Josef Bleyer

Josef Bleyer (around 1900)

Josef Bleyer

Josef Bleyer (born October 5, 1878 in Bayreuth , † March 27, 1935 in Munich ) was a mayor of Regensburg (1914-1920) and Bavarian State Councilor .

Bleyer was born as the son of customs inspector Josef Bleyer and his wife Anna. Between 1887 and 1896 he attended the humanistic high schools in Nuremberg , Burghausen and Landau in the Palatinate and studied law and political science at the University of Munich from 1896 to 1900 . He completed his legal clerkship at Munich's judicial and administrative offices and completed the state bankruptcy with a grade of one. In 1904 he initially worked as a legal assistant in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice , and since November as a judge at the Munich District Court . In 1906 Bleyer went back to the Justice Department as an assistant clerk. In 1913 he was appointed regional judge . In addition to his work in the State Department, Bleyer emerged as a writer of scientific articles, legal commentaries and editor of legal collections. In 1920 he received his doctorate with the work The financial situation of the Bavarian cities under the influence of the war and the Erzberger financial reform at the University of Erlangen .

On February 11, 1914, Bleyer was elected as the successor of Otto Geßler as 1st Mayor of Regensburg. The vote took place unanimously in the Regensburg community plenipotentiary council, which had never happened in the politically and denominationally divided city. The Catholic Bleyer, who was considered to be moderately liberal, was able to unite the votes of all parties (Liberals, Center, SPD) because the high level of professional competence spoke for him and he had not been involved in party politics in any way. In July 1916, Bleyer was elected for life, finally on January 1, 1917 by King Ludwig III. Appointed Lord Mayor . The November Revolution also changed the municipal constitution in Bavaria: In June 1919, the new city council was elected for the first time and was now dominated by the Bavarian People's Party . On November 23, 1919, the first direct election of the Lord Mayor of Regensburg took place for ten years, which Bleyer won with a large majority. But he gave up the office on November 1, 1920 and returned to the Ministry of Justice as Ministerialrat . From 1926 until his death he was a Councilor of State, first in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , then from 1933 in the Bavarian State Chancellery. The reason for Bleyer's sudden withdrawal from the office of mayor of Regensburg is not clear, but could be explained by the dominance of the BVP, to which he was not close, in the city council; perhaps also with the poor health of his wife Anna (née Patsch), with whom he had been married since 1904 and who died in 1921

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dieter Albrecht: Regensburg im Wandel, studies on the history of the city in the 19th and 20th centuries . In: Museums and Archives of the City of Regensburg (Hrsg.): Studies and sources on the history of Regensburg . tape 2 . Mittelbayerische Druckerei und Verlags-Gesellschaft mbH, Regensburg 1984, ISBN 3-921114-11-X , p. 179 f .