Hermann Kasten (politician, 1885)

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Hermann Kasten
Memorial plaque for Hermann Kasten at the residential building Parkstrasse 8 in Staßfurt

Hermann Kasten (born August 22, 1885 in Unseburg , † February 5, 1933 in Leopoldshall ) was a German social democratic politician. Kasten completed an apprenticeship as a painter and was an independent master painter in Schönebeck from 1912 to 1929 .

Life

Hermann Kasten joined the SPD and the free trade unions as early as 1903 . Before the First World War, he held various offices in the party at the local and regional level . In 1917, Kasten joined the USPD and ran for this party for the Reichstag in 1920, to no avail . At the local political level, he was an unpaid city councilor in Schönebeck from 1919 to 1929.

In 1922, Kasten returned to the SPD. For this party he was a member of the Prussian state parliament from 1923 to 1933 . In addition, since 1925 he was a member of the board of directors of the Imperial City Association. From 1929 on, Kasten was the first mayor of the city of Staßfurt . As such, he tried to weaken the advance of the NSDAP by unilaterally banning National Socialist moves . At the beginning of 1933 he had a deployment of the SA prohibited.

The local officials and the press of the NSDAP verbally attacked castes because of the unequal treatment of the local party organizations. Presumably influenced by this propaganda, on February 4, 1933 at 10:25 p.m., a minor high school student lurked with a revolver in front of the mayor's house and shot him down. Despite the nightly emergency operation in the Knappschaftskrankenhaus Leopoldshall, Hermann Kasten succumbed to his injuries on the morning of February 5, 1933. The perpetrator and thus the motive for the crime could not be determined beyond doubt, as there were no eyewitnesses to the crime. The evidence against the student was insufficient for the public prosecution to be brought, so that the chief public prosecutor in Magdeburg closed the investigation on March 8, 1933. On the occasion of Kasten's funeral, there was a mass demonstration by local SPD supporters.

A school in Staßfurt has been named after Hermann Kasten since the time after the Second World War. One street in Schönebeck is named Hermann-Kasten-Straße .

Stumbling block for Hermann Kasten, Parkstrasse 8, Staßfurt

On June 14, 2013, a stumbling block by the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig was laid in front of the Hermann Kastens house in Staßfurt .

literature

  • Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century. Marburg 2000, ISBN 3-89472-173-1 , p. 167.
  • High school student shoots mayor , in: Vossische Zeitung from February 6, 1933.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b State Archives Saxony-Anhalt: LHASA, MD, Rep. C20 I, Ib Nr.2049 Bd.3
  2. ^ Chronicle of the Hermann-Kasten community school. In: sks-kasten.bildung-lsa.de. Retrieved September 27, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Stolperstein for Hermann Kasten In: stassfurt.de , accessed on September 27, 2017 (biography available as PDF)
personal data
SURNAME Box, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social democratic politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Unseburg
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1933
Place of death Leopoldshall