Louis Grünwaldt

Louis Grünwaldt (born August 24, 1856 in Daulen in West Prussia , † February 1, 1931 in Hamburg ) was a Hamburg parliamentarian and senator ( SPD ).

Life and work

Grünwaldt spent his school days in Deutsch Eylau and did an apprenticeship as a wallpaperer in Berlin , where he also did his military service. After he was noticed in connection with the Socialist Law in Berlin, he evaded to Hamburg in 1881. In Hamburg he created a successful upholstery business. In 1884 he founded the central sickness fund for upholsterers and expanded it, together with the upholsterers' union, into an institution with a nationwide effect. From 1900 Grünwaldt worked exclusively as a paid chairman in the main board of the health insurance company he founded, an office which he resigned in 1919.

When there were supply bottlenecks during the First World War , Grünwaldt organized the fair distribution of food, especially potatoes , which were sold directly from the barges in the canals in the city area .

politics

Grünwaldt was one of the leading agitators and speakers of the SPD in Hamburg from the 1880s. In 1892 he was elected chairman of the SPD constituency organization for Reichstag constituency Hamburg 1. In 1904 Grünwaldt was elected to the Hamburg parliament for the SPD , to which he belonged until 1927, where he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group from 1913 to 1918. In 1919 Grünwaldt was meanwhile a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council for Greater Hamburg , in which he also headed the SPD parliamentary group.

From March 28, 1919 to April 4, 1928, Grünwaldt was a member of the Hamburg Senate . Grünwaldt was the first unbaptized Jew who ever belonged to the Hamburg Senate. In 1919 he was active in the following senate commissions and colleges: commercial recourse matters and association affairs, medical college, hospital college. During his tenure in the Senate, he held the de facto office of Senator for Health. In this office he implemented a reorganization of the Hamburg health system. In 1928 he retired.

Honors

• In 1928 he was awarded the “ Mayor Stolten Medal ”, Hamburg's highest honor after becoming an honorary citizen.

Web links

• Newspaper article about Louis Grünwaldt in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Leo Lippmann: My Life and My Official Activity. Hamburg 1964, p. 210.
2. ↑ See Ulrich Bauche : Biographies in the field of tension between ethnic and socio-political exposure. Jewish comrades-in-arms in the Hamburg labor movement. In: VOKUS 1/2002, to be found here www.uni-hamburg.de ( Memento from June 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ See Leo Lippmann: My Life and My Official Activity. Hamburg 1964, p. 103.
4. ^ See the Official Gazette of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. No. 80, dated Wednesday April 2, 1919, pp. 542-543.

literature

• Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1867-1933. Biographies, chronicles, election documentation. A handbook (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 7). Droste, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-7700-5192-0 (can also be found in short form on the Internet under the biography of Louis Grünwaldt . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reichs and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP) ) .
• Jewish Hamburg. A historical reference work. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0004-0 , pages 98-99.