Michael Helmerich

Michael Helmerich (born April 6, 1885 in Amberg , † June 8, 1974 in Munich ) was a Bavarian politician, trade unionist, member of parliament and minister of state.

Michael Helmerich learned the printing trade in his youth . From 1911 he joined the Royal Bavarian State Railways . From 1914 to 1918 he served as a medic in the war. From 1919 to 1920 he worked as an association secretary at the Bavarian Railway Union , after which he was again employed by the Reichsbahn . From 1924 to 1930 Helmerich was chairman of the main civil servants 'council at the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, Bavarian Group Administration , and a member of the main civil servants' council at the head office in Berlin.

From March 1, 1930 he became 1st Chairman of the Bavarian Railway Union , in the same year (5th electoral term) he came to the Reichstag in Berlin as a BVP member for the constituency of Lower Bavaria , where he - like the entire BVP - voted for Hitler's Enabling Act .

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he was briefly arrested and taken to the Stadelheim correctional facility for the period from June 26 to July 5, 1933 . After that, disciplinary measures and a punitive transfer to Ingolstadt took place. Helmerich was arrested again in connection with the grid action and was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp from August 26 to September 17, 1944 .

After the war ended in 1945, Michael Helmerich became the first staff representative at the Munich Railway Directorate. He joined the CSU , where he took on a number of functions. From February 9 to December 16, 1946 he was a member of the Hoegner cabinet as Minister of State for Transport. Helmerich became a member of the constituent assembly. From 1947 until he reached retirement age, he worked as a ministerial advisor and department head in the Bavarian Ministry of Transport. From 1950 to 1956 Helmerich was a member of the Bavarian State Parliament for the constituency Eggenfelden / Vilsbiburg .

Parts of his estate are in the Institute for Contemporary History / Munich-Berlin.

Honors

• July 3, 1959: Bavarian Order of Merit
• 1965: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state: persecution - resistance - emigration (1933–1945) . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 274 ff., 364, 498 (short biography).

Web links

• Short biography. Bavarian State Parliament. Retrieved November 5, 2013 . 
• Biography and estate report at the Institute for Contemporary History (pdf) (546 kB)
• Michael Helmerich in the database of members of the Reichstag