Kurt Necker

Kurt Erich Necker (* 29. December 1903 in Nuremberg , † unknown after 1968) in 1946 was district president of the administrative district of Dusseldorf .

Life

Necker was born as the son of the engineer Karl Necker and his wife Grete, b. Bühler, born in Nuremberg. After the Oberlyzeum in Metz ( Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine ) he attended the Realgymnasium in Benrath , which he left in 1920 with "O II-Reife". From April 1920 to Easter 1922 he worked as a “volunteer” for the Benrath municipal administration. From April 1922 to April 1923 he attended the municipal administration school in Düsseldorf . He then worked briefly for the city of Düsseldorf. In the winter semester of 1923/1924 he enrolled at the University of Cologne to study economics as a major and social policy and insurance science as a minor. He also worked as a miner and ironworker in the Ruhr area . In 1930 he finished his academic career as a graduate economist and Dr. rer. pole. with the dissertation The rationalization of the work of middle municipal officials .

According to his own statements, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1927 and was involved there until this party was banned in 1933. After being employed as a research assistant in several city administrations in Westphalia and East Prussia, he was dismissed in 1933 because his last employer, the National Socialist Mayor of Hagen , Heinrich Vetter , assessed him as politically unreliable. Attempts at ingratiation and Necker's entry into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933 did not change Vetter's attitude. Vetter also asserted political reservations when Necker applied to the district president of Potsdam, Ernst Fromm , for the provisional transfer of a mayoral position and Fromm asked Vetter about Necker. Not even in Königsberg , where Necker had also applied, was he given a job in the administration. In the following years he worked as a quarry, road and forest worker, interrupted by weather-related unemployment. It was only in 1938 that he managed to get a clerk's position for legal matters at the public transport company in the city of Königsberg, which he held until 1939. In 1940 he married and had two children. In February 1943 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht , which he left at the end of the Second World War with the rank of private.

After the Second World War

Since 1945 Necker has been involved again in the SPD, as a speaker, trainer and functionary. On May 28, 1945, he sent a letter to the British military government in Schleswig-Holstein, in which, referring to his dismissal from the administration of the city of Hagen in 1933, he asked for reinstatement in the higher administrative service. In a denazification process , he was classified as “exonerated” (category V). From July 1, 1945 to February 18, 1946, he held a management position as provisional district administrator in the Südtondern district in Niebüll , then until March 1946 as a regular district administrator. The appointment of Necker as provisional district administrator by the provisional chief president of the province of Schleswig-Holstein , Otto Hoevermann , was criticized as an affront by the local population, including the Danish minority.

Robert Görlinger , the chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Cologne City Council , was about to win Necker for the post of Deputy Mayor of the cathedral city in March 1946, when Necker was appointed to the position of regional president of the Düsseldorf administrative district . On April 16, 1946 , at the request of the British occupying power, Robert Lehr , a co-founder of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), appointed him regional president of the most important Prussian administrative district, although Lehr had expressed strong doubts about Necker's professional and personal suitability. Because of Necker's appointment, Konrad Adenauer later accused Lehr of neglecting the interests of the CDU through an SPD-friendly personnel policy. In the new position Necker was the successor to the bourgeois-conservative Eduard Sträter . The British had forced him to resign after less than a year as head of the authorities.

As district president Necker faced numerous problems. An extreme shortage of space endangered the official business of his authority. In addition, a number of incidents indicate that Necker showed little skill and assertiveness as the head of the authority. They suggest that a number of employees of the regional council showed less discipline and commitment than usual under his leadership. It is noticeable that he often complained about disregarding deadlines and instructions. In order to counteract unpunctuality, he ordered that the government building was to be locked from 8:30 a.m. and that every late employee had to report to him personally.

In January 1947 William Asbury , the British civil governor for North Rhine-Westphalia , wrote in confidence to the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Rudolf Amelunxen that “Dr. Necker is weak because he lacks initiative and control over his subordinates. (...) Dr. Necker [is] to be relieved of his position as President of Düsseldorf because he did not perform his duties during his term of office. ” A few months later, on August 4, 1946, Necker was retired by a cabinet decision for“ health reasons ”. The North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Walter Menzel had previously spoken out in favor of suggesting a resignation to Necker. It was also Menzel who suggested Kurt Baurichter, SPD member of the state parliament, as Necker's successor. After the cabinet decision to release Necker into retirement, the NSDAP membership, which Necker had concealed, became known, whereupon his civil servant status was withdrawn by decree of December 23, 1947 and corresponding pension payments were discontinued. In a year-long legal dispute over reinstatement, which Necker led very emotionally, he failed.

Necker was involved in the discussion of an administrative reform in North Rhine-Westphalia, in particular the question of the abolition or structuring of the state means of administration , together with the regional presidents of the other North Rhine-Westphalian administrative districts, Lude ( Aachen ), Fries ( Arnsberg ), Drake ( Detmold ), Warsch ( Cologne ) and Hackethal ( Münster ) - in May 1947, through the jointly written and much-noticed memorandum, guiding thoughts on administrative reform . The British occupying power, which was based on an alleged consensus on the abolition of the administrative districts and their district governments, examined this memorandum and saw in the statements of the district leaders "the undesirable trends of traditional 'Officials'', which these officials are evincing" ( the undesirable tendency towards traditional Officialdom, which these officials manifest ).

literature

• Opponent or activist? The case of the District President Kurt Necker . In: Christina Strick: Beyond the routine? The Düsseldorf district government 1945 to 1955 , dissertation at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 205 ff. ( Information on the document ; PDF: 8.18 MB )

Web links

• Figure Dr. Kurt Necker in the portal brd.nrw.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. Necker's curriculum vitae in: Kurt Necker: The rationalization of the work of the middle municipal officials . Dissertation University of Cologne 1930, Harich, Allenstein / East Prussia 1930, p. 63 ( online )
2. ↑ See obituary notice Betty Gruber in: Das Ostpreußenblatt of September 13, 1969, p. 17, online version, PDF , in the archive.preussische-allgemeine.de portal , accessed on September 12, 2014
3. ↑ Holger Martens : Hoevermann's calling was a mistake. The British military government corrects the occupation of the senior presidency . In: Democratic history, yearbook for Schleswig Holstein . Volume 12, 1999, ISSN  0932-1632 , pp. 201–203 ( PDF )
4. ↑ Jessica von Seggern: Old and New Democrats in Schleswig-Holstein. Democratization and formation of a new political elite at district and state level 1945 to 1950 . Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005, p. 53
5. ↑ See also footnote 64 on: Sozialistische Mitteilungen. News for German Socialists in England . Issue No. 79/80 (October / November) from 1945 ( online version in the library.fes.de portal of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung )
6. ^ Jost Dülffer: Cologne in the 50s. Between tradition and modernization . SH-Verlag, 2001, p. 42
7. ^ Peter Hüttenberger: North Rhine-Westphalia and the emergence of its parliamentary democracy . Respublica-Verlag, 1973, p. 169
8. ↑ Christina Strick: Beyond the routine? The district government of Düsseldorf from 1945 to 1955 . Dissertation Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 2007, p. 19 f.
9. ↑ Christina Strick, pp. 205 ff.
10. ↑ Christina Strick, p. 76