Heinrich Sahm
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Martin Sahm (born September 12, 1877 in Anklam , Germany ; † October 3, 1939 in Oslo , Norway ) was a German and Danzig politician and diplomat . From 1920 to 1931 he was President of the Senate of the Free City of Danzig and from 1931 to 1935 Lord Mayor of Berlin . He was then ambassador to Norway until his death .
Life
education and study
Heinrich Sahm came from an originally from East Prussia immigrant Pomeranian family of craftsmen who lived in Anklam since the second half of the 18th century. His great-grandfather, the rope maker Johann Sahm, immigrated from East Prussia between 1759 and 1799. His grandfather, Johann Joachim David Sahm, was also a rope maker, his father, Heinrich Alexander Wilhelm Sahm († 1901), a merchant, had originally learned the trade of a needle punch. The mother, Wilhelmine Friederike Sahm née Schußmann († 1920), whom the father had married in 1875 for the second time, was the daughter of a brush maker from Greifswald . The parents' marriage resulted in the eldest son Johannes Sahm (* 1876, † 1927), who later took over the parental business. The second and last son was Heinrich Sahm.
From 1883 Heinrich attended elementary school and then the grammar school in his hometown. Even if he had to repeat a school year because of his poor health, he graduated from high school in the spring of 1896 with very good grades.
Sahm studied law and political science in Munich from the summer of 1896 . After a semester, he moved to the University of Berlin before moving to the University of Greifswald in the summer of 1898 . During his studies he became a member of the gymnastics associations Cimbria Greifswald and Rhenania Berlin (today the gymnastics association Berlin). In the spring of 1900 he passed the first state examination at the Higher Regional Court in Stettin .
1900–1904 he worked as a trainee lawyer at courts and lawyers in Wollin , Greifswald and Stettin . He also worked as a tutor for law students. His father died in 1901. In October 1904 he passed the second state examination in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior with the grade "good".
Local political career in Magdeburg
After graduating, he worked briefly as an unpaid assessor at the Anklam District Court and as a lawyer. In May 1905 he was hired as a magistrate's assistant in Stettin. There he met his future wife Dorothea née Rolffs, daughter of a pharmacist. The engagement took place on December 29, 1905, and the couple married on October 10, 1906 - after being elected as a city councilor in Magdeburg . The marriage resulted in two sons and two daughters.
Sahm embarked on a civil service career in local government. In 1906 he was elected to the city council in Magdeburg and introduced into office on August 16, 1906. In the same year Hans Luther , the future Chancellor, was elected as a further city councilor. The longstanding friendship between the two was to be of use to Sahm in the Danzig era. In the magistrate he was responsible for various departments one after the other. As a special assignment, he was responsible for the incorporations of April 1, 1910 (Cracau and Prester (Jerichow I district), Fermersleben, Lemsdorf, Salbke, Westerhüsen (all Wanzleben district)).
Second mayor in Bochum
From September 1912 to June 1918 (with a break in Warsaw) he was second mayor in Bochum . There he was responsible for finance and tax matters, the savings bank, abandonments, the city archive, legal issues and primary school matters. He was instrumental in founding the Bochumer Hypothekenanstalt and the introduction of the city debt register. With the beginning of the First World War he was also responsible for war food and people's food in Bochum.
After returning from Warsaw in 1918, he worked in Bochum for four months.
Civil administration in Warsaw
On August 15, 1915, he was ordered by telegram to the Reich Office of the Interior, where Undersecretary Lewald asked him to act as local political advisor to the German civil administration in Warsaw . He accepted the offer and arrived in Warsaw on August 20th. One of the colleagues in the civil administration was Hubertus Schwartz , who was later to become a Senator in Danzig under him . In Warsaw, he was primarily responsible for questions relating to the war economy, i.e. primarily the food supply.
In December 1917 the Bochum magistrate asked for his return. He left Warsaw on February 11, 1918.
Managing Director of the German and Prussian City Council
At the beginning of 1918, Sahm applied for the position of Lord Mayor of Essen. However, the Center Party had reservations about the non-party Sahm and so Hans Luther was elected instead.
On June 21, 1918, at a joint meeting of the executive boards of the German and Prussian City Councils, he was elected managing director of the German and Prussian City Council and thus as Luther's successor.
Danzig
In October 1918, the mayor of Danzig , Heinrich Scholtz, died . On February 2, 1919, Sahm was elected Lord Mayor by the city council and on February 25, 1919 he was appointed to his office. In the first months of his activity, the Free City of Danzig was founded and Danzig was separated from the Reich as a result of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty . Sahm led the negotiations in Paris on the future status of the Free State and its relations with Poland.
