Joachim Lipschitz

Bust , Auerbacher Strasse 7, in Berlin-Grunewald

Memorial plaque on the house at Stühlinger Strasse 15 in Berlin-Karlshorst

Joachim Lipschitz (born March 19, 1918 in Berlin ; † December 11, 1961 there ) was a German politician ( SPD ).

Biographical

As a child of a social-democratic family of doctors from Charlottenburg , Lipschitz had become involved as an adolescent in the " Jungbanner ", the youth organization of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , as well as in the Socialist Student Union. Because of his Jewish father, the National Socialists regarded him as a " half-Jew " and suffered a variety of discrimination. After graduating from high school in 1936, he was not allowed to study and completed a commercial apprenticeship in a Berlin electrical factory. He then worked as an assistant fitter. In April 1939 he was drafted into the Reich Labor Service and transferred to the Wehrmacht when the war began. As a soldier he was seriously wounded in 1941 (loss of his left arm) and discharged from the Wehrmacht in 1942. It is not clear whether this happened “for racial reasons” or because of his war injury. In 1944 he went into hiding because, as part of Aktion Mitte , so-called “ first degree half-breeds ” and “Jewish relatives” were assigned to forced labor in the Todt Organization camps. He found help and shelter on Stühlinger Strasse in Berlin-Karlshorst .

After the end of the Second World War , Lipschitz married the later MP Eleonore Lipschitz in May 1945 . He joined the SPD in June 1945 and was a district councilor in the Lichtenberg district from 1947 to 1948 . To avoid the threat of imprisonment, he and his wife - opponents of the union of the SPD and KPD - fled to West Berlin . There he initially headed the central reporting office for East Berliners dismissed for political reasons, and from 1949 to 1955 he was district councilor in Neukölln . Member of the Berlin House of Representatives since 1951 , Lipschitz was appointed Senator for the Interior by the Governing Mayor Otto Suhr in January 1955 , a position that Lipschitz also retained under Suhr's successor Willy Brandt . Lipschitz acted “with extreme severity against real or supposed communists” and refused to continue paying his persecuted pension to Rudolf Schottlaender , an opponent of armaments, because of political activity. At the same time, as chairman of the Federal Council's Reparation Committee, he campaigned for a generous procedure in the handling of the Federal Compensation Act .

Grave of the Lipschitz couple

His initiative "Unsung Heroes" is remembered, an action with which, for the first time after the Second World War, those Berliners were honored in Germany who had given shelter to those persecuted by the Nazis .

Lipschitz died of cancer. He is buried in the churchyard of Sankt Simeon and Sankt Lukas in Berlin-Britz . His grave has been dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave since 1965 .

Honors

In the Berlin district of Neukölln belonging Gropiusstadt are the Lipschitzallee and Lipschitzplatz and a metro station named after the politician. In Berlin-Spandau the local police school bears his name.

See also

• Savior of Jews
• Senate Suhr - Senate Brandt I - Senate Brandt II

literature

• Werner Breunig, Siegfried Heimann , Andreas Herbst : Biographical Handbook of Berlin City Councilors and Members of Parliament 1946–1963 (=  series of publications by the Berlin State Archives . Volume 14 ). Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9803303-4-3 , p. 170 (331 pages).
• Biographical note on the Berlin Senators for the Interior

Web links

Commons : Joachim Lipschitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Joachim Lipschitz in the catalog of the German National Library
• SPD Berlin - biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dennis: Riffel: Unsung Heroes. Metropol, Berlin 2007, p. 48f.
2. ↑ See Dennis Riffel: Unsung Heroes. Metropol, Berlin 2007, p. 49.
3. ↑ See Dennis Riffel: Unsung Heroes. Metropol, Berlin 2007, p. 50.
4. ^ Hans-Rainer Sandvoss: Resistance in Friedrichshain and Lichtenberg. Edited by the German Resistance Memorial Center 1998; P. 296/297: Joachim Lipschitz goes underground
5. ↑ Dennis Riffel: Unsung Heroes. Metropol, Berlin 2007, p. 5.
6. ^ Christian Pross: Reparation: The guerrilla war against the victims , Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-08502-9 , p. 28
7. ^ Christian Pross: Reparation: The guerrilla war against the victims , Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-08502-9 , p. 105