Seriously honest

Ernst Honest (* 3. December 1872 in Neustadt bei Coburg , † 12. April 1951 in Hildesheim ) was from 1909 to 1937 and elected until July 31, 1945 April 8, by the British military government inserted mayor of the city of Hildesheim. As municipal representative he was also a member of the Prussian manor house until 1918, a member of the Prussian State Council until 1933 and a member of the provincial parliament of the province of Hanover from 1916 to 1932 .

biography

After attending the Casimirianum high school in Coburg, Ernst Ehrlicher studied law and economics in Jena, where he became a member of the Arminia fraternity on the Burgkeller , and Berlin. In 1896 he passed the first state examination in law and was promoted to Dr. jur. PhD. 1900 second state examination in law in Jena. From 1902 to 1905 he was the second legal councilor in Dessau . From 1906 to 1909 he was second mayor in Halberstadt .

In July 1909 he was elected Lord Mayor of Hildesheim. Ehrlicher ensured the connection to the German waterway network through the construction of the Hildesheim branch canal and the construction of the Hildesheim harbor. When the council of the city of Hildesheim finally approved an amount of 20,000 RM for the erection of the war memorial on Galgenberg at its meeting on November 22, 1937 , Ehrlicher spoke of the city's "duty of honor" to the infantry regiment "von Voigts-Rhetz" ( 3. Hannoversches) No. 79 and emphasized the "loyal solidarity" with this and his fallen in the First World War .

From 1916 to 1925 he represented the constituency of Hildesheim-Stadt in the provincial parliament. He was elected on the DVP's list. In 1925 he was re-elected for the constituency of Gronau and Alfeld and the United Hanover Provincial List. In the 1929 election he ran again for the DVP in Hildesheim-Stadt. In 1932 he did not run again.

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists tried local NSDAP functionaries Honest from office to remove, but were so unsuccessful. In 1937 he retired. After the Second World War he was reinstated as Lord Mayor by the occupation authorities.

In 1950 he became an honorary citizen of the city, in 1959 was in the district Drispenstedt the Honest street named after him. The Ernst Ehrlicher Park also bears his name.

In 1978, in connection with a discussion about the former Jewish community in Hildesheim, there was also a public debate about Ehrlicher's behavior during the Nazi era. Critics held that he was in office from 1933 onwards. It was about the honorary citizenship of Adolf Hitler , which was unanimously adopted in April 1933, and in particular Ehrlicher's statements from March 1933 in which he had called on the population to accept the Hitler regime for the sake of the "ultimate goal". The conservative sections of the Hildesheim public, including the Hildesheim CDU and the city archives manager Helmut von Jan , defended Ehrlicher's behavior with the argument that he could not have foreseen the further development of Hitler and the Nazi regime in the first years of Nazi rule. The debate had no consequences.

literature

• Klaus Arndt: Ernst Ehrlicher . Hildesheim 1983 (series of publications by the city archive and city library Hildesheim; 7) .
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 1: A-E. Winter, Heidelberg 1996, ISBN 3-8253-0339-X , p. 239.
• Beatrix Herlemann , Helga Schatz: Biographical Lexicon of Lower Saxony Parliamentarians 1919–1945 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Volume 222). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 2004, ISBN 3-7752-6022-6 , pp. 98-99.
• Peter Kaupp : Ehrlicher, Ernst , In: From Aldenhoven to Zittler, members of the Arminia fraternity on the Burgkeller-Jena, who have emerged in public life over the past 100 years. Dieburg 2000.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaus Arndt: Ernst Ehrlicher . Hildesheim 1983, p. 3
2. ↑ Retired Lord Mayor Dr. Ehrlicher died , Der Städtetag 1951, p. 168
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Anton J. Knott: Street, ways, squares and alleys in Hildesheim. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1984, ISBN 3-8067-8082-X , p. 34 f
4. ↑ http://www.stadtarchiv-hildesheim.de/geschichte/buergermeister.htm , accessed on February 11, 2008 at 10:45 p.m.
5. ↑ Barbara Thimm: Am Galgenberg, a war memorial. in: Herbert Reyer (Ed.): Traces of National Socialism in Hildesheim. = Sources and documentation on the city history of Hildesheim Volume 9, Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1999, ISBN 3-8067-8503-1 , p. 58.
6. ^ Klaus Neumann: Shifting Memories. The Nazi Past in the New Germany . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2000, pp. 87f. - Klaus Arndt's Ehrlicher biography (see lit.) describes Neumann as "apologetic" in this context (p. 287 A52)
7. ↑ Helmut von Jan: No more agitation against honest people! In: Huckup v. April 13, 1978

predecessor	Office	successor
Gustav Struckmann	Mayor and Lord Mayor of Hildesheim 1909–1937	Werner Krause
Werner Krause	Mayor and Lord Mayor of Hildesheim 1945	Franz Eger