Erich Kohlrausch

Erich Paul Heinrich Kohlrausch (born March 4, 1899 in Eisenach ; † January 31, 1960 in Graz ) was a German writer, politician of the USPD , KPD , KPO ( Communist Party Opposition ) and SPD as well as an entrepreneur.

Childhood, youth and participation in the war

Kohlrausch's father Arno was a typesetter for the social democratic Eisenacher Zeitung and active in the labor movement . After elementary and secondary school he switched to the teachers' college in his hometown in 1916. From there, Kohlrausch became a member of the Jäger 8 replacement battalion (Army) in Schlettstadt in Alsace in June 1917 . With the 381th Infantry Regiment he moved into the field in November 1917, first on the Eastern Front and - after the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Russia - on the Western Front in June 1918. A few days before the end of the war, Kohlrausch was taken prisoner in Belgium in Flanders, from which he only escaped in August 1919.

Erich Kohlrausch as a teenager (1916)

Via the Netherlands he returned to Eisenach and the teachers' college there. In the shortened special course for war veterans, he passed the first state examination in January 1920 with the overall grade of "good". He began his preparatory service shortly afterwards at the elementary school in the industrial town of Ruhla , located between Eisenach and Schmalkalden , on the Rennsteig , where he was irrevocably appointed teacher in February 1921, even after successfully passing the second state examination.

Teacher and mayor in Ruhla

In Ruhla, Erich Kohlrausch first joined the USPD in 1920 and - after its split - joined the KPD in 1921, of which he took over leadership that same year. Supported by his friend and political foster father, Theodor Neubauer (1890–1945), member of the state parliament and later Reichstag , he soon rose to become the undisputed leader of the KPD in the Ruhl. In September 1922 he was elected to the Ruhla city council and the Eisenach district assembly for the first time and took over the chairmanship of the communist parliamentary group in both bodies. Kohlrausch quickly gained the reputation of an excellent agitator and speaker not only in the two local parliaments, but also in numerous meetings. In addition, he was largely commissioned by his party leadership with the formation of the proletarian hundreds in West Thuringia and was therefore arrested at the instigation of the military district commander in November 1923 and suspended as a teacher in January 1924. A bright spot in the subsequent two years of bitter disciplinary proceedings was the marriage of the meanwhile non-denominational - he had left the Protestant Church in July 1921 - with Erna Giesdorf (1898–1976). The two daughters Helga (1925-2006) and Vera (1927-2003) emerged from the marriage.

In March 1926, the city council elected Kohlrausch - who was only 27 years old at the time - with the votes of the two left-wing parties as mayor of Ruhla. In his almost five-year term in office, he achieved great merits, primarily through a comprehensive welfare policy and the massive boost to urban housing construction - a Bauhaus settlement with 55 modern residential units for the Ruhla workers is now a listed building under his aegis. In addition to his political activities, he was also active as a writer and published plays on Thomas Münzer and Tilman Riemenschneider as well as several poems. Although Erich Kohlrausch 1924, outwardly against the Brandlerismus , wearing the official party line. Letters to his wife and companions at this point, however, indicated that he was critical of the radicalization of his party and that he spoke out against a united front with the SPD against the burgeoning nationalist movement. A policy that he practiced in Ruhla throughout his tenure. So it is not surprising that in 1929 he broke with the KPD and switched to the KPO. As the undoubtedly most intellectually and politically gifted of its few mayors, he formulated the local political principles of the movement. Under his aegis, Ruhla became the stronghold of the KPO in the German Empire. In 1930, however, the new Thuringian state government formed with the participation of the NSDAP gave Kohlrausch the choice of either turning his back on his party or resigning from office. He fought for both, but was removed from office in October 1930 by the National Socialist Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick . Worn down by internal party disputes and legal disputes, he resigned as mayor in September 1931.

Successful entrepreneur in the Third Reich

In the last two years of the Weimar Republic , Erich Kohlrausch renounced politics - and turned to his economic rise with great energy. In September 1931 he took over the branch management of Thuringia AG  - at that time one of the large building societies in the German Reich - for the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein and in parallel in April 1932 the function of organizational manager of Fides Zweckspar AG , a daughter of Thuringia , in Berlin.

As a soldier in the Wehrmacht (2nd from right) during the attack on Poland (1939)

After both activities did not turn out as successfully as expected , Kohlrausch and two partners founded Sparkraft AG in autumn 1932, where he subscribed 17 percent of the capital and where he joined the board. When the savings power had to cease operations due to the legally decreed, nationwide dissolution of the special-purpose savings company, he moved to Concordia-Lloyd AG in January 1936 as sole director .

