Karl Hermann (politician, 1885)

Karl Hermann

Election poster of the SPD from 1928: Wilhelm Bock , Kurt Rosenfeld , August Frölich , Mathilde Wurm , Georg Dietrich , Karl Hermann, August Siemsen , Elsa Niviera, Erich Mäder

Karl Robert Hermann (born November 28, 1885 in Unkeroda , † October 1, 1973 in Eisenach ) was a German politician of the USPD , the SPD and later the SED .

Life

Hermann was born in 1885 as the son of the gardener Lorenz Hermann and his wife Katharine Herbst in Unkeroda. After attending elementary school in Unkeroda and the trade school in Eisenach, he learned the mason trade. In 1911 he became union secretary, in 1912 managing director of the construction workers' association in Eisenach. Drafted into military service in 1915, he was taken prisoner by Russia in Galicia in May . After his return in 1918 he became chairman of the Eisenach workers and soldiers council . In 1919/20 he was a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach . After the state of Thuringia was founded, he was a member of the state parliament there from 1920 to 1933 and interior minister of the SPD / USPD and SPD / KPD state governments from 1921 to 1924. In this function he was co-author of the first Thuringian municipal code. From 1926 to 1933 he worked as managing director of the social construction companies in Central Germany . From 1928 to 1930 he was a member of the Reichstag . In 1934 he took up his main residence in Wutha , where he lived until the end of his life.

After 1933 Karl Hermann was arrested several times for resistance work, and in 1944 he was sent to the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps . He managed to escape on the death march to evacuate the camp in April 1945. From 1945 to 1946 he was the mayor of Eisenach , from 1946 to 1950 a member of the Thuringian state parliament and chairman of the legal and constitutional committee there. From 1946 to 1948 he was head of the state building authority and from 1948 to 1951 mayor of Mühlhausen . Then he officially retired from all offices after a "long, serious illness".

Hermann was married twice, first to Anna Pabst and later to Elise Schmidt. He died in Eisenach in 1973.

Honors

• Patriotic Order of Merit in gold, silver and bronze
• 1966 Appointed honorary citizen of Eisenach
• Street naming in Wutha-Farnroda

literature

• Martin Schumacher, Katharina Lübbe, Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3. Edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
• Julia Hörath: Karl Hermann. A political biography. Diploma thesis, Berlin 2005.

Web links

• Karl Hermann in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Brief portrait on www.eisenachonline.de
• Biography on www.Eisenach.de