Hans Herrmann (politician)

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Hans Herrmann (born January 26, 1889 in Regensburg ; † August 20, 1959 there ) was a predominantly local German politician ( BVP , NSDAP , CSU ). He was a member of the Reichstag in 1933 , Deputy Mayor from 1925 to 1945 , and Mayor of Regensburg from 1952 to 1960 , and a member of the Bavarian State Parliament from 1954 to 1958 .

Live and act

After attending elementary school and the humanistic grammar schools in Würzburg and Regensburg, Herrmann studied law first at the Regensburg Lyzeum and then at the universities of Würzburg and Munich . He was a member of the Catholic student association K.St.V., which was founded in Regensburg. Albertia Munich. In 1920 he passed the state examination for higher judicial and administrative service. After graduating, he was employed as a legal assistant with the city of Regensburg, whereupon he first became a legal assessor and then, in early 1921, city counsel with the city administration of Regensburg. During this time Herrmann turned to local politics and as a member of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP), to which he had belonged since 1918, he became a legally qualified city councilor in 1922 and from January 1, 1925, the city's second legally qualified mayor. Later he took over the office of deputy chairman of the district council of Upper Palatinate. He also became a member of the regional executive committee of the Bavarian People's Party.

Hans Herrmann and the National Socialist Regime

In the Reichstag election of March 1933 , Herrmann became a member of the eighth Reichstag of the Weimar Republic , in which he represented constituency 25 (Lower Bavaria / Upper Palatinate). As a BVP deputy, Herrmann voted, among other things, for the Enabling Act of March 1933 introduced by the Hitler government , which formed the legal basis for the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

On June 26, 1933, Herrmann was briefly taken into “ protective custody ” and handed over to a Regensburg hospital on the same day because of health problems. In his office as second mayor - contrary to the demands of the NSDAP district leader Wolfgang Weigert - at the request of the Nazi mayor Otto Schottenheim, he was left. On May 1, 1935, he joined the NSDAP as member number 3613732 , and in 1936 he also became a supporting member of the SS . In addition, Herrmann was a member of many other Nazi organizations. B. the function of the "district chief". In July 1942 he was awarded the War Merit Cross 2nd Class .

In addition to his function as the second mayor, Herrmann was responsible for the traffic, factory and property department, he practiced a. a. other functions as managing director and chairing the supervisory board of Stadtbau GmbH. As part of these official duties, he was u. a. dealt with the so-called " Aryanization " of Jewish property and personally led the negotiations on the occasion of the forced sale of the property of the synagogue that burned down in November 1938. According to Helmut Halter, he took advantage of the plight of the Jewish community as a "hardened real estate dealer" and expressed their asking prices.

Evaluation of Herrmann's work in the time of National Socialism

The evaluation of Herrmann's behavior during the Nazi era is still controversial in research today. Works that are friendly to Herrmann assume that he only joined the NSDAP under pressure and wanted to prevent worse, that is, “real Nazis” in office. This assessment coincides with Herrmann's defense strategy after the end of the war. Helmut Halter, the author of the standard work "Regensburg under the swastika", however, has u. a. on Hermann's good cooperation with the then Nazi Lord Mayor Schottenheim, who in 1940 certified him active in the NSDAP and special merits "in carrying out the war-important tasks" of the city administration. Mayor Herrmann exercised an indispensable function in the administration of the Nazi armaments city of Regensburg and during the war, as only he had the qualifications required by the German municipal code.

Hans Herrmann after the National Socialist era

Immediately after the end of the war, Herrmann was appointed acting head of the city administration by the US military government, but was removed from City Hall in mid-June and replaced by Gerhard Tietze on June 14th. Thereupon he was charged, and in August 1946 he was sentenced in the first instance in the arbitration chamber proceedings as an “incriminated person” to six months of forced labor and a ban on further political activity. He was also permanently banned from holding a public office and receiving a public pension. In February 1947, he was downgraded to a "fellow traveler" in the subsequent appellate instances of the ruling chamber, which was erroneously repealed by the American military government (non-concurrence decision). After political pressure from the State Minister for Special Tasks Ludwig Hagenauer on the Bavarian Court of Cassation, the latter confirmed the judgment in February 1948.

