Hans Elfgen

Johann Markus Hans Elfgen (born 12. February 1889 in Cologne , died 25. October 1968 in Cologne Braunsfeld ) was a Prussian civil servant and 1927-1933 President of the Government of the governmental district of Cologne . With the exception of the revolutionary year of 1848 , Hans Elfgen was the only regional president of Cologne born in Cologne during the first 140 years of the administrative district's existence.

Life

Origin and education

Hans Elfgen was the son of the businessman Heinrich Elfgen (1856-1919), partner in the coffee wholesaler Carl Mertens Wittwe , and Katharina, née Bechen. After visiting the Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium in his hometown, where he in 1907 as a sixth-former to Kaiserpreis received and where he at Easter 1908 Graduate took off, he studied at the Universities of Lausanne , Munich and Bonn law . After graduation, he joined the Prussian judicial service as a court trainee in 1911 , where he received further training at the local courts in Stolberg and Cologne until 1914 . In 1918 he passed the second state examination in law in Berlin. When he was appointed court assessor after the First World War in 1919, he was referred to the public prosecutor in Stettin for further training . From there, he moved to the newly founded University of Cologne for a semester to complete a special degree in economics and then to find employment in the presidential department of the Cologne Higher Regional Court , before finally joining the Cologne government in early 1921 as a legal advisor for occupation matters Administrative service transferred. At that time, the district president was Philipp Brugger . On May 3, 1921, he moved from Cologne as State Secretary for the occupied Rhenish territories to the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin.

Career

In July 1921 Brugger took Justiziar Elfgen to Berlin as a government assessor, where he found employment as an unskilled worker in the department for the occupied territories of the Reich Ministry of the Interior . There Brugger assigned him the department for regulations of the Rhineland Commission and attacks by the occupation . After transplantation as Councilor to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior (1922) Elfgen led there under the Minister Carl Severing since the beginning of the Ruhr struggle (1923), the Department Defense of separatism and occupation attacks, relief for the occupied territories, meetings with the political leaders in the Rhineland . In the same year he was promoted to the upper government council . 1925 Elfgen changed under appointment as Councilor in the Prussian Ministry . His area of ​​responsibility included the universities and the affairs of the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture.

According to a newspaper report of December 14, 1926 on the occasion of its transfer to Cologne, at the suggestion of the Prussian Minister of the Interior as local government president, Elfgen had previously become known to wide circles for his “diligent, more than five-year care for the social equilibrium occupied area ... especially in the bad years of the economic and traffic collapse and the separatist coup in 1923. ”It was emphasized that Elfgen was probably one of the few ministerial officials who, despite all the entry and passport difficulties in the occupied area, were on the spot with the leaders Minds from business and administration were able to keep in touch.

District President in Cologne

After the death of the 50-year-old Cologne District President Sigmund Graf Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden (died October 18, 1926), Elfgen was appointed his successor on December 21, 1926. The following January 11th was his formal inauguration. After the Reichstag elections of March 5, 1933, a few weeks after the National Socialists came to power , in the constituency of Cologne-Aachen with 30.1% of the vote, the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, decided on April 24, 1933 (Holy Saturday ) also deposed Hans Elfgen. On January 1, 1934, on the basis of Section 6 BBG, he was finally transferred to retirement. From his seven-year term of office, the following should be emphasized: the beginning of the recultivation of the lignite area , the establishment of a district planning association for the planning of new roads or their expansion, also the economic crisis and its effects from 1929 (160,000 people in Cologne received unemployment benefits in 1932) and finally the Municipal reorganization effective October 1, 1932, in which the number of districts within Elfgen's district was reduced from ten to seven. At that time, the Cologne administrative district had a population of 1.5 million, more than the then German states of Hesse, Mecklenburg or Oldenburg, but also as 28 other Prussian administrative districts. However , he was powerless to confront the “radicalization and wilderness of political life” . The rapidly increasing number of politically motivated demonstrations, including the associated street and hall battles, increasingly tied the police.

When in 1928 the Cologne Rabbi Adolf Kober oral and written because of occurring and increasing anti-Semitic incitement made representations, Elfgen took over as President of the Government response by letter of 18 August 1928 in relation to the in Koblenz seated Provincial President of the Rhine Province Hans Fuchs position. He saw no possibility of intervention on the part of the police, especially since they are reluctant to get to the point of "being subsequently disavowed by the judge in the event of seizure, they rather prefer to leave the initiative to the public prosecutor". The latter, however, saw no reason to intervene. In his statement to his superior department, Elfgen came to the conclusion: "Warnings would be ignored and only arouse filthy criticism of the authorities."

In contrast to the then Mayor of Cologne Konrad Adenauer , who refused to welcome Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor on the occasion of a visit to an election event in Cologne on February 17, 1933 , because he had come as an election speaker, Hans Elfgen as government president and the incumbent police president took Walther Lingens took part in the "giant rally " in the Deutz exhibition hall on February 19 . The historian Horst Matzerath described Elfgens work as a government minister during the first weeks after the seizure of power by the Nazis as "highly customizable willing", but provided with the stigma that he is the Center Party had been consulted and will also be identified with the old "system."

1933 to 1968

After his release in Cologne, Elfgen stayed in Rome , Oxford and London until 1934 . In 1935 he moved to Berlin , where he worked as a legal advisor for a battery factory, before taking over the asset management of the Pauli heirs in Cologne in 1936 (until 1956) and legal advice for the Kranken- und Pflegeeanstalten GmbH Arenberg (until 1960). The NSDAP continued to monitor Elfgen after his release. So wrote Reinhard Heydrich , chief of the Security Police and SD , on 23 May 1942, the head of the military administration in Belgium and former Cologne district president Eggert Reeder :

"Also the ... former Cologne District President and Western Secretary in the Prussian State Ministry, Elfgen, is a man who had to be retired in the course of the streamlining of the professional civil service. He too was a member of the center. It was not until 1941 that Elfgen represented the Dominican Order with the Chief Finance President in Koblenz and is still a member of the Board of Trustees of the Order of the “Good Shepherd” in Cologne to this day. Elfgen, too, has to be completely rejected in political and character terms ... "

- 150 years of the Cologne district.

In 1946 Elfgen was admitted to the bar at the Cologne District and Regional Court . He was the bearer of several church orders.

family

The Catholic Hans Elfgen married on October 2, 1922 in Berlin-Lankwitz Elisabeth Franziska Wilhelmine Schaller (born February 26, 1900 in Munich; died October 4, 1986 in Cologne), daughter of the factory director in Berlin, Otto Schaller (1859–1945) and Maria Schaller, née Pauli (1866–1951). The long-time mayor of Cologne, Max Wallraf, was an uncle through his second wife, Anna Wallraf, née Pauli, and the Cologne architect Fritz Schaller was a brother-in-law of Elfgen.

The youngest of the three sons from the marriage of Hans and Elisabeth was Anno Elfgen . The 1961 before the law faculty at the University of Cologne with the work Die Mejora. History and dogmatics in Spanish and South American law for Dr. jur. later obtained his doctorate in culture attaché at the German Embassy in Stockholm , and he gained greater fame when he was among the survivors of the hostage-taking by the " Holger Meins " command on April 24, 1975 . Annos older brother Heribert Ansgar Elfgen (1925–1949) died at the age of 24 from the consequences of being a prisoner of war , at which time he was completing an apprenticeship as a car mechanic .

literature

• 150 years of the Cologne district. Landesdienst – Verlag, Berlin – West 1966, without ISBN, pp. 108–110 (with picture).
• Horst Matzerath : Cologne in the time of National Socialism 1933–1945. (History of the City of Cologne, 12), Greven Verlag Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7743-0429-1 (linen) or ISBN 978-3-7743-0430-7 (half leather), pp. 61, 69 u. 86.
• Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 , p. 432 f .
• Ulrich S. Soenius : Elfgen, Hans In: Ulrich S. Soenius, Jürgen Wilhelm : Kölner Personen-Lexikon. Greven Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 134 f (with picture).

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, civil status archive Rhineland, civil status register, registry office Cologne West, deaths, 1968, document no. 3414.
2. ^ ^{A b c d e f g} Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} 150 years of the Cologne district.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Herbert M. Schleicher: 80,000 death notes from Rhenish collections. (= Publications of the West German Society for Family Studies eV , New Series No. 38) Volume I, Cologne 1987, without ISBN, p. 631.
5. ^ ^{A b c} Ministerialrat Elfgen District President of Cologne In: Kölnische Volkszeitung , No. 920 of December 14, 1926.
6. ↑ Horst Matzerath: Cologne in the time of National Socialism 1933-1945. (History of the City of Cologne, 12), Greven Verlag Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7743-0429-1 (linen) or ISBN 978-3-7743-0430-7 (half leather), p. 61.
7. ↑ Horst Matzerath: Cologne in the time of National Socialism 1933-1945. (History of the City of Cologne, 12), Greven Verlag Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7743-0429-1 (linen) or ISBN 978-3-7743-0430-7 (half leather), p. 69.
8. ↑ Horst Matzerath: Cologne in the time of National Socialism 1933-1945. (History of the City of Cologne, 12), Greven Verlag Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7743-0429-1 (linen) or ISBN 978-3-7743-0430-7 (half leather), p. 86.
9. ↑ Ulrich S. Soenius: Elfgen, Hans In: Ulrich S. Soenius, Jürgen Wilhelm: Kölner Personen-Lexikon. Greven Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 135.
10. ↑ CG: Terrorists blow up the German embassy in Stockholm. Bonn refuses to release the Bader Meinhof prisoners / hostage takers captured / Ambassador Stoecker lives. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 25, 1975, p. 1.
11. ↑ Elke Lehmann-Brauns: Deutschlandspiegel - in Swedish , Die Zeit from May 30, 1975, 23/1975, on Zeit Online, accessed on September 26, 2017.
12. ^ Between the teeth , Der Spiegel, July 26, 1976, 31/1976, accessed on September 26, 2017.
13. ^ Herbert M. Schleicher: 80,000 death notes from Rhenish collections. (= Publications of the West German Society for Family Studies eV, New Series No. 38) Volume I, Cologne 1987, without ISBN, p. 632.
14. ↑ Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, civil status archive Rhineland, civil status register, registry office Cologne I, deaths, 1949, document no. 740.