Ernst Castan

Ernst Castan (top row left) and the other members of the social democratic faction of the Saxon state parliament, 1909

Ernst Castan as a speaker at a meeting in Schönheide in August 1910

Ernst Karl Castan (born November 8, 1871 in Hilbersdorf , † August 4, 1948 in Adelsberg ) was a German politician ( SPD ).

Live and act

Ernst Castan came from an old German Huguenot family and was a material merchant in Chemnitz . From 1909 to 1918 he sat as a member of the 4th constituency of the city of Chemnitz for the SPD in the second chamber of the Saxon state parliament in Dresden . Here he belonged to the left wing of his party. In the state parliament, he usually spoke up on questions of government support for those in need. He was also part of the finance deputation and, as such, has taken part in decisions on various financial projects.

From 1919 to 1926 Castan was again a member of the Saxon state parliament. One of his political opponents - also the SPD - was the President of the Saxon People's Chamber and the Saxon State Parliament Julius Fräßdorf (1857-1932). In 1919 Fräßdorf supported the formation of a Saxon government as a coalition of the majority Social Democrats ( MSPD ) and the liberal German Democratic Party ( DDP ), which he pushed through together with Karl Sindermann and Georg Gradnauer against the resistance of his left party comrades around Castan and Alfred Fellisch . Castan preferred a coalition with the KPD. During the Saxon conflict between 1924 and 1926, however, he was on the right wing of his party and supported the government of Max Heldt . In 1926 he joined the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany (ASPD). In the same year he was appointed to the government council in the Saxon Ministry of the Interior in Dresden. In 1933 he was dismissed by the National Socialists and retired to Chemnitz, where he began to do research on family history . At the same time he was a member of the German Huguenot Association (DHV). Ernst Castan was married and had four children.

literature

• Carsten Schmidt: Between truce and class struggle. Social policy and war society in Dresden 1914-1918. Diss. Phil. TU Dresden 2007, pp. 78, 81, 84.
• Elvira Döscher, Wolfgang Schröder: Saxon parliamentarians 1869–1918. The deputies of the Second Chamber of the Kingdom of Saxony in the mirror of historical photographs. Droste, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-7700-5236-6 , p. 358 ( photo documents on the history of parliamentarism and political parties , 5).