Georg Boock

On August 31, 1958, Lord Mayor Georg Boock inaugurated a memorial for the 1392 bomb victims in Erfurt's main cemetery

Georg Boock (born September 6, 1891 in Berlin , † June 23, 1961 in Erfurt ) was a German civil servant , local politician ( SPD / USPD / KPD / SED ) and Lord Mayor of Erfurt.

Life

Boock comes from a family of officials. His father was a train driver for the Deutsche Reichsbahn . After attending primary school in Berlin-Charlottenburg and the secondary school in Wriezen (Abitur 1909), he trained as an administrative clerk in Rixdorf (today Berlin-Neukölln ) and worked in the administration of Berlin-Neukölln. During evening studies between 1910 and 1913 at the university and commercial college in Berlin, he acquired further knowledge in economics and finance as well as in law .

After his participation in the army service in World War I and subsequent captivity , he became head of the welfare office in Berlin-Neukölln in 1919 . His political involvement began in 1920 when he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) before he switched to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1922.

Since 1921 he has held various local political functions in Thuringia . He became mayors of Gera-Langenberg and Meuselwitz and worked for the Thuringian and the Imperial City Association .

From 1927 to March 1933 Boock was the first mayor of the cathedral city of Wurzen east of Leipzig. After his removal from office by the Nazi rulers in 1933, he opened a tax office in Leipzig and got in touch with the Schumann-Engert-Kresse resistance group in this city . In August 1944, he was sentenced to three years in prison during the " Operation Grid " ; he spent his imprisonment in Straubing prison and in Landshut prison.

After liberation from National Socialism , he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in July 1945 . He returned from Landshut to Wurzen, where he took over the office of Lord Mayor on July 10, 1945 . Boock held one of the first council meetings on August 22, 1945 in his Wurzen apartment - he directed Wurzen's city policy until April 1946.

On May 5, 1946, he was introduced to the office of Lord Mayor in Erfurt after the death of the predecessor Hermann Jahn ; In July 1946, the official confirmation from the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) followed. After the local elections in September, city councilors elected Paul Hach from the LDPD , which had become the strongest parliamentary group, as the new mayor. He was then arrested for "violating order 50 of the SMAD" and "sabotaging the coal supply" and taken to the Ichtershausen state prison. He was only released after the LDPD deputies had ceded the right to propose the post of mayor to the SED. So Boock was elected to this position.

During Boock's tenure from 1946 to 1961, the introduction of “ democratic centralism ” with the alignment of the other parties to block parties , expropriations without compensation and other systemic upheavals took place. There was also a strike in Erfurt on June 17, 1953 and other protests took place. The Soviet Army declared a state of emergency. In 1961 there were over 20,000 Erfurt residents in West Germany and West Berlin who had left their city for political and economic reasons since 1945.

During Boock's tenure, there were some innovations such as the establishment of the AWG -Wohnungsbau, the Pedagogical Institute in 1953, the Medical Academy in 1954, the Zoo Park and in 1961 the International Horticultural Exhibition ( IGA ) of the socialist countries. Boock also supported Curt Böhme in his efforts to increase the local government's self-government skills. In the 1950s he participated in the drafting of a law on the tasks and working methods of state organs. Boock was also a member of the Presidium of the German Association of Cities in the GDR .

Boock was also deputy chairman of the presidium of the German Association of Cities .

Private

Georg Boock married Rose Sorge in 1919 - the couple had three daughters. Daughter Hilderose Boock appeared on November 10, 1945 in Wurzen as an actress at the New Theater Wurzen in the Kulturhaus Schweizergarten. The coal mine near Kleinzschepa was named after Boock's daughter Hildegard (from October 1, 1947 to June 11, 1949, 5520 tons of brown coal were mined in the "Hildegard" mine).

Publications

• Memorandum on the school space shortage in the city of Meuselwitz , 1925
• Housing registration and distribution , VEB Dt. Central extension Berlin, 1958, 2nd, revised. 1959 edition
• A new day is dawning! About building our new social order in Wurzen. Pp. 155-165 in: Wurzen 961-1961. Festschrift for the millennium. Published by the council of the city of Wurzen and the editorial team “Der Rundblick” Wurzen. Format A 5, 256 pages. Wurzen 1961

Honors

• Boock was awarded the Silver Patriotic Order of Merit in 1954 .
• A retirement and nursing home in Erfurt, which the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund took over and expanded after the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR , has been called "Georg Boock" since the GDR era.
• In Wurzen there is the Boockweg as a thank you and in memory of the former Lord Mayor.
• German Peace Medal

literature

• Between Weimar democracy and tyranny: Georg Boock, First Mayor 1927-1933, Lord Mayor 1945-1946 . In: Hansrainer Baum, Jürgen Schmidt: From Schmidt to Schmidt - about Wurzener Mayor 1832-2008. Wurzen 2011, pp. 62-72
• Steffen Kachel : A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919 to 1949 = Publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia, Small Series Volume 29. ISBN 978-3-412-20544-7 , p. 539.
• Steffen Raßloff : The Lord Mayor of Erfurt since 1872 . In: City and History . Zeitschrift für Erfurt, 35, 2007, pp. 25-27.
• Short biography for:  Boock, Georg . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Boock in the catalog of the German National Library
• Georg Boock on erfurt-web.de

See also

• List of mayors of the city of Wurzen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register StA South Erfurt No. 295/1961 .
2. ↑ Boock's activity as mayor of various municipalities in the course of his professional life was the cause of a total of 14 moves.
3. ↑ Report of Erfurt's new mayor introduced . In: Thuringian People newspaper , May 8, 1946
4. ↑ Selmar Bühling: Erfurter Heimatbrief No. 1 (February 1961), p. 8
5. ↑ Mayor of the City of Erfurt queried on May 17, 2011
6. ↑ S. 8 in: Heimatkundliches Lexikon. Volume 1 of “Local history series of the Wurzen-Oschatz-Grimma districts”, published by the German Cultural Association, Wurzen district management, Wurzen 1970, A4 format, 104 pages.
7. ↑ p. 162-163 in: Wurzen 961-1961. Festschrift for the millennium. Published by the council of the city of Wurzen and the editorial team “Der Rundblick” Wurzen. Format A 5, 256 pages. Wurzen 1961
8. ↑ P. 34 in: Council of the City of Wurzen (ed.): Our Wurzen , magazine for information and entertainment, No. 1/1986, Wurzen 1986
9. ↑ S. 8 in: Heimatkundliches Lexikon. Volume 1 of “Local history series of the Wurzen-Oschatz-Grimma districts”, published by the German Cultural Association, Wurzen district management, Wurzen 1970, A4 format, 104 pages.
10. ↑ postcodes.de ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .