Franz Behrens

Franz Behrens

Franz Carl Heinrich Behrens (born February 2, 1872 in Marienhof , Mecklenburg-Strelitz , † September 14, 1943 in Altlandsberg ) was a German politician ( CSP , DNVP , CSVD ).

Life and work

He was the son of the master bricklayer Wilhelm Behrens. After attending the community school, Behrens, who was of Protestant faith, completed an apprenticeship as a gardener in Möllenbeck from 1886 to 1889 and initially also worked in the profession. From 1898 he worked as a workers secretary , but the following year he took over the editing of several newspapers. In 1900 he became managing director of the General German Gardeners Association, which was closely related to the Hirsch-Duncker trade associations . When the gardeners' association joined the SPD-dominated "General Commission of Trade Unions" in 1903, Behrens switched to the Christian trade unions. He was chairman of the General Association of German Health Insurance Funds and the Association of German War Disabled and War Participants . At times he was also a board member of the Association for Social Colonization of Germany , founded in 1910 , which wanted to reclaim wasteland by the unemployed. After 1918 he was deputy chairman of the Reichsbauern- and agricultural workers' council in Berlin and sat on the working committee of the demobilization commission. He was also the second chairman of the general association of Christian trade unions and chairman of the central association of forest, agricultural and vineyard workers in Germany .

Political party

Behrens initially belonged to the Christian Social Party , of which he was also temporarily chairman. In 1918 he participated in the founding of the DNVP, of which he was a member of the board. At the end of the 1920s he left the DNVP out of criticism of Alfred Hugenberg's large-scale agricultural policy and joined the CSVD .

MP

Behrens belonged to the Reichstag of the Empire from the Reichstag election from 1907 to 1918 for the constituency Koblenz 1 ( Wetzlar - Altenkirchen ), where he was a member of the Economic Association . In 1919/20 he was a member of the Weimar National Assembly . Then he was again a member of the Reichstag until 1930 and again from July 1932 to November 1933 , where he also voted for Hitler's Enabling Act .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz Specht, Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1907. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives . 2nd edition supplemented by an appendix. Addendum. The Reichstag election of 1907 (12th legislative period) . Carl Heymann Verlag, Berlin 1908, p. 45.

Publications

• We Protestants and the Christian trade unions . Barmen 1912.

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , p. 13 ( online , PDF; 2.2 MB).
• Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Behrens in the catalog of the German National Library
• Franz Behrens in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Franz Behrens' biography . In: Heinrich Best : database of the members of the Reichstag of the Empire 1867/71 to 1918 (Biorab - Kaiserreich)