Erich Kapitzke

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Erich Kapitzke (born May 17, 1906 in Baden-Baden ; † November 11, 1991 in Eltville am Rhein ) was a German environmental activist. He was the founder and spokesman of the first German citizens' initiative .

Erich Kapitzke (1991) with Schinkel-Ring

Life

Erich Kapitzke grew up in Baden-Baden. After having worked for a bank in Baden for 10 years, he then worked for a decade in a large company in the luxury food industry in Berlin. At the end of the 1930s, his professional career took him to Eltville am Rhein , where he worked for three decades as managing director or commercial director of the sparkling wine cellars Matheus Müller KGaA (MM Sekt, today a production site of the Rotkäppchen-Mumm sparkling wine cellars ) and Gebr. Hoehl GmbH (today Part of the Bernard-Massard group of companies). In 1958 he founded the "Association for the Protection of the Eltviller-Wallufer Rheinuferlandschaft", which is considered the first citizens' initiative in the Federal Republic of Germany. The initiative fought against the route of a motorway-like planned expressway , which had been planned along the banks of the Rhine since the 1950s.

The dispute over the construction of the bypass escalated when Minister Karry ordered the planning approval decision in 1974 and ordered the construction work to be carried out immediately. In addition to taking legal action, Kapitzke and his colleagues in the “Association for the Protection of the Eltviller-Wallufer Rheinuferlandschaft” now also intensified their public relations work. In addition to countless newspaper advertisements and reports, 1500 letters were written to German politicians and personalities during this time alone. In 1976 a court overturned the "immediate execution" and a little later the Hessian Transport Minister Heinz-Herbert Karry overturned the planning approval decision for the solution on the banks of the Rhine due to the great resistance among the population. On August 18, 1989, a four-lane bypass road was opened, which leads around Walluf and Eltville to the north, in order to relieve the town centers of through traffic. It cuts through vineyards and crosses valleys. Kapitzke has documented his long struggle in 52 large photo albums, which he handed over to the Hessian State Archives in Wiesbaden. These are provided with the words “Therefore, the first commandment is to ensure that no documents that have become uncomfortable are removed! The folders must not be accessible to Eltviller or other administrations alone. Everyone later has to answer for what they did. "

Honors

In 1978, along with Lord Duncan Sandys and Christian Wallenreiter , Kapitzke was awarded the “Karl-Friedrich-Schinkel-Ring” from the German National Committee for Monument Protection . In the same year he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon and presented by his long-standing adversary, the Hessian Minister Heinz-Herbert Karry . Years later, the city of Eltville awarded him the "Eltville Honor Plate", which he returned. The reason for this was, on the one hand, the lack of support he received in the fight against the bypass road from the city of Eltville and, on the other hand, the fact that this everyday price does not do justice to his services for Eltville. In 1989 the citizens of Eltville put a plaque on the wall of the electoral castle Eltville for Erich Kapitzke and his colleagues, the publicist and writer Karl Korn and the city planner Edmund Gassner .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ wiesbadener-kurier.de
  2. ^ Minister Karry's foolish decision . In: The time . No. 43/1974 ( online ).
  3. ↑ That's why it stays so beautiful on the Rhine . In: Die Zeit , No. 15/1976
  4. ↑ Horst Hachmann: Death Sentence for a Landscape: Against Democracy and Reason . In: Die Zeit , No. 39/1968
  5. ↑ Oliver Bock: Eltville Northern Bypass - How the Small Riviera on the Rhine Was Saved In: FAZ , August 17, 2014
  6. ↑ Bernd Minges: B 42 bypass road near Eltville only single lane until the end of August . ( Memento from December 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: Wiesbadener Kurier , Walluf / Eltville edition, July 9, 2009
  7. ↑ Erich Kapitzke: The Eltville Case - A Documentation of the Recent History of the Rheingau by Dr. Renate Quermann . Published by: Stadtbildverein Eltville, June 2014
  8. ↑ Horst Johannes Tümmers: The Rhine: a European river and its history , 2. revised. Edition. CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44823-2 , p. 289 and related footnote 222 on p. 435.
personal data
SURNAME Kapitzke, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German environmentalist, founder of the first German citizens' initiative
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Baden-Baden
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1991
Place of death Eltville on the Rhine