been elected by the Charlottenburg district councilors to be district mayor of Charlottenburg, Franke became district mayor of Wilmersdorf on September 3, 1924. For one session he was the deputy chairman of the German Association of Cities and was a member of the supervisory board of the city's gas and electricity works. He also acted as a consultant at the Charlottenburg City Opera . Events such as the opening of the Wilmersdorfer Mosque on Brienner Strasse (1928), the inauguration of the Kreuzkirche (1929), the inauguration of the Sankt Gertrauden Hospital (1930), the inauguration of the Martin Luther Hospital (1931), the inauguration of the Artists' colony Berlin (1927–1931), closure of the Luna Park (1934), inauguration of the church on Hohenzollernplatz (1934) and finally the 1936 Olympic Games . The development of the Wannsee lido was particularly close to his heart, which according to his idea was expanded into a spacious facility for thousands of people. Until the regional reform in 1938 , large parts of the Grunewald with the Wannsee belonged to the Wilmersdorf district.

As a tried and tested national civil servant , he kept his post as one of the few district mayors even after the National Socialists came to power until his term in office ended in 1936, as he essentially acted in their favor. However, Franke did not want to join the National Socialist idea, he did not join the NSDAP . The signal effect that he exerted above all on the German national employees of the district office should not be underestimated. In order to control Franke, the Nazi city councilor Humbert was put at his side, who countersigned all personal matters. In March 1933 Franke dismissed the unpaid SPD city councilors Emmel and Oppel and the Jewish welfare workers Blumenthal and Landsberg.

At the end of 1934, the local political office of the NSDAP operated Franke's disempowerment. When the "old fighter" Hermann Petzke became his deputy at the beginning of 1936 , Franke was sidelined until the end of his term of office in September 1936. After his retirement, Franke pushed for continued employment in the civil service and found a job as the first district syndic in the Teltow district . Franke lived around 1909 on Augustastraße 67 (today Blissestraße), from 1920 to 1933 Düsseldorfer Straße 46 and from 1933 on Meierottostraße 13. From December 1936 he was the syndic of the Teltow district . When his service villa at Meirottostraße 13 was destroyed by bombs on November 13, 1943, he moved into an emergency apartment in the local hospital in Königs Wusterhausen. When the city was captured by Soviet troops, he and other people committed suicide there on April 28, 1945. He is buried in the Wilmersdorf cemetery.

literature

• Udo Christoffel: Berlin Wilmersdorf. The years 1920 to 1945 . Ed .: Kunstamt Wilmersdorf. Wilhelm Möller KG, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-9801001-1-1 , p. 10 ff .
• Karl-Heinz Metzger, Monika Schmidt, Herbert Wehe, Martina Wiemers: Local government under the swastika. Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1933-1945 . Ed .: District Office Wilmersdorf of Berlin. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-89468-057-1 , p. 48 .
• Berlin's district mayor . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 7, 1997, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 120–127 ( luise-berlin.de - here, p. 124).
• Hainer Weißpflug: Franke, Emil . In: Hans-Jürgen Mende , Kurt Wernicke (Hrsg.): Berliner Bezirkslexikon, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf . Luisenstadt educational association . Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-7759-0479-4 ( luise-berlin.de - as of October 7, 2009).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Augustastraße 67 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1911, Berliner Adreßbuch: for d. Year 1911> V. suburbs of Berlin> Dt. Wilmersdorf> B. Directory of the streets with all the houses and building sites together with details of the owners, administrators and tenants, p. 716.
2. ↑ Düsseldorfer Strasse 46 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1932, Berliner Adreßbuch: for d. Year 1932> Part IV. Residents and companies sorted by street> Wilmersdorf administrative district> Wilmersdorf> AG, p. 1325.
3. ↑ Meierottostraße 13 . In: Berlin address book , 1935, Berlin address book: for d. Year 1935> Residents and companies sorted by street> Wilmersdorf administrative district> Wilmersdorf> M- R, p. 1310.