Hugo Dornhofer

Hugo Dornhofer (born November 14, 1896 in Oberfeistritz , Styria , Austria ; † April 5, 1977 in Heiligenstadt ) was a German politician ( center , CDU ) and member of the Thuringian state parliament .

Life

education and profession

Dornhofer grew up as one of seven children of a street attendant in poor circumstances. From his parents he received a deep piety and a firm belief that carried him throughout his life. His mother died when he was twelve years old. After primary school in Anger and Lebing and an apprenticeship as a carpenter, he did military service from 1915 . Back from Italian captivity, he worked at the Weiz electrical works from 1919 . There he joined the Christian trade unions and was secretary at the Christian trade unions in Graz and Klagenfurt from 1920 to 1921 . After his marriage in 1921 he moved to Heiligenstadt, his wife's hometown, and worked in various trade union functions until 1933. From 1923 to 1924 he was District Secretary of the Central Association of Agricultural Workers in Heiligenstadt and from 1926 in the same position for Christian tobacco workers. He was a member of the supervisory boards of the AOK and the Merseburg state insurance company .

time of the nationalsocialism

In May 1933 the Christian trade unions were smashed and Dornhofer was removed from his trade union and political offices. He was unemployed and from 1938 was forced to do labor, initially in Heiligenstadt, from 1943 as a building supervisor in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp . There he was arrested after the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 , but was only imprisoned for a short time. After the liberation of the Dora camp in April 1945, Dornhofer returned to Heiligenstadt.

SBZ and GDR

In August 1945 Dornhofer was one of the founding members of the CDU in Eichsfeld and chairman of the district association until the beginning of 1948. From 1946 he was deputy state chairman of the CDU Thuringia . In 1947, following the dismissal of Jakob Kaiser's provisional state chairman , ordered by the Soviet military administration in Germany (SMAD) .

As a resolute opponent and persecuted person of the Nazi regime, he was seen as an incontestable representative of the interests of the local SMAD commanders, and the population placed great trust in Dornhofer. Under his leadership, the Union became the strongest political force in Eichsfeld. In the local elections in 1946, the CDU received more than 70% of the vote. Dornhofer then became a member of the city council in Heiligenstadt and the district council in the district of Worbis . He was elected to the Thuringian state parliament in the state parliament elections that took place in the Soviet Zone in 1946 . Until his forced resignation on September 16, 1947, he was chairman of the committee for work, health and social welfare in the state parliament. Dornhofer also resumed his trade union work after the war. He became co-founder and board member of the unified union in Eichsfeld and administrative director of the AOK.

His political work since 1945 has been determined more and more by massive conflicts with the occupying power and the SED . The rejection of the land reform , his bourgeois-democratic convictions and the resistance to the harmonization of the institutions led to the forced withdrawal from politics on February 19, 1948 by the Soviet military administration in Thuringia (SMATh). Dornhofer resigned from the district council and resigned as chairman of the Eichsfeld CDU. Even after his removal from office, he continued to pose a threat from the rulers' point of view due to the broad support of the people of Eichsfeld, which led to his dismissal as head of the health insurance fund in 1949.

He was arrested by the State Security on July 26, 1952 and sentenced to twelve years in prison on March 4, 1953 in a show trial . In the same trial, his son Ignaz Dornhofer was sentenced to six years. After four years in prison, both were released early in 1956 as part of an amnesty . Hugo Dornhofer was refused a job after his release from prison. He worked as a caretaker and gardener in the mountain monastery in Heiligenstadt.

Honors

In 1991 the posthumous rehabilitation took place at the Erfurt District Court. In the same year Dornhofer was awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Heiligenstadt.

In August 2009, the then President of the Thuringian State Parliament, Dagmar Schipanski, unveiled a plaque on the wall opposite the Ricarda-Huch slogan in the foyer of the parliamentary group building with the words: The Thuringian State Parliament commemorates all persecuted politicians in the state of Thuringia 1945 - 1952 , among which the following three Politicians named and portrayed are: Hermann Becker (LDP), Hermann Brill (SPD) and Hugo Dornhofer (CDU).

