Kurt Jeserich

Kurt Gustav Adolf Jeserich (born February 5, 1904 in Wensickendorf ; † November 12, 1995 ) was a German local scientist and politician as well as a publishing director.

Live and act

Jeserich was born as the son of a businessman and factory owner (Jeserich AG Asphaltwerke). After graduating from high school in 1922, he studied law and political science in Berlin and graduated in 1926 with a degree in economics . He has been working as a student trainee in industry and trade, as a journalist and as an administrative officer in the Pankow district office since 1923 . On leave from there in 1928, he became head of department at the newly founded “Municipal Science Institute” at the University of Berlin as assistant to Walter Nords . He received his doctorate in 1929 for Dr. rer. pole. and completed his habilitation in political science in 1934. When Norden was dismissed in 1933 because of his “Jewish descent”, Jeserich succeeded him as director of the institute. At the same time, in May 1933, he secured the post of "Managing President" of the German Municipal Assembly, which he was to hold until 1940. Jeserich also became vice president of the International Community Association in 1936 and published the yearbooks for community science and the community science series . In it he tried to establish an independent communal science.

During National Socialism , Jeserich was heavily involved in local political issues. In 1988, for example, he wrote that, as Executive President, he had fought off numerous attempts by the NSDAP and its branches to dissolve the German Municipal Association in favor of the Central Office for Local Politics of the Reich leadership of the NSDAP and to transfer local tasks to the party organization. However, he had worked out the plans for the compulsory unification of the municipal umbrella organizations in the German Municipal Day on behalf of the National Socialist Mayor of Berlin- Steglitz , Herbert Treff . In 1933, Jeserich also declared that democracy was the "natural enemy of self-administration". Contrary to the representation of the German Municipal Assembly as a purely professional interest group, more recent research has also shown its function in the coordination of anti-Jewish local politics. “The community day”, as the historian Wolf Gruner sums it up, “represented a very independent political line in the persecution of the Jews, which at certain times was far more radical than that of the Nazi leadership.” Nevertheless, Jeserich in particular became the target of party-driven criticism German community day. He was accused of being just an opportunist who actually clung to democratic-liberal convictions.

Jeserich was initially denied membership of the NSDAP, which he had repeatedly requested. He was only able to join the party in 1940. Jeserich became a member of the SS in 1933 and was appointed SS-Untersturmführer in the SS-Hauptamt in 1938. The hoped-for professorship, against which Martin Bormann, among others , had appealed, did not materialize. The background was that Jeserich was accused of being close to the north in a secret dossier, and it was alleged that he was an opponent of the movement before 1933. He founded a sub-organization of the Republican Protection Association. In fact, Jeserich was a member of the Republican Circle , an organization of the German State Party .

At the end of 1938, Jeserich's speeches and publications for the German Community Day were forbidden by the “ Staff of the Deputy Leader ”. Files and his personal files were confiscated. In 1939, Jeserich was relieved of his functions and given leave of absence for the Wehrmacht . He experienced the end of the war in 1945 as a captain and battery chief in an army artillery division. In the SS, Jeserich rose to SS-Sturmbannführer in 1944.

Until March 1947, Jeserich was in American captivity and internment . After being denazified as a “fellow traveler” at the end of 1947 , he initially worked as a scientific advisor and between 1948 and 1959 as managing director of Kohlhammer Verlag . Here he was largely responsible for the publication of the “German Constitutional History” by Ernst Rudolf Huber .

In the Soviet occupation zone , Jeserich's writings Social Policy ( Spaeth & Linde , Berlin 1937), The German Community and the Situation and Future of German Community Finances (both Kohlhammer, Stuttgart and Berlin 1938) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

In 1960 Jeserich acquired his own publishing house, the G. Grote'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , which he sold to Kohlhammer Verlag in 1973. As early as the end of the 1950s, with the support of the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gesellschaft, of which he was a member of the Presidium, he initiated the later project of a “German Administrative History”, which was not implemented until the 1980s. Here he also acted as editor. From 1988 to 1992 he published an administrative history of East Germany 1815–1945 on behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Interior .

