Karl Meitmann

Karl Meitmann (born March 20, 1891 in Kiel - Gaarden , † February 17, 1971 in Kiel) was a German politician ( SPD ).

Karl Meitmann in Hamburg around 1930

Life and work

After graduating from school, Meitmann completed a commercial apprenticeship. Before the First World War he worked as an employee at the large purchasing company of German consumer associations in Hamburg. In 1918 he became secretary and assistant to the regional president of Schleswig-Holstein , who in 1919 sent him to the secretariat of the voting commissioner for North Schleswig. There he was responsible for organizing the voting campaign. In 1920 he was a member of the military leadership in the suppression of the Kapp Putsch . He then became a civil commissioner for the protection police in Schleswig-Holstein. Shortly after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he was arrested three times, first on March 24, 1933, and sent to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , where he was severely mistreated. Through the action of the lawyer and former mayor Dr. Herbert Ruscheweyh was released at the end of October 1933. Then he went into hiding as a payroll clerk at a lignite works in West Prussia and Berlin, a position that Herbert Dorendorf (1900–1960) had given him. At the end of the war he returned to his hometown and then resumed his political duties in Hamburg. From 1956 he lived in Mönkeberg near Kiel; he retired from political life in March 1961. His granddaughter was the French actress Catherine Stermann .

Karl Meitmann is buried in Hamburg on the Ehrenfeld of the Geschwister-Scholl-Foundation in the Ohlsdorf cemetery .

Political party

Since 1905 Meitmann belonged to the socialist youth workers . In 1909 Meitmann joined the SPD. In 1924 he participated in the founding of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , of which he became the regional manager for Schleswig-Holstein. From 1928 to 1933 he was state chairman of the SPD in Hamburg .

From 1945 onwards, Meitmann participated in the reconstruction of the Hamburg SPD and was re-elected chairman of the state organization by the district leaderships of the SPD in Hamburg on July 14, 1945, i.e. before the British occupying power had formally admitted parties. He held this office until 1952 and was also a member of the federal executive committee, after which he continued to belong to the state executive committee. In November 1945 he advocated a merger of the SPD in Hamburg with the Free Democrats Party , the later state association of the FDP , after he had signed an appeal in August 1945 with Walter Schmedemann (SPD), Friedrich Dettmann and Paul Tastesen (both KPD), after "on the basis of joint action of the social democratic and communist comrades ... the one socialist party should arise". After the general election in 1946, he pleaded for a single SPD government, the Social Democrats had won 83 out of 110 seats due to the majority vote, but could not prevail against Max Brauer , who spoke out in favor of an all-party government, in which the CDU did not participate, however. so that the Senate was formed by the SPD, FDP and KPD (until Friedrich Dettmann's dismissal on July 28, 1948).

MP

Meitmann was a member of the Hamburg parliament from 1931 to 1933 during the Weimar Republic . From 1946 to 1948 he was a member of the Zone Advisory Board for the British Zone of Occupation. From 1946 to 1949 he was again a member of the Hamburg Parliament and then to the German Bundestag since its first election from 1949 to 1961. In 1949 he was directly elected in the Hamburg VI constituency, after which he moved into the German parliament via the Hamburg state list of the SPD.

Publications

• The Kapp Putsch in Schleswig. In: Grenzfriedenshefte. Husum 1963, pages 153 to 166.

Sources / literature

• Working Group Formerly Persecuted Social Democrats (AvS): Guide to the sites of persecution and social democratic resistance in Hamburg, part 1. [Texts and research: Holger Martens ], Hamburg 2005.
• Christof Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953. Start as a bourgeois left party. M-Press Meidenbauer Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89975-569-5 .

• Holger Martens (HM): Meitmann, Karl In: For Freedom and Democracy: Hamburg Social Democrats in Persecution and Resistance; 1933-1945. Social Democratic Party of Germany / State Organization Hamburg / Working Group on History and Working Group Formerly Persecuted Social Democrats (ed.), Christel Oldenburg et al. (Red.), SPD regional organization Hamburg, Working Group on History, 2003, pp. 103seq. ISBN 3-8330-0637-4 .
• Fritz Singer , Siegfried Singer: Handbook of the German Bundestag (3rd electoral period). Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1957.
• The daily newspaper : Unity and never again fratricidal conflict. In: regional supplement "taz-hamburg" from August 19, 2005.

• Michel Stermann: Maman Grete. An educator from Germany for concentration camp victim orphans in France and other family portraits . Twentysix Verlag, Norderstedt 2016, 2nd edition 2018, ISBN 978-3-7407-4985-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Meitmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Karl Meitmann in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Curriculum vitae at the working group for formerly persecuted social democrats

Individual evidence

1. ↑ At that time only Gaarden: birth certificate, registry office Kiel
2. ^ Death certificate, Kiel-Mitte registry office
3. ↑ Karl Meitmann , on: spd-geschichtswerkstatt.de, accessed on December 18, 2017.
4. ↑ Meitmann, Karl , on: avs-hh.de, accessed on December 18, 2017.
5. ↑ Holger Martens : On the way to the resistance: The "Echo" assembly of the Hamburg SPD 1933 . Books on Demand, Berlin 2012. ISBN 978-3844805383 , p. 39.
6. ^ Gravestone Geschwister-Scholl-Stiftung Hamburg-Ohlsdorf