Gustav Bratke

Gustav Bratke (born July 29, 1878 in Hanover , † October 24, 1952 in Coburg ) was a social democratic German politician and municipal official. In 1945 he was appointed the first Lord Mayor of Hanover after the war and organized the first Hanover Fair in 1947 .

Life

As a trained lithographer , Gustav Bratke became a member of both the book printers' union and the SPD at an early age .

Tiergartenstraße corner Brabeckstraße : Instead of the branch of the savings bank operating Bratke 1908 Unter den Linden 1 his Kolonialwarenhandlung

After the incorporation of the former village Kirchrode to Hannover yet at the time of the German Empire on October 1, 1907 Gustav Bratke operation, according to the address of the royal residence city of Hanover from 1908 in the building Unter den Linden 1 , later in the branch of the Savings Bank moved its Kolonialwarenhandlung .

After Misburg , one by the cement industry dominated community northeast of Hanover, came Bratke 1910 and worked first as a storekeeper in the cooperative ( cooperative society ) and later as its general manager. Since 1912 he had been a member of the local council for the SPD, an event which he later commented with the words: “When I was elected to the Misburg municipal council for the first time 40 years ago, I did not know that this election would be my whole later life would affect. "

After participating in the First World War, he became the mayor of Misburg in 1919 and, on September 1, 1919, succeeded Clemens von Wedel-Gödens as a member of the SPD in the provincial parliament of the province of Hanover . The history of Misburg was decisively shaped in the 1920s and early 1930s by Bratke's forward-looking local and social policy. He had the community purchase building land, which enabled him to set up the Deurag-Nerag oil refinery union in Misburg in 1931 . He had 154 community-owned houses and 250 apartments built and promoted home construction - even for the unemployed. In 1925/26 he built his own waterworks (by the architect Friedrich Fischer ) and two sewage treatment plants, and in 1926 a youth home (also by Friedrich Fischer in forms of the new objectivity with expressionistic features). Since 1926 Bratke was also chairman of the provincial committee and was thus at the head of the administration of the province of Hanover. Here, too, he achieved a great deal through his political initiatives.

Pre-printed signatures from Mayor Henkel and City Director under the certificate “ Duty of honor fulfilled” to clear rubble , 1946

After the takeover of National Socialism 1933 Gustav Bratke was the victim of a political denunciation by an official of the provincial administration, which accused him of embezzlement and misappropriation. Bratke lost all his offices and was in prison for nine months before his complete innocence was proven. After that he was under police supervision and earned his living as an authorized signatory for a construction company.

On the day of the occupation of Hanover on April 10, 1945 by American troops, in whose immediate wake the British moved in with the designated city ​​commander, Major GH Lamb , appeared "around noon [...] following an agreement between the members of various underground groups, the former police chief Erwin Barth and the trade unionists Albin Karl and Heinrich Möhle , all three SPD members, with the American officer who was still interrogating Egon Bönner , the last acting mayor, to propose Gustav Bratke as mayor. ”The officer replied : "He is too old" ("He is too old"). Bratke replied: "If I'm too old for him, then he has to look for someone else".

After the secret service intervened, however, Bratke was appointed mayor on the following day as an “unencumbered” politician under the supervision of the British city commander Lamb , and Erwin Barth was appointed police chief. Lamb: "If there are any decent Germans at all, then he [Bratke] is one of them."

From April 11, 1945, Bratke was Lord Mayor, and when, following the British model, the political representation of the city and the top administration were separated, Bratke took over the office of City Director of Hanover from March 20, 1946 to October 20, 1949 . During this time he was responsible for organizing the first "Export Fair 1947 Hanover" (the later Hanover Fair ).

Until his death, Bratke was a member of the supervisory board of the Deutsche Messe- und Ausstellung-AG Hannover-Laatzen and president of the Lower Saxony City Council . Bratke died of a heart attack during a meeting of the city council in Coburg .

Honors

Because of his services to local politics, the city of Hanover made Gustav Bratke an honorary citizen in 1949 , as did the Misburg community in 1952. In 1952 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In Hanover, a newly built street from the Black Bear to Waterlooplatz was named Gustav-Bratke-Allee, in Misburg the former street In der Plantage. The youth hostel in Torfhaus bears his name.

literature

• Tackle and complete! Hanover 1945-1949 . Edited by the City Press and Culture Office Hanover. Arranged by Heinz Lauenroth and Hans von Gösseln. Osterwald, Hanover 1949. (In it the title-giving preface by Gustav Bratke: “Attack and complete!”)
• Harry Pott: Gustav Bratke . In: Misburg's soil and population through the ages . [Ed.] By Anton Scholand . 2nd edition, Lax, Hildesheim 1960, pp. 191-198.
• Great Lower Saxony. Spiritual acts, life journeys, adventures . Edited by Fred Engelke. Aufstieg-Verlag, Munich 1961 (Heimat und wide world. 4), pp. 280–284 (therein pp. 282–284: Walter Spengemann: Biography Gustav Bratke).
• Fossilized seashells on a trip to Jerusalem. Misburg . In: Hanover on foot. 18 city tours through history and the present . Ingo Bultmann (inter alia) (Ed.) VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1989, pp. 237–245. ISBN 3-87975-471-3
• Tackle and finish. Hanover's reconstruction in the 1950s . A source reading book. Arranged by Waldemar R. Röhrbein (among others). Hannover 1993. (Writings of the Historisches Museum Hannover. Vol. 5) ISBN 3-910073-06-9
• Klaus Mlynek and others: Bratke , in: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , pp. 69-70 and others, * Klaus Mlynek and others: Bratke , in: Hannover Chronik
• Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein , Dieter Brosius : Bratke , in: History of the City of Hanover , Vol. 2: From the beginning of the 19th century to the present
• Friedrich Lindau : Bratke , in: Reconstruction and destruction. The city in dealing with its architectural identity , 2nd revised. Ed., Schlütersche , Hannover 2001, ISBN 3-87706-659-3

Web links

Commons : Gustav Bratke  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dieter Bischoff, Gerhard Roemheld, Martin Anger: The "village" in 1983 , as well as Helmut Zimmermann : In the mirror of address books , in Martin Anger, [...] Dreimann: The Chronicle. Kirchrode in words and pictures , 1st edition, Hanover: TT-Verlagsgesellschaft Hanover, 1983, pp. 108–112; here: p. 110, as well as 116ff .; here: p. 117
2. ↑ ^{a b} Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Men and women from the very beginning , in: History of the City of Hanover, Part 2 ... , p. 652ff.
3. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Bratke, Gustav. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , pp. 69f.