Fonts

• The importance of operating surpluses for the municipal budget. In: Contributions to the communal finance economy 1930, pp. 204–223.
• with others: The economist in practice. Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1931.
• The Prussian provinces. A contribution to administrative and constitutional reform. German Kommunal-Verl., Berlin-Friedenau 1931.
• The administrative organizations of the federal capital Vienna . In: Harry Goetz, Kurt Jeserich, Otto Kleine, Albert Zollikofer: The administrative organization of the world cities Paris, London, New York, Vienna. Vahlen, Berlin 1931, pp. 105–153.
• Studies and professional training in economics. In: The economist in practice 1931, pp. 1–29.
• The general compulsory labor service. Idea, development, current status and future. In: Archive for Social Science and Social Policy 1932, pp. 82-101.
• Communal science. Attempt to form a concept and systematize it. In: Jahrbuch für Kommunalwissenschaft 1934, pp. 1–46.
• Combating unemployment through job creation. In: International Congress of Cities and Local Governments 6, No. 2 (1936), pp. 23–92.
• The municipal science institute at the University of Berlin. With appendix: Communal literature 1933–1935. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin 1936.
• Local science in teaching and research in the cultural states of the world. In: International Congress of Cities and Local Governments 6, No. 3 (1936), pp. 1-54.
• with Hans Heinrich Lammers , Hans Pfundtner and Otto Koellreutter : The Administrative Academy. A manual for civil servants in the National Socialist state. Spaeth & Linde, Berlin 1936.
• with Karl Fiehler : Handbook of the municipal administration. 8 parts, Jehle, Munich Berlin 1937.
• Development tendencies of communal self-government. In: Journal for the entire political science 1937, pp. 280–309.
• International development tendencies of community politics. In: Jahrbuch für Kommunalwissenschaft 4, No. 2 (1937), pp. 283-305.
• Situation and future of German municipal finances. In: Report on the founding conference ... and the day of German economics. 1937, pp. 56-77.
• To reform the county administration. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1937.
• with Hans Arnold: The German districts. County reform material. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1937.
• with others: social policy. Industrieverlag Spaeth & Linde, Berlin 1937.
• The future of community self-government. In: Jahrbuch für Kommunalwissenschaft 1938, pp. 157–186.
• To reform the county administration. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1938.
• with Kurt Buhrow and Fritz Nordsieck : The German community. [Commemorative publication of the Municipal Science Institute at the University of Berlin on the 10th anniversary of its existence 1928–1938]. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1938.
• with Kurt Otto: The Community Science Institute at the University of Berlin. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1939.
• with Hans Pohl and Georg-Christoph von Unruh : German administrative history. 6 volumes, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1983.
• The Reich as a republic and in the time of National Socialism. German Verl.-Anst, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-421-061343 .
• with Helmut Neuhaus (ed.): Personalities of the administration. Biographies on German administrative history 1648–1945. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-17-010718-6 .
• Prussia and France 1807–1812. On the question of the Prussian contributions. In: Wilfried Feldenkirchen (Hrsg.): Economy, society, companies. Festschrift for Hans Pohl on his 60th birthday. Steiner, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-515-06646-2 , pp. 150-165.

literature

• Horst Matzerath : National Socialism and Local Self-Government. Stuttgart 1970.
• Helmut Neuhaus: Between science and practice. Kurt GA Jeserich and the German administrative history. In: Helmut Neuhaus (ed.): Constitution and administration. FS for Kurt GA Jeserich on his 90th birthday , Cologne 1994, pp. 3–29.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Wolf Gruner : The municipalities under National Socialism: domestic political actors and their powerful networking . In: Sven Reichardt , Wolfgang Seibel (Hrsg.): The precarious state: Rule and administration in National Socialism . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2011, pp. 168–211.

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Jeserich in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BArch N 1402/59 Nachlass Kurt Jeserich, Jeserich about himself in a curriculum vitae, 1988.
2. ^ Kurt Jeserich: The community in the National Socialist state . In: Der Gemeindetag 27 (1933), pp. 309–311, here: p. 310.
3. ↑ Wolf Gruner: Public welfare and the persecution of the Jews. Interaction between local and central politics in the Nazi state (1933–1942) . Munich 2002, pp. 321–322.
4. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 287.
5. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-i.html .
6. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-i.html .