Ludwig Rickert

Ludwig Rickert (born July 20, 1897 in Schelze near Posen ; † October 4, 1963 in Wuppertal ) was a German teacher and from 1933 to 1945 the National Socialist Lord Mayor of Bonn .

Life

After finishing school, Rickert began training as a teacher. In 1917 he interrupted this and entered the military . He suffered severe wounds during the war and was taken prisoner by the British, from which he was released in 1919. He completed his training and entered the public school service. But in 1923 Rickert began studying and in 1927 he received his diploma as a commercial teacher. Active in Herne since 1925 , after graduating he switched to the city's vocational and commercial schools in Bonn. Until 1930 he remained enrolled in the law and political science faculty at Cologne University .

Rickert's first political activities date back to the beginning of 1930: He joined the NSDAP , where he was one of the few academics who quickly made a career. As early as 1931 he was the local group leader of Beuel , in 1932 he took over the Bonn-Land district leadership . His advocacy of the party with speeches and articles in the " Westdeutscher Beobachter " soon led to a conflict with his employer. Because of his attacks on the mayor and the director of the city commercial school, he was suspended and disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, the National Socialists also paved the way for conquering the communities. Shortly after the local elections in March 1933 Rickert took over the provisional management of the city ​​administration and in June 1933 the majority of the city council also formally elected him mayor. He remained in this office until 1945. Shortly before the Bonn Rhine bridge was blown up, he settled down on the right bank of the Rhine.

Gravestone of Ludwig Rickert in Bonn's north cemetery

In May 1945 he was interned in detention. A procedure initiated in 1945 for crimes against humanity before the Wuppertal Regional Court had to be discontinued due to a lack of evidence. Another case brought by the Bonn City Council in 1946 was dropped by the Bonn Regional Court after the preliminary investigation in 1951. In August 1948, Rickert had already been released from internment custody by the British. His denazification process was delayed because the files were needed for the criminal proceedings and were not available. When the criminal proceedings came to an end, the North Rhine-Westphalian state government had already announced the completion of denazification. Rickert avoided a denazification process. A regulation procedure initiated in 1953 dragged on before the regional administrative court until 1957 and was then discontinued. As a result, Rickert was entitled to receive a pension . Since the district president had decreed in 1956 that the mayor's time should not be taken into account, Rickert sued against it. However, the regional administrative court rejected the action in 1958, which the higher administrative court in Münster confirmed a year later.

In his professional life, Rickert was again active as a commercial teacher, in 1956 he was deputy head of the private commercial school in Rahden / Westphalia.

literature

• Horst-Pierre Bothien: The brown Bonn. People and Events (1925-1939). With two contributions by Ansgar Sebastian Klein . Essen: Klartext, 2005. ISBN 3-89861-419-0 .