Karl Strasser

Karl Strasser (born June 30, 1869 in Aulendorf in Württemberg ; † February 11, 1945 in Dahlewitz near Berlin ) was a German architect , secret building officer and at times head of the Reich property office .

life and career

Karl Strasser was born in Aulendorf in 1869. His father Rudolf Otto Albert Strasser was there as an architect and from 1876 as a royal garrison - builder in Ludwigsburg operates. After graduating from high school , Strasser studied architecture at the Technical University of Stuttgart from 1888 to 1892 . In the winter semester of 1890/91 he joined the Stuttgart fraternity of Ghibellinia , whose board he led for three semesters. In May 1892 he completed his studies with the examination as a government building supervisor and entered the state service in Württemberg . Here he was initially employed in the military building administration. From October 1, 1892 to September 30, 1893 he did his one-year voluntary military service . Then switched to the Prussian civil service and worked as a government site manager and site manager in Saarbrücken . On December 1, 1894, he then moved again - this time to the Bavarian civil service. On June 1, 1896, he was appointed government master builder.

Probably at the instigation of the Reichsmarinamt , Strasser was then given leave of absence from January 1, 1900, in order to be sent to the German protected area Kiautschou , which was then under this office. In Tsingtau , Strasser was supposed to help set up the infrastructure for the German trade and naval base .

Strasser probably arrived in Tsingtau in February or March 1900 and headed the building construction department (Department 3 of the colony's civil engineering ). Apparently due to contradictions with Richard Gromsch (1855–1910), the head of the port construction authority , to whom the other building management and civil engineering departments were subordinate, Strasser did not fulfill his contract to the end, but returned to Germany at the end of 1902. He then worked in Straubing , where he was appointed garrison construction inspector on June 1, 1903 .

In 1904 a new manager for the building construction department was sought in Tsingtau and the position was offered to Strasser by the German governor von Kiautschou Oskar von Truppel , which he accepted under two conditions. On the one hand, Strasser demanded permanent employment as a civil servant in Tsingtau and, on the other hand, Strasser no longer wanted to be subordinate to the port construction department as the sole responsible head of the building construction department. Both conditions were met and Strasser was dismissed from the Bavarian civil service on February 14, 1905. On February 15, 1905, he joined the Imperial Navy Office as head of the structural engineering department in the Kiautschou lease area and on March 15, 1905, he traveled from Genoa to Tsingtau.

Strasser's main task as building construction director was to coordinate the many simultaneous activities of his office. Strasser was also the chief of the building police . From 1905 to 1914 he was responsible for the structural design of the city of Tsingtau.

Former residence of the German governor in Qingdao

One of the most important projects was the construction of the governor's residence on Signalberg in Tsingtau. The project started in September 1905 and was overshadowed by great difficulties. This caused a long delay as well as much higher costs in the construction, which even triggered an official investigation against Strasser by the Naval Office. However, this was inconclusive, also because Governor Truppel spoke out on behalf of Strasser. The building was finally completed in September 1907 and still exists today as a museum and landmark of Qingdao. On March 16, 1911, Strasser was appointed director and building officer.

When the First World War broke out , Strasser was appointed captain of the Landwehr on August 18, 1914 . D. called up to the Landsturm and took part in the defense of the city . After Tsingtau was occupied by Japanese forces on November 7, 1914, Strasser, like the other Tsingtau fighters, was taken prisoner by Japan , first in the Fukuoka camp, then on March 22, 1918 in the Narashino camp.

In December 1919 Strasser was released from captivity and returned to Germany, where he arrived in Wilhelmshaven on February 25th. After his return, Strasser was appointed government building officer and employed by the naval administration in Bremerhaven . With a certificate dated May 27, 1920 he was promoted to privy councilor. A little later he was briefly transferred to Koblenz as head of the Reich Property Office. Then Strasser worked as a construction consultant in Nuremberg and was finally transferred to the Navy Ministry in Berlin in 1925 . In 1929 Strasser bought a house in Dahlewitz south of Berlin. He retired in 1934 .

At the end of 1944 Strasser was diagnosed with diabetes and lost a leg. Shortly afterwards he passed away.

family

On August 1, 1906, Strasser married Mathilde Warlich in Hong Kong . The couple met before Strasser's second visit to Asia in Munich . Strasser's wife subsequently also moved to Tsingtau. The couple had a daughter.

At the outbreak of the First World War, the siege of the city by Japanese troops was already expected. Therefore, at the behest of the government, all German women and their children were evacuated first to Tientsin and then to Beijing in the vicinity of the German embassy .

When China broke off relations with the German Reich on March 14, 1917 , many Germans, especially the German diplomats , left the country and traveled to the USA . On the way there by ship, Ms. Strasser fell seriously ill and had to be hospitalized on arrival in San Francisco . After a long stay in hospital there was no longer any possibility of traveling to Germany, as the USA had meanwhile also entered the war against Germany. Mother and daughter were therefore considered interned, had to report to the police every week and were not allowed to leave the district. After all, Ms. Strasser received her husband's salary through the Swiss consulate and found a place to stay with an Irish family. It was not until December 1919 that she received the travel documents for herself and her daughter through the agency of the Swiss consulate and was able to travel by ship from New York to Germany in March 1920 , where she arrived on April 7, 1920. With that, the family finally met again after five and a half years of separation.

One day after her husband's funeral in 1945, Mathilde Strasser left the house in Dahlewitz for southern Germany to take her daughter and grandchildren to safety in view of the impending invasion of the Red Army . After an adventurous four-day trip on the platform of a hospital train accompanied by air raids , the small group reached Munich . Ms. Strasser died there on September 4, 1957.

Web link and sources

• Wilhelm Matzat: biography Karl Strasser. In: www.tsingtau.org - History of the Germans in East Asia - 1898 to 1946. Retrieved on March 23, 2016 . 
• Short biography of Karl Strasser. In: Tsingtau and Japan 1914-1920 - Historically Biographical Project. Retrieved March 23, 2016 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Well-known Ghibellines - Stuttgarter Burschenschaft Ghibellinia . In: Stuttgarter Burschenschaft Ghibellinia . ( ghibellinen.de [accessed November 2, 2017]).