literature

• Thomas Heddergott, Ralf Kothe: Hugo Dornhofer (1896-1977). Trade unionist and politician, persecuted under two dictatorships. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt Augustin 1996, ISBN 3-931575-16-0 .
• Thomas Speckmann: Hugo Dornhofer. Biographical studies 1896–1977. Hain Verlag, Rudolstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89807-037-9 .
• Thomas Speckmann: Fight against the dictatorship. The Eichsfeld Christian Democrat Hugo Dornhofer. In: The Political Opinion. No. 403 (June 2003), pp. 35-38. (online: kas.de ).
• Thomas Speckmann: Hugo Dornhofer (1896–1977). Deputy Chairman of the CDU Thuringia. In: Günter letter , Brigitte Kaff, Hans-Otto Kleinmann (ed.): Christian democrats against Hitler. From persecution and resistance to the Union. Herder, Freiburg 2004, ISBN 3-451-20805-9 , pp. 131-137.
• Thomas Speckmann: A CDUD functionary from the very beginning in Thuringia. Hugo Dornhofer's resistance to the alignment of the Eastern CDU . In: Listen and Look. Journal of the Memorial Museum in the "Round Corner" . Vol. 2004, issue 48, pp. 37-42.
• Thomas Speckmann: Unmasking the socialist illusory world. The resistance of the Christian Democrat Hugo Dornhofer in Eichsfeld against the alignment of the Eastern CDU . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, vol. 52 (2004), pp. 824–843.
• Thomas Speckmann: Hugo Dornhofer - a Christian trade unionist in the Nazi era . In: Year Book for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Vol. 2005, Book I, pp. 142–151.
• Thomas Speckmann: The war in the Alpine region from the perspective of the “little man”. Biographical studies using the example of Hugo Dornhofer's notes . In: Hermann JW Kuprian (ed.): The First World War in the Alpine region. Experience, interpretation, memory . Wagner, Innsbruck 2006. (= publications of the South Tyrolean Provincial Archives, vol. 23), ISBN 3-7030-0423-1 . Pp. 101-116.
• Thomas Speckmann: The First World War from the perspective of the “little man”. Autobiographical literature using the example of Hugo Dornhofer's notes . In: Lars Koch, Marianne Vogel (ed.): Imaginary worlds in conflict. War and history in German-language literature since 1900 . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2007. ISBN 978-3-8260-3210-3 . Pp. 16-29.
• 60 years of the CDU . 2005 special edition of the Eichsfeldkurier, CDU members' magazine in Eichsfeld. (online: 60 years of the CDU ( Memento of May 3, 2006 in the Internet Archive ); PDF file; 1.38 MB)
• Martin Biesenbach: Driven by "the immortal values ​​of Christianity". Hugo Dornhofer as a Christian and politician during the reconstruction of Germany after 1945. In: Eichsfeld-Jahrbuch 2011. pp. 337–352.

Footnotes

1. ^ Thomas Heddergott, Ralf Kothe: Hugo Dornhofer (1896-1977). Trade unionist and politician, persecuted under two dictatorships . Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt Augustin 1996, p. 8.
2. ↑ Thomas Speckmann: The First World War from the perspective of the “little man”. Autobiographical literature using the example of Hugo Dornhofer's notes . In: Lars Koch, Marianne Vogel (ed.): Imaginary worlds in conflict. War and history in German-language literature since 1900 . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2007. ISBN 978-3-8260-3210-3 . Pp. 16–29, here p. 18.
3. ^ Thomas Heddergott, Ralf Kothe: Hugo Dornhofer (1896-1977). Trade unionist and politician, persecuted under two dictatorships . Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt Augustin 1996, p. 10.
4. ↑ Thomas Speckmann: Unmasking the socialist illusory world. The resistance of the Christian Democrat Hugo Dornhofer in Eichsfeld against the alignment of the Eastern CDU . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, vol. 52 (2004), pp. 824–843, here p. 825.
5. ^ Thomas Speckmann: Hugo Dornhofer - a Christian trade unionist in the Nazi era . In: Year Book for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume 2005, Issue I, pp. 142–151, here p. 149.
6. ↑ Heinz Siebert: The Eichsfeld under the Soviet star . Supplemented edition, edited by Bernhard Opfermann . Mecke, Duderstadt 1992. ISBN 3-923453-47-7 . P. 108.
7. ↑ Thomas Speckmann: A CDUD functionary from the very beginning in Thuringia. Hugo Dornhofer's resistance to the alignment of the Eastern CDU . In: Listen and Look. Journal of the Memorial Museum in the "Round Corner" . Vol. 2004, issue 48, pp. 37–42, p. 38.
8. ↑ Ehrhart Neubert, Thomas Auerbach: It can be different. Opposition and resistance in Thuringia 1945–1989 . Böhlau, Cologne 2005. ISBN 3-412-08804-8 . P. 25.
9. ^ Herbert Gottwald: The Thuringian Parliament, 1946-1952. A political demolition . Thuringian Landtag, Erfurt 1994. (= writings on the history of parliamentarism in Thuringia), ISBN 3-86160-505-8 . P. 40.
10. ^ Günter letter (ed.): Persecuted and disenfranchised. The elimination of Christian democrats under Soviet occupation and SED rule 1945-1961 - a biographical documentation . Droste, Düsseldorf 1998. pp. 109f.

Web links

Commons : Hugo Dornhofer  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Hugo Dornhofer Foundation