Heinrich Leuchtgens

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Leuchtgens (born October 31, 1876 in Birklar in the district of Gießen , † March 21, 1959 in Friedberg ) was a German politician .

Life

Heinrich Leuchtgens was born as the son of the princely Solms carriage master Peter Rainer Leuchtgens and his wife Margarete nee Klamm. He was married to Auguste Vorbach († 1936) in his first marriage since 1900 and his second marriage to the teacher Hilde Kullmann since 1946. The children August (* 1901 in Alsfeld) and Verena (* 1903 in Bad Nauheim) emerged from the first marriage.

He attended elementary school in Lich from 1883 to 1891 and the preparatory school in Lich from 1891 to 1893. Since preparation institutes were preparing to attend a teachers 'seminar , they attended the teachers' seminar in Friedberg / Hessen from 1893 to 1896. Leuchtgens worked from 1896 to 1905 as a primary school teacher in Burgholzhausen vor der Höhe and from 1905 to 1925 as a seminar teacher at the Friedberg teachers' seminar. From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War as a soldier . Fighting on the Western Front, he was promoted to lieutenant in April 1916 .

From 1919 to 1931 he worked as an editorial writer for the “Neue Tageszeitung” in Friedberg. The "Neue Tageszeitung" was founded in 1908 by leading members of the Hessian Land Association. During the time of the Weimar Republic, this fighting paper of peasant interests stood on the side of the opponents of democracy and was assigned to the right to right-wing extremist camp.

From 1921 to 1924, Leuchtgens studied economics , finance and jurisprudence at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Giessen. In 1922 he passed the high school diploma. After his final examination as an economist, he was awarded a doctorate in 1924 at the University of Giessen. rer. pole. PhD. The title of his dissertation was: "Society and State with Christian Jacob Kraus ".

In 1928/29 he volunteered at the " Deutsche Effecten- und Wechselbank " in Frankfurt am Main. In 1929 he founded the "Oberhessische Bank Actien-Gesellschaft, Friedberg (Hessen)" together with several donors and took over the chairmanship of its supervisory board.

politics

From 1910 to 1933 Leuchtgens was a member of the Friedberg city parliament. Since 1922 he was also a deputy mayor (alderman) in the magistrate. In his function as city councilor, he represented the interests of the city of Friedberg on the board of trustees of the Friedberg Polytechnic . As the third log book of the board of trustees of the Polytechnic shows, Leuchtgens was chairman there for some time.

At first, Leuchtgens was a member of the Progressive People's Party , but after the First World War he joined the Hessian Farmers' Union , which was closely associated with the DNVP . From 1925 to 1931 he sat for the farmers' union, which from 1927 called itself the Hessischer Landbund, in the Hessian state parliament and was also parliamentary group chairman until 1927. Leuchtgens was a member of the finance committee. In 1932 he ran his own list (“List Leuchtgens”) for the state parliament, but failed with 0.28% of the votes.

Leuchtgens was in strong opposition to the political goals represented by the SPD , the center and the German state party . Despite his right-wing extremist views, Leuchtgens was sent to the Osthofen concentration camp for five weeks in 1934 . Due to this decisive personal experience, he lived completely withdrawn from all public activities until the end of the Third Reich. This imprisonment of Leuchtgens may be surprising from today's point of view, because the majority of the political concentration camp prisoners were members of left-wing parties. However, it should not be underestimated that many NSDAP supporters saw themselves as part of a social revolutionary movement. This was accompanied by strong opposition to reactionary forces in the bourgeoisie. Conservative and monarchist currents, as represented by the DNVP, were initially only tolerated by the new Reich government. From 1934 she strictly opposed monarchist aspirations. The trigger was the celebrations for the 75th birthday of the abdicated Kaiser Wilhelm II on January 27, 1934. After SA men had disrupted a celebration of officers' associations in Berlin, the German Reich Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick (NSDAP), felt compelled to take countermeasures . In February 1934, he asked the state governments to dissolve and ban monarchist associations immediately. The concrete aim of the actions to be initiated was the dissolution of the “Kaiserbewbewegung” and the “Kaiserdank” association.

In the late summer of 1945, Leuchtgens founded the National Democratic Party (NDP) with Heinrich Fassbender and became its chairman; however, the party was not approved as a state party in the American zone of occupation . Leuchtgens was re-elected to the Friedberg City Council in 1946. From 1946 to 1947 he was the first deputy mayor (alderman) of the city of Friedberg. In the negotiations of the NDP with the German party and the DKP-DRP on July 1, 1949 about a joint election for the 1949 federal election , Leuchtgens took part for his party together with Karl Schäfer and Erich Teuscher . Although the plans had come quite far, they ultimately failed. The reason was the declaration by the British military government that a merger party would not receive a license and would therefore not be able to run for election.

The NDP then concluded an election agreement with the Hessian FDP , due to which Leuchtgens entered the German Bundestag as the only one of his party in 1949 . After Paul Löbe ( SPD ) and Konrad Adenauer ( CDU ), he was the third oldest member of the first Bundestag. First he formed the National Rights Group together with the five members of the DKP-DRP and in January 1950 merged his party with the Lower Saxony DKP-DRP to form the German Reich Party (DRP), but switched to the DP on December 6, 1950 . On July 27, 1953, he left this party and remained non-attached to the end of the electoral term . After leaving parliament in 1954, he founded the “Monarchist Party of Germany”, which in 1956 became part of the “People's Movement for Emperor and Reich”.

literature

  • Eva Haberkorn:  Leuchtgens estate  (= Repertories Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt ) Dept. O59 Leuchtgens (PDF; 51 kB). In: Archive Information System Hessen (Arcinsys Hessen), status: 1995, accessed on September 16, 2016.
  • Jochen Lengemann : MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 242.
  • Thomas Petrasch, Klaus-Dieter Rack: From the commercial academy to the technical university - Friedberg university history (1901–2011). In: Wetterauer Geschichtsblätter, Volume 62. Verlag der Buchhandlung Bindernagel, Friedberg (Hessen) 2013, ISSN  0508-6213 .
  • Klaus-Dieter Rack, Bernd Vielsmeier: Hessian MPs 1820–1933. Biographical evidence for the first and second chambers of the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse 1820–1918 and the state parliament of the People's State of Hesse 1919–1933 (= Political and parliamentary history of the State of Hesse. Vol. 19 = Work of the Hessian Historical Commission. NF Vol. 29) . Hessian Historical Commission, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-88443-052-1 , No. 533.
  • Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 1: A-M. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 501.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Schmollinger, German Conservative Party - German Right Party , in Stöss, Party Handbook , Westdeutscher Verlag , Opladen 1986, page 1002 f.
personal data
SURNAME Leuchtgens, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician, Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Birklar
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1959
Place of death Friedberg