Josef Amann (politician)

Josef Amann (around 1933)

Josef Amann (born January 22, 1879 in Regenstauf ; † July 27, 1971 in Heidelberg ) was a German SPD politician .

education and profession

Amann did his apprenticeship as a baker and after successfully passing the journeyman's examination worked as a baker's assistant in Munich. In 1910 he took up the position of district manager of the Association of Bakers and Confectioners in Mannheim and came to Baden . During the First World War he was a member of the fourteenth train battalion .

Political activity

In 1920 he moved to the regional association of the SPD as party secretary on the initiative of Emil Maier . After the post was abolished, Amann held the post of state manager of the workers' welfare in Baden from 1925 to 1927 . In 1928 he returned to his old, re-established post of SPD secretary in Heidelberg, which he held until the SPD was banned in 1933. From 1924 he was a member of the Heidelberg Citizens' Committee and the City Council, and in 1933 he sat for a short time in the Baden state parliament . There he had to submit an opinion on the Enabling Act . These mandates were also revoked by the party ban.

In the years that followed, Amann was under constant surveillance by the Gestapo and remained unemployed. In 1939 he got a job as a porter at the Teroson Works in Heidelberg , and only a little later he was promoted to head of the shipping department. In 1944 he was managing director of the building cooperative "Neu Heidelberg", where he also sat on the board. In the meantime he was arrested again.

After the end of the Second World War and the invasion of the Americans in Heidelberg, he returned to politics, was a member of the Provisional Representation of the People for Württemberg-Baden and the Constituent State Assembly of Württemberg-Baden and the Heidelberg City Council. In February 1948 he ran for the office of Lord Mayor of Heidelberg at the suggestion of the SPD. With 43.76% of the vote, he was only second behind the CDU candidate , Hugo Swart , but on the basis of an agreement, the city council elected him mayor, the full-time representative of the head of the city. In this office he campaigned primarily for the refugees who had found shelter in the undestroyed city. The Bunsen grammar school is also based on his initiative. In 1952 he ran again for the office of mayor, but only took third place in the victory of CDU candidate Carl Neinhaus .

In 1954 Amann finally retired, but continued to be involved in his district, in Pfaffengrund . In 1963 he was made an honorary citizen of the city of Heidelberg.

literature

• Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century. Schüren, Marburg 2000, ISBN 3-89472-173-1 , p. 20.

Web links

Commons : Josef Amann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography about Josef Amann at LeoBW
• Speeches by Josef Amann in the Baden state parliament in the digital collections of the Badische Landesbibliothek