Erwin Classen

Erwin Classen

Erwin Oskar Alexander Classen (born November 5, 1889 in Aachen , † February 8, 1944 in Heidelberg ) was a Prussian administrative officer and district administrator of the district of Heinsberg and the district of Aachen .

Life

Origin from training

Erwin Classen was the son of Alexander Classen , who last worked as a professor of chemistry at the Technical University in Aachen, and Johanna, geb. Bischoff. After visiting the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium in his hometown, which he in 1908 passing the matriculation examination was going on, he studied from 1908 to 1911 at the city's Technical University and at the University in Bonn law . After graduation, he entered the Prussian administrative service as a court trainee on December 29, 1911 (swearing in on January 5, 1912).

Career

When he passed the examination to become a government trainee (April 24, 1914), Classen moved from the judiciary to the interior department. He found employment there initially with the government and the Poznan Higher Presidium , from where he was entrusted with the representative administration of the Samter District Office from 1915 to 1919 . After a further examination and the appointment as government assessor (March 8, 1919), Erwin Classen was a member of the Armistice Commission from May 1 to June 30, 1919 , to which the then Lord Mayor of Posen, Ernst Wilms, also participated. Upon graduation, Classen moved to the Prussian Interior Ministry in Berlin on July 1, 1919, under the new Social Democratic Interior Minister Wolfgang Heine , who was born in Poznan . After barely six months he returned to his hometown with his transfer on December 20, 1919 to the Aachen government . On February 9, 1920, his employer gave him provisional management of the Heinsberg district (final appointment July 16, 1920), but his term of office was temporarily extended by his expulsion from June 8, 1923 to March 13, 1924, by the Inter-Allied Rhineland Commission Arrest interrupted during the battle against the Ruhr . Classen had put up passive resistance against the occupation and was therefore held for six months in the prisons in Aachen and Verviers . His last post as district administrator of the district of Aachen was also temporarily transferred to Classen on May 9, 1928. The inauguration on May 21 was followed by an election by the district council on August 2 and his final appointment on August 16, 1928. The seriously ill Classen died on duty while his hometown was already badly destroyed. Classen was a member of the German Center Party .

Classen as Aachen district administrator

In the district commemorative publication from 1966, Classen is described as a “personality of distance, but a person with a soul”. And further:

““ The Aachen district was one of the few districts in which the NSDAP district leader did not dictate the district's decisions. The clever Erwin Classen met the urges and demands, the reproaches and threats calmly, on the other hand he was tactically so sovereign that he repeatedly cleared the difficulties caused by the party out of the way. His experience with the Allied occupation now benefited him. Now the district administrator could have tried to demonstrate power in the Aachen district even with the system of the Führer principle. But Erwin Classen has remained the mature person of earlier years. ""

- Aachen district (ed.): 150 years Aachen district, p. 57

family

The Catholic Erwin Classen married Bärbel Breuer, born on July 29, 1933 in Düsseldorf. Dörr (born April 8, 1897 in Berlin), the Protestant daughter of the factory owner Josef Dörr and Pauline, b. Hennig. He found his final resting place in the grave of his parents in the Aachen Ostfriedhof .

literature

• Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft - The handbook of personalities in words and pictures . First volume, Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, ISBN 3-598-30664-4
• District of Aachen (Ed.): 150 years of the district of Aachen, Aachen 1966, pp. 55–57 (with picture).
• Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 , p. 395 .

Web link

• Entry in acta borussica, vol. 12.2, p. 541 (PDF; 2.2 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816-1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Aachen district (ed.): 150 years Aachen district