Herbert Alberts

Herbert Wilhelm Alberts (born January 31, 1943 in Canhusen , Aurich district ) is a German local politician. From 1981 to 1986 he was honorary mayor of the seaport city of Emden in East Friesland and was elected by the SPD majority faction to succeed Jan Klinkenborg , who had voluntarily left office , but remained in office for only four and a half years, not least because of private problems.

Mayor Jan Klinkenborg, who has been in office since 1973, had successfully run as a candidate for the European Parliament in 1979 and was elected. He had already announced in 1980 that he did not want to continue his office as an honorary Emden mayor in parallel to his work as a MEP, which made it necessary for the Emden SPD, which had an absolute majority in the city council, to search for a new mayor. In addition to the administrative specialist Alberts, who worked in the local government in Aurich , the trade unionist Willi Grix and the Emden VW employee Hartmut Uhe were also up for discussion. The Emden SPD member of the state parliament Johann Bruns had already declared early on that he was not available for the office as mayor. The SPD parliamentary group ultimately decided in favor of the then 38-year-old Alberts, which later prompted Uhe to withdraw from politics in Emden and apply for a job at another VW location.

Albert's tenure was still overshadowed by the longstanding discussion about the pros and cons of the Dollarthafen project , a large-scale project that envisaged an outer harbor several kilometers long at the mouth of the Ems and the settlement of industrial companies. In the end, nothing came of this project, but it still dominated Emden politics until the late 1980s. The economic development was otherwise dominated by the decline in the workforce at the largest shipyard in Emden, Nordseewerke , while the number of employees at the other large company, the Volkswagen factory, remained constant. The population fell below 50,000 for the first time in around two decades by the mid-1980s. In terms of urban planning, Emden made little progress in the five years of Alberts' term of office - in contrast to the terms of office of his two predecessors Hermann Schierig and Jan Klinkenborg - apart from the conversion of Große Straße in the city center into a pedestrian zone. The only major project started during Albert's tenure was the Kunsthalle in Emden (planning and construction commenced in 1983), which, however, did not owe its creation to any municipal initiative, but to that of the native Emder and Stern founder Henri Nannen .

The mayor's term of office was not a good star in the local government either: two “deviants” in the SPD majority faction prevented - presumably for personal reasons - the re-election of the city director Heinrich Kleinschmidt, a widely recognized person. Kleinschmidt's successor Jörg-Dieter Thoben, however, was overwhelmed with the post, which increasingly cost him authority. He was voted out again by the council with a large majority. Alberts, too, became intolerable as private problems became increasingly public. He offered his resignation on August 11, 1986. Alberts' successor was Alwin Brinkmann .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Herbert Kolbe: The man. The institution. The town. An essay about Alwin Brinkmann and other (s). Verlag SKN, Norden 2011, ISBN 978-3-939870-96-8 , p. 56 ff.
2. ↑ Herbert Kolbe: The man. The institution. The town. An essay about Alwin Brinkmann and other (s). Verlag SKN, Norden 2011, ISBN 978-3-939870-96-8 , p. 60.
3. ↑ Herbert Kolbe: The man. The institution. The town. An essay about Alwin Brinkmann and other (s). Verlag SKN, Norden 2011, ISBN 978-3-939870-96-8 , p. 60.