Johannes Dunkel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johannes Dunkel

Johannes Dunkel (born May 2, 1876 in Osterwick , † February 10, 1942 in Erfurt ) was a German baker and politician (DNVP, Economic Party, NSDAP).

Live and act

Johannes Dunkel came from a Catholic family in Erfurt. He attended the community school in Worbis (Eichsfeld). Then he went to Mühlhausen and learned the bakery trade (master baker). After traveling all over Germany as a baker's assistant for seven years, he founded his own business in Erfurt in 1898. From 1902 to 1918 he was also a specialist teacher for the bakery trade at the vocational school in Erfurt. From 1902 he was also a member of the Erfurt Chamber of Commerce. In 1915 he was appointed to the board of directors and from 1922 he chaired it. During the Empire, Dunkel hardly excelled politically and was only moderately successful in his profession.

On March 3, 1917, Dunkel entered the First World War as a member of the reserve battalion of Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 71 . He later belonged to the 2nd Landsturm Infantry Battalion XI / 16. On January 11, 1919 he was finally released and sent back to his homeland.

As a “climber” (Dowe, Kocka , Winkler ), Dunkel made a career as a politician after the First World War . From 1919 he belonged to the German National People's Party (DNVP), for which he was elected to the Reichstag in 1920 as a representative of constituency 10 (Thuringia) .

In 1924, Dunkel left the DNVP because of what he saw as a lack of representation of medium-sized interests and ran for the newly founded economic party in the Reichstag elections in 1924 ( May and December ). For his new party, Dunkel was a member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1932. In addition, Dunkel, whose bakery business was significantly more successful during the Weimar period than in the German Empire, was also a city councilor in his hometown from 1920 to 1924.

Helmuth Kocka and Heinrich August Winkler characterize Dunkel, who joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 , as a “transition candidate” who could be seen as symbolic for the change from the German Empire to the NS: With his milieu politics, he was arrested in the German Empire at the same time as his “ anti-Semitic populist protest policy ”for the“ increasing radicalization of the bourgeoisie ”. In addition, it opened up a perspective for the electorate that earlier notables had not been able to offer them. He was thus a “harbinger of a new type of party leader” who had shed the old fetters of the “dignitaries policy”.

literature

Steffen Raßloff : Escape into the national community. The Erfurt bourgeoisie between the Empire and the Nazi dictatorship. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2003. ISBN 3-412-11802-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dieter Dowe, Jürgen Kocka and Heinrich August Winkler: Parties in Change. From the Empire to the Weimar Republic . 1999, p. 265. indicate that at the turn of the century he earned around 300 RM a year, at that time an average annual income for medium-sized companies.
  2. ↑ Raßloff. Escape to the national community. P. 290 ff.
  3. ↑ Kocka and Winkler: Parties in Transition . 1999, p. 265.
personal data
SURNAME Dark, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DNVP, WP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Osterwick
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1942
Place of death Erfurt