Vacation at Lake Wörthersee (1940)

At this time, together with his Jewish friend Arthur Behrendt, he started a very profitable side business, the mediation of beleaguered Jewish companies - according to the definition of the National Socialist racial legislation - Aryan interested parties. Among other things, he worked on the " Aryanization " of Katz & Michel Textil AG , a textile purchasing association based in Bielefeld, the long-established Berlin silk goods factory Michels & Cie. , the traditional fountain pen factory S. Roeder OHG , also located in the capital, and the large Essen textile department store Gustav Blum . In September 1938 he finally “Aryanized” - after preparatory courses that he took at the renowned Reimann School , and together with the deputy chairman of the Commerzbank AG supervisory board , Consul Hans Harney , who stayed in the background as a silent partner - the Berlin Mohrenstrasse Women's clothing store Lachmann & Meyer OHG , which was renamed Harko Kohlrausch & Co. KG . And in April 1939 Kohlrausch and Harney in Vienna acquired inventory and stocks of goods from the confectioner Deutschland & Jassinger , which had been forced into bankruptcy, and founded the Viennese coat store Kohlrausch & Co. KG . Kohlrausch, who took part in the attack on Poland as a medical officer , was henceforth a manufacturer who distinguished himself through a large number of voluntary services for his workers and who granted some half-Jews work and protection in his factories.

With his wife Ursula in the bombed Berlin factory (1944)

After considerable bomb damage at both locations, in 1943 he relocated production to the small town of Osterhofen in Lower Bavaria  - where the Kohlrausch & Co. KG clothing factory was established  - where he moved with his wife Ursula, née Rietz (1914-2006), who was married in November 1944. Kohlrausch's second marriage has sons Michael (1945–1970) and Gregor (1948–2014). He had previously been divorced from Erna in September 1944 after four years of legal dispute.

Politician and visionary during the occupation

In Osterhofen and in what was then the Vilshofen district , Erich Kohlrausch advanced to become a key figure within the SPD after 1945. With the help of Wilhelm Hoegner  - to whom he also sent a draft for an election manifesto for the Bavarian Social Democrats - he sought to realize a visionary project. In the state forest near Osterhofen he planned a new home for the 18,000 refugees and displaced persons of the district. The plans were well advanced before the massive resistance of the long-established population and the local and state parliamentary groups of the CSU brought them down. His attempt to be elected mayor of the city of Osterhofen against the conservative incumbent in April 1948 also failed. Resigned, he withdrew from politics - again and this time for good - at the end of the 1940s.

Decline as an entrepreneur after 1950

In later years in the "Kohlrausch Villa" in wooden houses near Osterhofen (1954)

At the beginning of 1949, Erich Kohlrausch and Hans Harney had reorganized their group of companies and concentrated them at the locations in Büderich , Osterhofen and Vienna when the Jewish owners of Lachmann & Meyer and Deutschland & Jassinger sued for restitution .

Obituary notice (1960)

The businesses in Büderich and Osterhofen, which were already battered by mismanagement, were placed under compulsory administration and immediately closed, and the bankruptcy estate was restituted. Hopelessly over-indebted, Erich Kohlrausch retired to his recently completed house near Osterhofen, where he ran a small textile production company under the name of his wife. At the beginning of 1957 the family moved to Vienna, where the Restitution Commission gave him a share in the company founded by Harney and himself and which had been under the management of the previous owners since the end of the war - in addition to the Viennese Mäntelhaus Kohlrausch & Co. , this is its subsidiary Erich Quehl & Co. KG  - had been awarded. With Leopold Jostal, the nephew of the former Jewish owner, he joined the two companies in equal parts, which were merged and henceforth operate under the Jostal & Kohlrausch OHG and the brand name Joko .

The renewed economic prosperity remained modest - and of short duration: suffering from increasing asthma and shortness of breath, Erich Kohlrausch died on January 31, 1960 on a business trip in Graz.

Works

• Thomas Münzer. A tragedy in five acts from the time of the great peasant war, Berlin-Hessenwinkel 1926
• Tilman Riemenschneider. A German play in five acts, undated and unpublished manuscript
• Welfare care in Thuringia. With special consideration of the welfare work in the city districts and larger communities belonging to the district, in: Carl Becker and Erwin Stein (eds.): Thuringia. Culture and work of the Thuringian country, Berlin-Friedenau 1927, pp. 46–50
• Administrative report of the city of Ruhla 1925–1928, Ruhla 1928
• Young Plan and Community Policy, Berlin 1930
• Housing industry and advertising guide for building society employees, Hamburg 1931

literature

• Bernhard Taubenberger: Erich Kohlrausch 1899–1960. A German Life, Munich 2010 ( ISBN 978-3-00-030077-6 )

Web links

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