Hugo Landé

Thekla and Hugo Landé , Elberfeld, photo around 1890

Hugo Landé (born March 6, 1859 in Ostrowo , Posen, † September 14, 1936 in Nyon ) was a German administrative lawyer and member of the SPD .

Life and work

Hugo Landé's father Josef, a Jewish merchant, was a liberal-minded Jew and a democrat. Some ancestors served as rabbi in Jewish communities; graves of the Landé family can be found in the Jewish cemetery in Prague. Hugo Landé had well developed math skills and dreamed of becoming an astronomer . The family feared the high expenses for a scientific education, but after high school enabled him to study law in Berlin, Leipzig, Breslau and Heidelberg. After passing his legal state examination and subsequent internship in Neuwied and Frankfurt / Main , he embarked on a legal career. At the age of 27, he opened his own law firm in Elberfeld in 1886 .

In 1887 he married his cousin Thekla Landé , one of the first elected female MPs in the Rhineland.

He belonged to the SPD. In 1891 he co-designed the “ Erfurt Program ”. In the following years he was one of the programmatic pioneers of social democratic local politics in the Rhineland. For over 40 years he accompanied the social democratic history in Elberfeld and later in Wuppertal .

After the November Revolution, the Prussian state government appointed him acting president of Düsseldorf on October 1, 1919 . He left this office on December 31, 1919.

Landé had broken away from his parental religion and was registered as a dissident . This did not protect him from being persecuted as a " Jew " after Hitler came to power . He emigrated to Switzerland, where he committed suicide in 1936.

The Landé couple had four children:

• Alfred Landé (1888–1976), physicist;
• Charlotte Landé (1890–1977), pediatrician, city doctor of Frankfurt am Main and specialist author;
• Franz Landé (1893–1942), musician and conductor; murdered in Auschwitz on September 30, 1942 ;
• Eva Landé (1901–1977), reform pedagogue and emigrant (see: Well-known members of the Association of German Emigrant Teachers: Eva Landé and Erich Stedeli ).

literature

• Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 , p. 288 .
• Reiner Rhefus: The Social Democrat Hugo Landé (1859 - 1936) - Stations from his political life between the “Socialist Law” and National Socialism. P. 67ff.
• Elke Brychta, Anna-Maria Reinhold, Arno Mersmann (ed.): Courageously militant reformist. Die Landés - Six Biographies 1859-1977 , Klartext Verlag, Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89861-273-2 .