Max Mendel

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In July 1919 Friedrich Ebert ( Reich President ) (third from right) and Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske (far right) visited the PRO children's and recreation home in Haffkrug with members of the board of the "Produktion" cooperative . Third from left: Max Mendel.

Max Mendel (born May 19, 1872 in Hamburg ; † August 10, 1942 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp ) was a merchant , consumer cooperative member and senator ( SPD ) in Hamburg.

Life

Max Mendel came from a merchant family. He attended the Johanneum secondary school in Hamburg, which he had to leave prematurely in 1886 due to a hip joint disease. He recovered from the illness after a year and a half. He then devoted himself to historical and national economic studies. In 1889 he entered his father's business as a businessman. He was a member of the social democratic central association of clerks .

He continued his economic studies in the following years. In 1897, shortly after the great port workers' strike , he met Adolph von Elm . From him he received suggestions about the importance of the cooperative system in the national economy. He took part in the preparatory work for the establishment of the consumer, building and savings association “Produktion” eGmbH, Hamburg, and was elected secretary. In 1900 he was elected to the supervisory board of the cooperative founded in the previous year, in which he worked until 1909. During this time he continued his activities in private business. In 1909 he was elected to the board of production . He was considered a financial expert and was chairman of the four-person board from 1920 to 1928. Within the cooperative, he was subject to a dispute with Ferdinand Vieth in 1928 , in which anti-Semitic tendencies also played a role. Factually, it was about investment decisions about a concentration of the operating sites, about the abandonment of an own ship supply company and the participation in a brewery. For many years, Mendel worked as a board member with Henry Everling , whose role in Mendel's professional and political isolation still remains unclear.

In 1913 he was also elected to the supervisory board of the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine mbH. On November 2nd, 1920 he co-founded the GBI Großhamburger Funeral Home .

On July 16, 1919, Reich President Friedrich Ebert and Reich Defense Minister Gustav Noske visited the PRO children's recreation home in Haffkrug on the Baltic Sea with members of the board of the “Produktion” cooperative . The home had been financed from the profits of the cooperative's war production and was to be recognized as an exemplary social institution

From 1920 to 1930 Mendel was also a member of the supervisory board of the Volksfürsorge insurance company .

Since Mendel was patterned as unfit for war, he remained at his post during the First World War . From March 18, 1925 to June 20, 1929 he was senator for the SPD in the Hamburg Senate , he worked primarily in the finance deputation . Health reasons for his resignation from the Senate are considered to be advanced. It is possible that his Jewish origins were the decisive factor in his withdrawal from the Senate. In its election propaganda in 1927 and 1928, the German National People's Party explicitly defamed the large consumer cooperative production as a Jewish-controlled Moloch. With him and Senator Carl Cohn from the DDP , the last two Jewish politicians left the Hamburg Senate four years before the National Socialists came to power .

Immediately after the transfer of power to the National Socialists in January 1933 , Otto Becker, the district leader of the NSDAP in the Hamm- Süd district , was appointed state commissioner for the "Consumer, Building and Savings Association Production" on May 17, 1933 . Max Mendel was immediately charged with alleged embezzlement , but the trial before the Hamburg Regional Court ended with an acquittal.

Max Mendel all pensions were gradually reduced and finally canceled. He was only left with the pension from the pension fund of the Central Association of German Consumers .

On July 19, 1942 he was born with his second wife Ida Mendel. Lobatz and other relatives were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , where he died 22 days later. He was the only former senator murdered by the Nazis.

Max Mendel's musical side was described by his nephew Arie Goral-Sternheim : Uncle Max could do everything. He could sing entire Wagner operas with his full bass baritone and accompany himself on the piano. He was able to recite Gorch Fock and Rudolf Kinau so true to the original that something like a Low German-Jewish symbiosis arose in those moments.

The Mendel family lived in Hamburg-Hamm for many years . His grandson is the cultural historian and folklorist Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bauche .

