Gerhard Fürst

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Gerhard Fürst (born May 1, 1897 in Berlin ; † July 27, 1988 in Wiesbaden ) was a German civil servant and from 1948 to 1964 President of the Federal Statistical Office and Federal Returning Officer . 1959 awarded him the University of Munich , the honorary doctorate . The “Gerhard Fürst Prize” is awarded in his honor every year.

education and profession

Gerhard Fürst was the son of an architect and was baptized Protestant . In December 1914 he graduated from high school and joined the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 202 of the 43rd Reserve Division of the German Empire as a volunteer . He took part in the fighting in Belgium , France, Serbia and Russia and was taken prisoner as an officer candidate in 1917 , from which he returned in early 1920. From the winter semester of 1920 he studied at the philosophical faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and graduated in 1923 with a doctorate to obtain a doctorate in political science. He studied a. a. with Heinrich Herkner , Ignaz Jastrow and Rudolf Meerwarth .

1923 began prince as a research assistant at the Statistical Office in Berlin Reich in the wage statistics and then worked on the preparations for the evaluation of the people - and occupation census. In 1930 he was offered a job as secretary of the "Committee of Statistical Experts" of the League of Nations in Geneva , which he held until 1939. In 1940 he worked for the Consulate General in Geneva until he moved back to Berlin in the same year.

Back in Germany, Fürst worked at IG-Farben industrial works as a market observer in the economic department (Vowi) in Berlin, a subdivision of the central financial administration of IG Farben (NW 7). This was headed by Max Ilgner , who was convicted in Nuremberg in 1948 in the IG Farben trial . Fürst worked for the IG Farben Vowi until 1945 as a processor for Russia issues. In December 1942 he made a lecture tour in the central section ( Army Group Center ) of the Eastern Front via Minsk , Gomel , Bryansk to Orel . From his report it is clear that he was informed about the treatment of the political commissars and the murder of the Jewish population by the Einsatzgruppen (page 3, paragraph 3, sentence 3. Due to the war situation in Berlin, Unter den Linden 78, the Vowi became part of the Behringwerke after Marburg in Hesse, and in the same year he was given responsibility for setting up and managing the Hessian State Statistical Office .

Three years later, in 1948, the Statistical Office of the United Economic Area was established with Gerhard Fürst as director. In 1949 the office was renamed "Federal Statistical Office". The head of this authority has since called himself the “President of the Federal Statistical Office”.

Contrary to the regulations at the time, the Prince's term of office was extended three times. This was justified with his outstanding service to the German statistics. Fürst did not leave office until the end of 1964, he was president for 16 years and of all previous presidents he had the longest term of office. During his term of office, five former SS members who were burdened were transferred from the Federal Criminal Police Office to the Federal Statistical Office on April 1, 1964 - including Wilhelm Rohrmann and Otto Martin .

In a publication by Götz Aly , Gerhard Fürst's extended term of office is justified with the Nazi past of his potential successor, the department head Siegfried Koller , who moved to Mainz University in 1963.

Fürst's services to German statistics

Gerhard Fürst not only managed to build up a functioning office in the post-war years , he was instrumental in ensuring that the work program as well as the organizational and legal structures of German statistics could develop further. It is thanks to him that official statistics have become one of the most important sources of information for the state , society and science .

In addition to the official statistics, Fürst worked towards a separate building for the Federal Statistical Office. The new building was inaugurated in Wiesbaden in 1956 and is still used today by statisticians.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Fürst: The wage policy of the free trade unions after the war . Berlin July 28, 1923, DNB  363933131 (dissertation; curriculum vitae and acknowledgments on the last page).
  2. ^ Report on a lecture tour to the Eastern Front in December 1942. Evidence of Prosecution NI-8995, January 4, 1943, accessed on June 6, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Dr. Dr. hc Gerhard Fürst. Retrieved April 11, 2020 .
  4. ↑ BKA - Book-rich "Police + Research" - Shadows of the Past - The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic. See from page 112 , accessed April 11, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Götz Aly, Karl Heinz Roth: The complete recording - census, identification, weeding out in National Socialism . 1984 ( books.google.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Prince, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil servant, President of the Federal Statistical Office and Federal Returning Officer
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 1988
Place of death Wiesbaden