Gerhard Brandes

The title of this article is ambiguous. for the German artist of the same name see Gerhard Brandes (artist) .

Gerhard Brandes (born September 14, 1902 in Leipzig , † June 14, 1999 in Hamburg ) was a German social democratic politician and Hamburg senator.

Weimar Republic and the time of National Socialism

Brandes attended elementary school and completed an apprenticeship as a legal assistant in Leipzig. He became a member of the SAJ at an early stage and in 1920 a member of the SPD .

In 1921 he became SAJ secretary in his hometown. He took over the position of senior trade union secretary of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) and moved to Greiz in Thuringia . His wife Charlotte, also a member of the SPD, was elected to the city council there. In the function of ADGB functionary he moved to Königsberg .

After the Nazi regime came to power, Brandes was arrested on suspicion of illegal party work. From July 1, 1933, he was in the Königsberg police prison. Although he was released in September of that year, he was under police supervision. In detail, this meant that he had to report regularly to the authorities and to register trips from Königsberg. When Adolf Hitler visited Königsberg in 1936, Brandes was again taken into so-called “ protective custody ” for three days . He was able to maintain his existence by working as an assistant in tax matters.

After the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 , Brandes, his wife and other former union secretaries were arrested on the 22nd of the following month. Brandes was released on September 1st. His apartment and business premises were destroyed in the heavy Allied bombing of August 30th. He and his family managed to flee East Prussia.

Post-war period and Federal Republic

In 1945 Brandes came to Hamburg with his wife. He worked as an independent tax advisor and was from 1946 to 1974 for the SPD for his residential district St. Georg in the Hamburg citizenship . As chairman of the refugee committee, he played a key role in organizational and fiscal aid and compensation measures and laws for refugees and displaced persons. From 1957 to 1965 he chaired his parliamentary group. In 1965 he became Finance Senator in the Senate of Mayor Herbert Weichmann . During his time as senator, projects such as the expansion of the trade fair , the construction of the congress center (CCH), the pool program of the waterworks and the introduction of general data processing (ADV) were promoted. After he left the Senate in 1970, he took over the chairmanship of the SPD parliamentary group for another two years.

From 1958 to 1965 he was managing director of the Hamburger Wasserwerke .

Cabinets

• Soft man I.
• Soft man ii

Honor

Brandes was awarded the Mayor Stolten Medal in 1972.

On the occasion of the death of Brandes in 1999, Mayor Ortwin Runde said: “With Gerhard Brandes, Hamburg has lost an established social democrat from the very beginning. Well-founded knowledge and expertise were the tools of the trade of this politician, who naturally made his energy and ideas available to the new beginning after the war. Hamburg has benefited greatly from the work and achievements of Gerhard Brandes wherever he has performed public tasks. Right up to the end, he followed closely and critically what those who came after him politically achieved. We will keep Gerhard Brandes in good memory. "

literature

• Meik Woyke: Brandes, Gerhard . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 7 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2020, ISBN 978-3-8353-3579-0 , p. 43-44 .
• SPD Hamburg: For freedom and democracy. Hamburg Social Democrats in Persecution and Resistance 1933-1945. Hamburg 2003, pp. 33/34.
• SPD Hamburg Persecution as a political experience p. 21 with picture (PDF; 3.1 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Press release of the City of Hamburg from June 24, 1999 ( Memento from August 18, 2002 in the Internet Archive )