Honors

Stumbling stone in front of the Hamburg City Hall
  • Mendelstrasse in Hamburg-Lohbrügge has been named after him since 1964.
  • On March 29, 2005, the 1000th Stumbling Stone was placed in front of Hamburg City Hall as a reminder of Max Mendel. In Hamburg-Hamm , too, a stumbling block was laid in front of the Mendel family's house at Hammer Landstrasse 59 , which was destroyed in the war .

literature

  • Heinrich Kaufmann : The large purchasing company of German consumer associations mb H. GEG. For the 25th anniversary 1894–1919. Hamburg 1919.
  • Josef Rieger, Max Mendel; Walter Postelt: The Hamburg consumer cooperative "Production". 1899-1949. History of a consumer cooperative association from its inception to its fiftieth business deal and its predecessors. Hamburg 1949.
  • Holger Martens : Max Mendel. In: SPD regional organization Hamburg: For freedom and democracy: Hamburg social democrats in persecution and resistance 1933–1945, biographical sketches. P. 106 f, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-8330-0637-4 . [2] Accessed April 9, 2008.
  • Institute for the history of the German Jews (ed.): The Jewish Hamburg. A historical reference work. Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0004-0 .
  • Ulrich Bauche : Max Mendel (1872–1942). In: Peter Freimark, Arno Hertzig (ed.): The Hamburg Jews in the Emancipation Phase (1780-1870). Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-7672-1085-1 .
  • Ulrich Bauche: The cooperative businessman Max Mendel. P. 86 in 2006 Hamburg: "It works better together". Cooperative traditions and perspectives. Norderstedt 2011, ISBN 978-3-8423-4957-5 .
  • Ulrich Bauche: High-profile visitors in the group picture in front of the “Produktion” children's recreation home in Haffkrug / Baltic Sea at the end of July 1919. Questions about this photo document. In: 125 Years of the Cooperative Act. 100 years of the First World War. Norderstedt 2015, ISBN 978-3-7392-2219-6 , pp. 79-88.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josef Rieger, Max Mendel; Walter Postelt: The Hamburg consumer cooperative "Production". 1899-1949. History of a consumer cooperative association from its inception to its fiftieth business deal and its predecessors. Hamburg 1949, p. 256.
  2. ^ Heinrich Kaufmann: The large purchasing company of German consumer associations mb H. GEG. For the 25th anniversary 1894-1919. Hamburg 1919, p. 241 f.
  3. ↑ a b Holger Martens : Max Mendel. In: SPD regional organization Hamburg: For freedom and democracy: Hamburg social democrats in persecution and resistance 1933–1945, biographical sketches. Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-8330-0637-4 , p. 106 f.
  4. ↑ Ferdinand Vieth 1869–1946, published by the Heinrich Kaufmann Foundation, Norderstedt 2018, p. 120 Note, p. 196–201 Commentary by Hartmut Bockelmann, ISBN 978-3-7460-5925-9
  5. ↑ Josef Rieger, Max Mendel; Walter Postelt: The Hamburg consumer cooperative "Production". 1899-1949. History of a consumer cooperative association from its inception to its fiftieth business deal and its predecessors. Hamburg 1949, p. 166 f.
  6. ^ University of Hamburg, Inst. F Folklore / Cultural Anthropology. ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed April 9, 2008  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kultur.uni-hamburg.de
  7. ↑ Ulrich Bauche - Look closely , contributions to the history of Hamburg's society, edited by Jürgen Bönig, Rolf Bornholdt and Wolfgang Wiedey, VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2019, p. 127 ISBN 978-3-96488-019-2
  8. ↑ A review by Bernhard Nette and Stefan Romey of Ulrich Belly's book: Precisely. Contributions to the social history of Hamburg [1]
  9. ↑ Kersten Artus : Magda Langhans - Biographical
  10. ↑ Aria Goral-Sternheim in his Jeckepotz youth memories
  11. ↑ Mendelstraße  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed April 9, 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.hamburgwiki.de  
  12. ↑ taz Hamburg of March 29, 2005, p. 22, article by Markus Jox
  13. ↑ Stadtteilarchiv Hamm, We moved to Hammer Landstrasse - Life and Death of a Jewish Family, Hamburg 2001, p. 9. ISBN 3-9807953-0-6
personal data
SURNAME Mendel, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician, Jewish senator in the Hamburg Senate before the National Socialists came to power
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1942
Place of death Theresienstadt concentration camp