Erich Klabunde

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Saying at the house in Weimarer Strasse Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg

Erich Klabunde (born February 20, 1907 in Hamburg ; † November 21, 1950 in Bad Pyrmont ) was a German journalist and politician of the SPD who promoted the founding of the Northwest German Broadcasting Corporation and the founding of social housing in post-war Germany.

biography

Family, education and work

Klabunde grew up in Berlin as the son of a book printer and completed an apprenticeship in banking in 1926. He then studied at the University of Hamburg until 1930 without a degree “across the board”, including newspaper studies. Journalism became his "great passion"; From 1927 to 1933 he was employed by Alexander Zinn at Hamburger Anzeiger, first as a volunteer and then as an editor.

Since 1926 member of the SPD and the Socialist Student Union , he was after the seizure of power of the National Socialists dismissed for political reasons and was given an employment ban for one year. During this time Klabunde married the lawyer Clara Genter (November 1934) . From then on he worked as an auditor in Pinneberg and, in 1935, succeeded Erich Lüth as managing director of the Hamburg-based Association of German Sewing Machine Dealers . From 1939 he worked for institutions involved in housing policy and published ideas in the specialist press on how social housing could be financed. During the Second World War he was obliged to serve in the Todt Organization . His biographer Holger Martens writes that Klabunde “should” have held “the rank of officer”.

In associations and politics

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, he made connections with journalists who were friends. Together with them, he founded the professional association of Hamburg journalists in 1945 and headed it ever since, as did the association of North German journalists from 1946. After organizing the first German Journalists' Day , he was elected first chairman of the German Association of Journalists in Berlin in December 1949 . Josef Müller-Marein judged his daily political association work at the time that Klabunde was “not only not a journalist, but more inclined ... to serve his party, namely the SPD, as the interests of the press”. Klabunde was also involved in setting up the Northwest German Broadcasting Corporation ( NWDR) in the main committee there (now the Broadcasting Council ).

Klabunde continued his work as managing director of the Association of North German Housing Entrepreneurs in the post-war period . As early as August 1945, he presented his far-reaching ideas of comprehensive funding for housing construction to an SPD working group, which were not considered feasible in the situation at the time, but formed the basis for his further political commitment. In 1947 the British occupation authorities appointed him to the zone advisory board as a specialist in non-profit housing construction . In addition, he became managing director of the general association of non-profit housing companies for the British zone of occupation and initiated the trade journal charitable housing as its publication organ . In March 1949 he achieved the merger of the housing associations of the three western occupation zones with 2,000 companies and 700,000 apartments, which he again took over as chairman. In 1946, Klabunde turned against what he perceived to be the widespread economic bureaucracy that he held against economic freedom; In doing so, he combined the basic socialist value of freedom with that of the entrepreneur as well as the worker to effectively demand greater scope for action in the economy.

From 1946 Klabunde was a member of the Hamburg citizenship , where he was elected parliamentary group leader of the SPD and became part of the political prominence; so he associated with the later Federal Bank chief Karl Klasen and the later Federal Minister of Economics Karl Schiller . In the federal election in 1949 , he was elected to the German Bundestag via the Hamburg state list of the SPD , to which he belonged until his untimely death in 1950. As a member of the Housing Committee, he played a key role in the creation of the First Housing Act of April 24, 1950 , “his great coup”, which provided social housing in the Federal Republic with a solid foundation. Although he was an opposition member, he succeeded in anchoring his key points in law and in bringing about an almost unanimous decision of the Bundestag; the "high point of his life", as Marina Friedt says.

Death and tributes

Gravestone Klabunde in the women's garden
Klabundeweg in Hamburg-Bergstedt

After a stroke at a meeting of the NWDR main committee on November 18, 1950, he died shortly afterwards at the age of 43. Adolf Grimme praised the Klabunde, who is considered a young talent, ready to lead and rhetorically gifted, as a “dreaded sovereign quick-witted dialectic, always ready to jump into the intellectual tournament”. He fought hard battles with Hamburg journalists as well as with people from his own camp. As “one of the founders of social housing”, the controversial fighter set accents, which was “not just social commitment”, “but at the same time a question of the system”, since for him it was related to the anchoring of democratic values.

