Heinz Potthoff (politician, 1875)
Heinz Potthoff (born May 9, 1875 in Bielefeld , † March 4, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German social reformer and liberal politician. He stood out in particular as an influential labor lawyer.
Life
The father Hermann was a manufacturer. Potthoff attended the Realgymnasium in Bielefeld up to the final exam in 1893. Between 1893 and 1895 he first completed a commercial apprenticeship at the Barmer Litzenfabrik. In addition, he also passed the re-examination at the local humanistic grammar school in 1898. After that, he studied political science and law in Munich , Leipzig and Berlin from 1895 . In Munich he became a member of the Rhenania fraternity in 1895 , from which he had to resign in 1932 due to political differences. In 1900 he completed his studies with a doctorate to become a Dr. phil. in political science. His dissertation was a regional and economic history work: "The linen legging in the Grafschaft Ravensberg ."
Between 1901 and 1905 he was managing director of the trade contract association in Berlin. Afterwards he was in-house counsel for the German Workers' Association based in Düsseldorf . From 1906 he was also the editor of the Volkswirtschaftliche Blätter , the organ of the Reich Association of German Economists.
Potthoff was elected to the Reichstag in 1903 for the Waldeck constituency. There he first sat in the parliamentary group of the Liberal Association . From 1910 he belonged to the Progressive People's Party . Before the Reichstag election of 1912 , he renounced another Reichstag candidacy.
In terms of content, he was close to Friedrich Naumann and campaigned against the three-class suffrage in Prussia and other German countries. He also campaigned for women's suffrage . In 1911 he published the programmatic text The Social Tasks of Liberalism . As a leading liberal social politician, Potthoff took part in the gathering of reform forces. He has actively participated in the work of the Association for Social Policy and the Society for Social Reform .
In particular, he tried to standardize employee law. In 1908 he submitted the draft of a Reich Labor Law. Between 1914 and 1933 he was the journal labor law. Yearbook for the entire service law of workers, employees and civil servants .
Potthoff moved to Munich in 1917 . Under the impression of " war socialism " he turned to the common economy . Between 1918 and 1920 he was a consultant in the Bavarian Ministry of Social Welfare. After that he lived as a freelance writer. He was later involved in drafting a labor code. He was a member of the labor law committee at the Reich Ministry of Labor . As such, he played a leading role in drafting and establishing an employment contract law in 1923. He was also involved in the preparation of the Collective Bargaining Act and the Labor Court Act. As a former functionary of the foremen's association, the rights of (managerial) employees continued to be of great importance to him. However, he could not push through further ideas. Although he was appointed government councilor in the Reich Labor Ministry in 1928 , his influence waned and he was given only a minor department. At the beginning of the National Socialist era , he was dismissed from civil service.
In a last larger work, The German Labor Law, Handbook for Confidants, Operators and Followers (Frommhagen, Berlin 1935), he delimited labor law during the Nazi era from that of the Weimar Republic in a positivistic way. Since then he has worked in commercial legal protection. He was also the head of the Hess publishing house in Stuttgart . The circumstances of his death are unclear. After the Second World War, Potthoff's writings were of considerable importance for the development of labor law in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In the GDR , German labor law was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out.
literature
- Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , p. 126 ( online , PDF; 2.2 MB).
- Thilo Ramm: Potthoff, Heinz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 662 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 4: M-Q. Winter, Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-8253-1118-X , pp. 345-346.
- Marie Louise Seelig: Heinz Potthoff (1875–1945). Labor law as an economic and socio-political tool . Berlin, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8305-1473-2 Partially digitized
Web links
- Literature by and about Heinz Potthoff in the catalog of the German National Library
- Heinz Potthoff in the database of members of the Reichstag
- Heinz Potthoff's curriculum vitae on the website of the Independent Historical Commission for Research into the History of the Reich Ministry of Labor 1933–1945
Individual evidence
- ^ Ernst Elsheimer (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1927/28. Frankfurt am Main 1928, p. 394.
- ↑ polunbi.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Potthoff, Heinz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German social reformer, labor lawyer and politician (FVg, FVP), MdR |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 9, 1875 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bielefeld |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 4, 1945 |
| Place of death | Berlin |