Karl Grobbel

Karl Grobbel (born October 29, 1896 in Berlin ; † January 3, 1971 ) was a Center Party politician and, after the Second World War, a CDU functionary in the Soviet Zone and GDR . For a time he was minister in the state of Brandenburg .

Life

After primary school, Karl Grobbel attended the Berlin Gymnasium Zum Grauen Kloster , which he left without a high school diploma. He then completed an apprenticeship as a banker . In the First World War Grobbel was seriously wounded and fell as a lieutenant in 1917 in French captivity, which he served in France and Switzerland. In 1919 Grobbel made up his Abitur and then studied economics and law in Berlin. After completing his studies, he worked as a banker for a few years in his learned profession. Grobbel became a member of the Center Party in 1920 during his studies. From 1924 he worked in the General Secretariat of the Center Party and from 1925 to 1933 he was the editor of the monthly “Der Weckruf”. In June 1933, Grobbel was sentenced to three months of “protective custody” in an express trial and then drafted for military service. By the end of the war in 1945, Grobbel was able to make ends meet as an independent sales representative and managing director of a church aid organization, although he was obliged to work as a registry assistant and magazine writer in the last months of the war.

After the end of the war, Grobbel was one of the founders of the CDU in Berlin. At first he became an employee of the local administration in Berlin-Wilhelmshagen and head of department in the Reich office of the CDU. From October 1945 to April 1946 Grobbel was an assessor and in the further course of 1946 managing director of the CDU in Brandenburg. At the same time he had been the publishing director of the CDU regional newspaper Märkische Union since 1948 . In April 1950 Grobbel was appointed Minister for Labor and Social Affairs after his predecessor Fritz Hermann Schwob (CDU) fled to the West. Grobbel moved in October 1950 to the head of the Brandenburg Ministry of Trade and Supply, which he headed until the dissolution of the states in the GDR in July 1952. Then Grobbel was the deputy chairman of the Cottbus district council . On August 14, 1953, Grobbel was released from all functions as a result of the “follow-up” of the workers' uprising of June 17. He returned to work as a journalist and got a job as an editor for economic policy at the CDU central organ Neue Zeit . In 1961, Grobbel founded the Catholic monthly encounter . In 1963 Grobbel said: "Today, as we are witnessing the building of socialism, we members of the middle class and the intelligentsia understand the historic task of the working class and we support it wholeheartedly." In 1964 Grobbel was one of the founders of the Berlin Conference of European Catholics .

Party offices

As a member of the Center Party, Grobbel was temporarily General Secretary for East-Central Germany and the diaspora areas between 1924 and 1933 .

As a co-founder of the CDU in the Soviet Zone, Grobbel was elected deputy CDU state chairman of Brandenburg in April 1946, in order to replace Ernst Zborowski as state chairman in November 1948 , who he remained until June 1950. At the 3rd party congress of the Eastern CDU from September 18 to 20, 1948 in Erfurt , Grobbel was elected deputy party chairman and was confirmed in office at three subsequent party conventions. On August 14, 1953, he was released from his office in the party and reprimanded by his party for “behavior that was harmful to the party”.

Seats in parliament

In 1947 Grobbel received a mandate as a member of the Brandenburg state parliament for the CDU and represented his party until the end of the first election period on October 15, 1950. Grobbel received a mandate from his party for the German People's Council when it was founded in 1948 and remained a member of the later provisional Volkskammer renamed parliament until the first Volkskammer elections, which also took place on October 15, 1950.

Awards

1966 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze

literature

• Karl Grobbel: In the service of humanity, in Heinrich Fink , Hg .: Stronger than fear. The six million who couldn't find a savior. Union, Berlin 1968, pp. 153–158
• Andreas Herbst , Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 1: Encyclopedia of organizations and institutions A - L . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1994
• Andreas Herbst, Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 3: Lexicon of Functionaries . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1994
• Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Grobbel, Karl . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Grobbel in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Claims of yore realized , Neue Zeit, January 16, 1963.
2. ^ Neues Deutschland , September 15, 1966, p. 2