Hermann Oxfort

Hermann Oxfort (born October 27, 1928 in Erfurt , † August 8, 2003 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( FDP ). The lawyer was Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Justice in the 1970s and 1980s .

Life

education and profession

Hermann Oxfort was born the son of a businessman, graduated from high school in Erfurt in 1947, then completed basic commercial training at the adult education center as well as a typist's examination. He had to break off training as a judicial officer in the Thuringian judicial service for political reasons.

Oxfort was not admitted to study in Thuringia and moved to West Germany in 1949 , where he studied law , philosophy , sociology and psychology at the Free University of Berlin (FU). In 1952 he passed the first state examination in law. Until the end of 1953 he worked for the student union at the FU. He then completed his preparatory service as a trainee lawyer in the area of ​​the Supreme Court, and worked alongside in a Berlin law firm. After graduation in 1957 he became a lawyer , from 1968 and notary , and represented prominent clients such as the entrepreneur Beate Uhse or after 1990 the last GDR - State Council Chairman Manfred Gerlach .

Oxfort was a member of the administrative board of the Sparkasse der Stadt Berlin (West).

Party politician and MP

Oxfort has been involved in the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDP) in Thuringia since 1946 , quarreled with the FDJ and was temporarily imprisoned in 1947. In 1948 he became a member of the LDP and in 1952 a member of the FDP. From 1969 to 1971 and from 1989 to 1990 he was state chairman of the Berlin FDP . From 1968 to 1972 he was a member of the FDP federal executive committee.

From 1963 to 1981 and from 1985 to 1989 Oxfort was a member of the Berlin House of Representatives . The FDP parliamentary group elected him from 1963 to 1975 as chairman. In 1969 and 1974 he was a member of the Federal Assembly , where he was involved in the election of Gustav Heinemann and Walter Scheel as Federal President.

In 1963, Oxfort led Berlin's FDP into one of the first SPD-FDP coalitions at the state level. In January 1968, he discussed the reformability of the Federal Republic with Rudi Dutschke and Ralf Dahrendorf in front of around 3,000 supporters of the extra-parliamentary opposition at the FDP federal party conference in Freiburg im Breisgau . An active reunification policy was part of his political credo , which he did not give up in the 1980s , when it was considered obsolete in western Germany. In 1967 he was one of the spokesmen for a new East and Germany policy at the FDP federal party conference in Hanover, and in September 1989 he presented a plan for the German confederation . In 1990, under his leadership, the FDP and LDPD merged to form a regional association in Berlin.

In 1979, Oxfort co-founded and chaired the Liberal Society together with Alexander von Stahl , which set itself the goal of a right-wing liberal renewal of the FDP.

Mayor and Senator

In 1975 Oxfort became mayor of Berlin and Senator for Justice in an SPD-FDP coalition and represented Berlin in the Federal Council . On 10 July 1976 he took over after a spectacular eruption of the RAF - terrorists Inge Viett , Juliane Plambeck , Gabriele Rollnik and Monika Berberich from the women's prison in the Lehrter Strasse political responsibility and resigned from office.

From 1983 to 1985 Oxfort was again Senator of Justice in a CDU-FDP coalition . He took a sharp line towards squatters , opposed “legal vacancies” and the withdrawal of criminal proceedings against 177 squatters by the Neue Heimat housing association . He was a member of the city's judges selection committee for several years .

Private

Oxfort had been married to Ruth Lenz for the second time since 1969 and had four children: Angelika, Wolfgang, Ursula and Livia. His hobbies were archeology and history . From 1985 to 1999 he was chairman of the Association for the History of Berlin, founded in 1865 . In 1997 he housed the club library in the Central and State Library of Berlin in the Old Marstall in Berlin-Mitte .

Oxfort died of complications from a heart condition.

Awards

In 1964, Oxfort became an Honorary Colonel in the United States National Guard in the state of Mississippi . In 1969 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon and in 1979 the Great Federal Cross of Merit. The savings bank organization honored him with the Dr. Johann Christian Eberle Medal. In 1998 he received the Fidicin Medal and honorary membership of the Association for the History of Berlin . The Berlin Senate appointed him shortly before his death to the city elders of Berlin . Since October 2014, a path along the Burgwallgraben on the Havel in Berlin-Spandau has been named after Hermann Oxfort.

Fonts

• Hermann Oxfort: Plea for Berlin: Speeches of a Liberal 1963-70. o. O. 1971.

See also

• Senate Schütz III - Senate Weizsäcker - Senate Diepgen I

literature

• Werner Breunig, Andreas Herbst (ed.): Biographical handbook of the Berlin parliamentarians 1963–1995 and city councilors 1990/1991 (= series of publications of the Berlin State Archives. Volume 19). Landesarchiv Berlin, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-9803303-5-0 , p. 281 f.
• Wolther von Kieseritzky : Historical responsibility and liberal rule of law. On the 10th anniversary of Hermann Oxfort's death. In: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins 109 (2013), pp. 261–270.

Web links

• Hermann Oxfort , in Internationales Biographisches Archiv 50/2003 of December 1, 2003, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Berlin Street: Portrait of Hermann Oxfort
• Martin Lindner : Speaking at the memorial service on the death of Hermann Oxford, 2003
• Ulrich Zawatka-Gerlach: The man at the microphone - when Oxfort met Dutschke

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Oxfort, Wolfgang Mleczkowski : Confederation for Reunification . Germany plan of September 26, 1989, published in the press service of the Berlin regional association of the FDP, in: Archiv des Liberalismus .
2. ↑ Continuation of the development of the moat! Press release of the District Office Spandau from 2014 , accessed on August 21, 2016.