Heinrich Valid

This article deals with the NSDAP politician and mayor of Heilbronn from 1933 to 1945, Heinrich Valid. For the publisher of the Heilbronner Zeitung Neckar-Dampfschiff see Heinrich Güldig (1820–1893).

Heinrich Valid (born May 20, 1898 in Heilbronn ; † June 9, 1963 there ) was Lord Mayor of Heilbronn from April 26, 1933 to April 1945 . The trained businessman belonged to the NSDAP from 1930 . After the Second World War he served a prison sentence of several years for shooting a French prisoner of war near Neuenstadt am Kocher . After his release from prison in 1953, he acquired a company in Heilbronn that manufactured wine corks. The valid process named after him for the sterilization of natural corks with sulfur dioxide has established itself as the standard worldwide.

Life

Valid was a businessman by profession. In 1921 he received the power of attorney in the building materials company founded by his grandfather Christian Heinrich gilt (1836–1912) and managed by his father Karl gilt. He became a party member of the NSDAP in September 1930. In January 1932 he became a member of the municipal council in Heilbronn's city parliament, where he became the leader of his party. In October of the same year, Valid was promoted to SA -Sturmbannführer. Also in the same year he gave up the power of attorney for the family business. From 1933 to 1945, he was the chairman of the Heilbronn section of the German Alpine Club .

On March 16, 1933, a municipal council meeting took place in Heilbronn with only 17 out of 30 councilors, as Social Democrats and Communists had been beaten, arrested or intimidated. Those present elected Valid as the first deputy of the sick Lord Mayor Emil Beutinger . The second deputy was City Councilor Krauss from the civil association. On March 17, Heinrich Valid was appointed State Commissioner and sworn in as such on March 21, 1933. On July 26th, Beutinger was retired against his will on the basis of the law to restore the professional civil service . On August 16, 1933, Valid was appointed Lord Mayor. As early as March 23, without the participation of the municipal council, VALIG had appointed his party friends and parliamentary colleagues Hugo Kölle and Alfred Faber as his deputies.

According to the new German municipal code of April 1935, Valid in the future led the city in "full and exclusive responsibility", the previous councilors only had an advisory role as councilors .

On May 1, 1937, Valid became the acting leader of SA Standard 122, and in November 1942 he was appointed SA Oberführer.

When the air raid on Heilbronn on December 4, 1944, gilt experienced the total destruction of the city with over 6,000 victims. Heilbronn was ahead of Stuttgart at the top of the number of victims of all cities in Württemberg . After the air strike, he was criticized by the survivors for not having passed on life-saving air protection instructions on how to behave in the event of a firestorm . On April 1, 1945, valid was drafted to the Volkssturm . He appointed Karl Kübler as his deputy, but he was shot on April 6th on the orders of the district leader Richard Drauz because he had hoisted a white flag at his house. Valid itself was now considered fallen. American troops occupied the city on April 12, 1945, and the next day, valid predecessor Beutinger was reinstated as mayor.

On March 12, 1945, Valid was called to the dairy in Neuenstadt , where problems are said to have arisen with the French slave laborers employed there. Valid and his two companions took the Frenchman André Guyot to the quarry in Eberstadt , where they shot him. The corpse was validly reported to the Eberstadt town hall and returned to Heilbronn.

On April 1, Valid took over the leadership of a combat group named after him of the Volkssturm , which was no longer used. Shortly before the end of the war, he was taken prisoner by the French near Wangen.

The administration building of the company in Heilbronn-Böckingen, which was taken over in 1953

In 1948 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of the Frenchman . In a second trial before a French military court in Rastatt , he was sentenced on December 22, 1952 to eleven years in prison with forced labor. After he had been imprisoned for a total of eight years, he was released early on July 14, 1953 under an amnesty. Afterwards he litigated in vain with the city of Heilbronn for the rights of a civil servant for life, which he believed he could claim as the former mayor.

Back in Heilbronn, in December 1953, he bought the company Zuko W. Lahnstein & Co. , founded in 1949 , which made wine corks . The by this company, now Henry Valid GmbH , 1956/57, together with Ernst Klenk and Gerhard Strecker from the wine school Weinberg developed valid methods for sterilization of cork stoppers with sulfur dioxide has become the worldwide standard and still bears his name.

literature

• Uwe Jacobi : The end of the war. Scenes in 1944/45 in Heilbronn, in the Unterland and in Hohenlohe . Verlag Heilbronner Voice, Heilbronn 1986, ISBN 3-921923-03-4 (Heilbronner Voice / book series, 2)
• Uwe Jacobi: The missing council minutes . 1st edition. Heilbronner Voice publishing house, Heilbronn 1981

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Susanne Schlösser: The Heilbronn NSDAP and their "leaders" . In: Heilbronnica 2. Contributions to the city's history . Heilbronn city archive, Heilbronn 2003, ISBN 3-928990-85-3 (sources and research on the history of the city of Heilbronn, 15). P. 289
2. ↑ Susanne Schlösser: Chronicle of the city of Heilbronn. Volume V: 1939-1945 . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2004 (Publications of the Heilbronn City Archives, 40), ISBN 3-928990-89-6 . S. XLVI
3. ↑ Christhard Schrenk, Hubert Weckbach: "... for your account and risk" - invoices and letterheads Heilbronner Firmen , Heilbronn 1994, p. 50.
4. ↑ Susanne Schlösser: Chronicle of the city of Heilbronn. Volume IV: 1933-1938 . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001 (Publications of the Heilbronn City Archives, 39), ISBN 3-928990-77-2 . Pp. XIX-XXIII.
5. ^ ^{A b} Robert Bauer: Heilbronner Tagebuchblätter , Heilbronn 1949.
6. ↑ Susanne Schlösser: The Heilbronn NSDAP and their "leaders" . In: Heilbronnica 2. Contributions to the city's history . Heilbronn city archive, Heilbronn 2003, ISBN 3-928990-85-3 (sources and research on the history of the city of Heilbronn, 15). P. 315.
7. ↑ Uwe Jacobi: In the quarry there was a dead French man . In: Heilbronn voice . March 12th, 2005 ( at Stimme.de ( Memento from March 12th 2007 in the Internet Archive )). A French man lay dead in the quarry ( Memento from March 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Susanne Schlösser: The Heilbronn NSDAP and their "leaders" . In: Heilbronnica 2. Contributions to the city's history . Heilbronn city archive, Heilbronn 2003, ISBN 3-928990-85-3 (sources and research on the history of the city of Heilbronn, 15). P. 316.
9. ↑ Susanne Schlösser: The Heilbronn NSDAP and their "leaders" . In: Heilbronnica 2. Contributions to the city's history . Heilbronn city archive, Heilbronn 2003, ISBN 3-928990-85-3 (sources and research on the history of the city of Heilbronn, 15). P. 316.
10. ↑ Kilian Krauth: Valid lets pop the corks . In: Heilbronn voice . December 22, 2003.