Erich Klabunde (like his wife Clara Klabunde in 1994) was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery , grid square Z 11, 169 (south of Norderstrasse ). The tombstone has been in the women's garden cemetery area since July 2020 .

According to him, roads have been designated in all of West Germany, according to a survey of the time from January 2018 eleven in number, including the Klabundeweg in Hamburg-Bergstedt , Soltau and Lunen , the Erich-Klabunde Street in Bremen- stone gate and in the district of Kassel Auefeld as well as the Erich-Klabunde-Hof in Hanover . In addition, since 1957 (and every year since 1996) the professional association of Hamburg journalists has awarded the Erich Klabunde Prize for socially critical journalistic work that is related to Hamburg.

Works

  • (with Julius Brecht ) Housing industry in our time. Edited by the Association of North German Housing Companies on the occasion of its 50th anniversary and the entry into force of the first Federal Housing Act. Hammonia, Hamburg 1950.

literature

Web links

Commons : Erich Klabunde  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Holger Martens: Klabunde, Erich. In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie. Lexicon of persons. Vol. 2, Christians, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 978-3-8353-0099-6 , p. 216 f.
  2. ↑ a b c d Marina Friedt: Erich Klabunde Prize. In: DJV -Hamburg.de .
  3. ↑ a b c Erich Klabunde. In: Hamburg personalities .
  4. ↑ According to Erich Lüth's biography "Erich Klabunde - journalist and politician of the first hour", Klabunde worked both through the mediation of his friend Julius Brecht in the Ministry of Housing and for the Association of North German Housing Entrepreneurs.
  5. ↑ Klabunde, Erich. In: Rudolf Vierhaus, Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 1: A-M. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 421.
  6. ↑ Confederate Brothers. In: Der Spiegel from December 15, 1949.
  7. ^ Jan Molitor (pseudonym): Our parliamentarians and the public. In: Die Zeit , October 5, 1950.
  8. ↑ Holger Martens: Erich Klabunde and the First Housing Act of 1950. In: Heinrich-Kaufmann-Stiftung (ed.): It's better together. Contributions to the 1st conference on cooperative history (2006). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2011, pp. 73–79, here pp. 74 f .
  9. ↑ Holger Martens: Erich Klabunde and the First Housing Act of 1950. In: Heinrich-Kaufmann-Stiftung (ed.): It's better together. Contributions to the 1st conference on cooperative history (2006). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2011, pp. 73–79, here p. 75 .
  10. ^ Erich Klabunde: Economic freedom - economic bureaucracy . In: Die Zeit , September 26, 1946; see Richard Tüngel's reply : An “apolitical” replies. In: Die Zeit , March 13, 1947.
  11. ↑ Dieter Felbick: Keywords of the post-war period, 1945–1949. De Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-11-017643-2 , p. 156 .
  12. ↑ Rudolf Herlt: Schiller and Klasen. How a friendship broke Divorce under Paragraph 23. In: Die Zeit , July 7, 1972.
  13. ↑ Holger Martens: Erich Klabunde and the First Housing Act of 1950. In: Heinrich-Kaufmann-Stiftung (ed.): It's better together. Contributions to the 1st conference on cooperative history (2006). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2011, pp. 73–79.
  14. ↑ Klabunde seriously ill. In: Hamburger Abendblatt from November 20, 1950.
  15. ↑ The week. In: The time of November 30, 1950.
  16. ↑ Quoted from Erich Lüth: Erich Klabunde. Journalist and politician from the very beginning. Kayser, Hamburg 1971, p. 79.
  17. ↑ a b Holger Martens: Erich Klabunde and the First Housing Act of 1950. In: Heinrich-Kaufmann-Stiftung (Ed.): It works better together. Contributions to the 1st conference on cooperative history (2006). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2011, pp. 73–79, here p. 79 .
  18. ↑ Celebrity Graves
  19. ↑ Search for Klabunde. In: Time Online , How Often Is Your Street There?
personal data
SURNAME Klabunde, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdHB, MdB
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1950
Place of death Bad Pyrmont