Despite the prohibition to be politically active, Herrmann participated in the founding of the CSU in Regensburg in 1945 . For this party he was elected Lord Mayor of Regensburg in 1952 and confirmed again in 1956. According to Halter, Herrmann campaigned unusually strong for "some of the city's former leading National Socialists" during this period. So he gave the former NSDAP district leader Wolfgang Weigert a "voluntary aid" until the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior decreed in 1957 that the city of Weigert, as a former city school council, had to pay a maintenance contribution.

From 1950 to 1955 he served as chairman of the district association of the CSU Upper Palatinate and as a member of the state board of the CSU. From 1954 to 1958 he was a member of the Bavarian State Parliament .

Awards, but also deletion from the list of honorary citizens and school renaming

The city of Regensburg awarded Hans Herrmann honorary citizenship in 1959, the year he died, and honored him posthumously by naming an elementary school after his name. Since the end of the 1990s, there has been increasing public criticism of the naming of a school after Hans Herrmann. According to the decision of the Bavarian State Parliament in April 2013, the Ministry of Culture prepared a report on school name cartridges, which are to be classified as problematic because of their Nazi past. It also mentions the Hans Herrmann School in Regensburg. The school forum decided by a large majority to drop the name and rename the school to Willi-Ulfig- Mittelschule.

Following a resolution of the City Council of Regensburg in July 2015, the name Hans Herrmann was removed from the list of honorary citizens and from the list of holders of the Silver Citizen Medal. The park named after him was renamed Albert Schweitzer Park.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933-1945. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1991, ISBN 3-7700-5162-9 , p. 277 f.
  2. ^ Robert Werner: Hans Herrmann - a mayor for every system , Regensburg-Digital from August 6, 2012, p. 1
  3. ↑ Helmut Halter, City under the Swastika. Local politics in Regensburg during the Nazi era , (published by the museums and the archives of the city of Regensburg) 1994, pp. 87–91, here 89.
  4. ↑ Stephanie Schmalhofer, The Mayor of Regensburg Hans Herrmann , (Master's thesis) 2000, p. 25.
  5. ↑ Helmut Halter, 1994, p. 90.
  6. ↑ Arthur Liebehenschel introduced the euphemism "completing the war-important tasks" .
  7. ↑ a b Robert Werner: Hans Herrmann - a mayor for every system , Regensburg-Digital 2012, p. 2
  8. ^ Robert-Werner: End of the war in Regensburg , 2012, p.6 (PDF file; 167 kB)
  9. ↑ a b Helmut Halter, 1994, p. 91.
  10. ^ Thomas Schlemmer: Awakening, Crisis and Renewal. The Christian-Social Union 1945 to 1955 , 1998, p. 472.
  11. ↑ Stefan Aigner: Honorary Citizen: Leader leaves, Mayor stays , regensburg-digital 2011.
  12. ↑ Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture (report of July 25, 2013; PDF; 32 kB)
  13. ↑ Homepage of the school  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.schulen.regensburg.de  
  14. ^ Herrmann deleted from the list of honorary citizens, Mittelbayerische Zeitung online, July 31, 2015
  15. ↑ Resolution draft of the city council meeting of July 30, 2015 ( memento of the original of October 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Website of the city of Regensburg, accessed on July 31, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / srv19.regensburg.de
  16. ↑ The name Hans Herrmann disappears Mittelbayerische Zeitung online, July 2nd, 2015

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Herrmann, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (BVP, NSDAP, CSU), MdR, MdL and Mayor of Regensburg
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg
DATE OF DEATH 20th August 1959
Place of death regensburg