In 1920 he was appointed President of the Danzig State Council. After the Treaty of Versailles came into force, he served as Senate President of the Free City of Danzig from November 6, 1920 to January 9, 1931 through three Senate legislatures , which were characterized by economic difficulties and political tensions. From Warsaw he was also accused of having promoted the procurement of forced labor from Poland during the First World War . He saw his main political task in Danzig in maintaining the German character of the city, which had a purely German population, after the separation from the German Reich, in preserving its political independence, which he believed threatened by Poland, and in preventing Polish desires.
Sahm prevented the Haller army from moving through , which - following the example of Vilna - could have jeopardized the independence of the new state. He was responsible for the formulation of a constitution for the Free State and the conclusion of the Danzig-Polish Convention. He repeatedly represented Danzig's interests before the Council of the League of Nations . Although he viewed the creation of the Free City of Gdansk and the establishment of the Polish Corridor as wrong and untenable in the long run, in foreign policy he loyally adhered to the international treaties and the decisions of the League of Nations, as it provided the strongest protection in the current international law looked for the weak small state. After repeated re-election as president, he was overthrown in 1931 by a right-wing coalition.
Lord Mayor of Berlin
On April 14, 1931, he was elected Lord Mayor of Berlin , thereby simultaneously gaining the position of President of the German and Prussian City Councils . By introducing energetic austerity measures, he rehabilitated the capital's economic and financial situation. In view of the threat of political danger from the National Socialists , he founded a committee to ensure the re-election of Paul von Hindenburg as Reich President . After the committee had collected over a million signatures in favor of Hindenburg and Hindenburg had declared himself ready to run again, Sahm withdrew from the chairmanship of the committee so as not to endanger his non-partisan position.
After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Sahm initially remained in office. However, he was increasingly exposed to personal attacks in order to oust him from office. The last democratically determined mayor until the post-war period worked as a German national in the expansion of Nazi rule at the local level: Sahm signed the dismissals of employees who were not acceptable to the new regime and the exclusion of communist and social-democratic city councilors. When Julius Lippert was appointed State Commissioner to him in March 1933 , his office lost its decision-making powers. He resigned on December 18, 1935 and went to Norway as ambassador on May 11, 1936 , from where in 1939 Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop wanted to recall him. Sahm died in Oslo as a result of an appendix operation. His grave is in the Dahlem forest cemetery . From 1932 to 1937 Sahm was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society .
Sahm had been a member of the NSDAP since November 1933 . His exclusion in 1935 by party court proceedings for shopping in Jewish shops was lifted at the express request of Adolf Hitler .
A grandson of Sahm is the Middle East correspondent Ulrich W. Sahm , son of the German diplomat Ulrich Sahm .
art
Heinrich Sahm was a connoisseur and patron of art. Part of this art funding was that he commissioned well-known artists to paint pictures of him. In 1917 it was painted by Henryk Berlewi in Warsaw , Fritz Pfuhle and Otto Dix in Gdansk, and Konrad von Kardorff , Heinrich von Luckner and Leo von König in Berlin . Fritz Gruson created a portrait bust.
Honors
- His grave was dedicated to the city of Berlin from 1952 to 2001 .
- 1924 Awarded an honorary doctorate ( Dr.- Ing.hc ) by the Technical University of Danzig
- 1927 Award of the German Red Cross Decoration
- 1928 Awarded an honorary doctorate ( Dr. jur. Hc) by the law faculty of the Albertus University in Königsberg
- 1928 Appointment as honorary senator of the University of Tübingen
Works (selection)
- Material on the history of the Free City of Gdansk . AW Kafemann, Danzig 1930.
- Sahm, memories from my years in Danzig 1919–1930 . Johann Gottfried Herder Institute, Marburg 1955 (printed as a manuscript).
literature
- Heinrich Sprenger: Heinrich Sahm: Local politician and statesman, 1969, Diss.
- Martin Otto: Sahm, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , pp. 353-355 ( digitized version ).
- Joachim Lilla : The Prussian State Council 1921–1933. A biographical manual . With a documentation of the state councilors appointed in the “Third Reich”. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2005
- Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-71843-3 , p. 5f
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Ulrich Sahm: Sahm, Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Martin . In: Old Prussian biography . Volume 2, Marburg / Lahn 1967, p. 582.
- ^ Norman Davies : White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20 and `the miracle on the Vistula '. Pimlica, London 2003, p. 185.
- ↑ Lilla, p. 234
- ↑ Lilla, p. 233
Web links
- Literature by and about Heinrich Sahm in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Heinrich Sahm in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sahm, Heinrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sahm, Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Martin (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Gdansk politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 12, 1877 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Anklam |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 3, 1939 |
| Place of death | Oslo |