Karl Hamann

Karl Hamann (1950)

Karl Otto Hamann (born March 4, 1903 in Hildesheim , † June 16, 1973 in Munich ) was a German politician . From 1948 to 1952 he was chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD) and Minister for Trade and Supply of the GDR .

Life

Hamann studied agricultural science in Hohenheim , Bonn and Berlin from 1922 to 1927 . Then he was head of the employment offices in Schwerte , Hörde and Dortmund and a housing cooperative in Thuringia . In 1933 he was awarded a Dr. med. At the University of Bonn with his thesis "The job market in Westphalian agriculture". agr. PhD. Since 1935 he lived as an independent farmer in Thuringia on the Mönchshof, near Römhild near Hildburghausen .

Hamann joined the LDPD in 1946 and was its state chairman in Thuringia from 1949 to 1952. In 1948 he became chairman of the LDPD, and in 1949 he was confirmed in office with Hermann Kastner . From 1946 to 1950 he was a member of the Thuringian state parliament , from 1949 also a member of the GDR - People's Chamber and Minister for Trade and Supply.

In December 1952 Hamann was arrested because he had "sabotaged the regular supply of the population", relieved of his functions and expelled from the LDPD. After more than two years of custody in the remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen , he was sentenced in July 1954 to ten years in prison for “sabotage” , which he initially spent in the Brandenburg prison. In October 1956, however, he was pardoned and released from prison. In May 1957 he fled to the Federal Republic of Germany . His grave is in the Bad Godesberg Central Cemetery .

In May 1990 he was legally rehabilitated by the successor organization of the LDPD, the Bund Free Democrats, and in August 1991 by the Berlin Regional Court . The FDP- affiliated Karl Hamann Foundation for political education in the state of Brandenburg was named after him.

See also

• Provisional government of the GDR
• Council of Ministers of the GDR (1950–1954)

Publications

• The tasks for unity and peace. Speech, Dresden 1951.

literature

• Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk : Victim of your own politics? On the background to the conviction of Minister Karl Hamann (LDPD) . In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 16 (2004), pp. 221–271.
• Peter Menke-Glückert : Karl Hamann, the Liberals and the Sources. Comments and considerations of a contemporary witness from 1945 to 1952 . In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 17 (2005), pp. 253–270.
• NN: Schweinemord , in Der Spiegel 3/1953 of January 14, 1953, article as a PDF document [1] .
• Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Hamann, Karl . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Hans Helmut Rösler: Karl Hamann, my personal opinion on his work in the LDP . In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 17 (2005), pp. 271–272.
• Christoph Wunnicke: Hermann Kastner / Karl Hamann. In: The block parties of the GDR. Continuities and Transformation 1945–1990 (=  series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR. Vol. 34). LStU Berlin, Berlin 2014, pp. 73–80 ( PDF; 434 kB ).

Web links

Commons : Karl Hamann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Karl Hamann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl Hamann's curriculum vitae

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke : Historical revisionism from the MfS perspective. Former Stasi cadres want to reinterpret their story. In: Germany Archive . 39, 2006, issue 3, pp. 490-496 PDF; 132 kB ( Memento from June 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).