Oskar Kalbfell

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Oskar Kalbfell (born October 28, 1897 in Betzingen , today a district of Reutlingen ; † November 5, 1979 in Reutlingen) was a German politician of the SPD and Lord Mayor of Reutlingen.

education and profession

Oskar Kalbfell attended elementary school and learned a trade with subsequent commercial training. From 1921 to 1922 he worked as a sports teacher abroad. Later he worked as an authorized signatory and managing director in a construction company.

politics

Until the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933, he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Reutlingen city council. In 1928 he ran for the Württemberg state parliament and in 1930 for the Reichstag .

In 1933 he was arrested and taken to the Heuberg concentration camp as an SPD functionary for nine months .

In November 1939, Kalbfell placed an admission order to the NSDAP , which, however, was rejected because of “poor political reliability”. During the Second World War , Kalbfell and Georg Allmendinger led a local resistance group against the Nazi regime in Reutlingen. Through his courageous demeanor in the final phase of the war, when he met the French troops advancing from Tübingen with a white flag in hand on April 20, 1945 and handed over the city to them, he was able to avert further destruction of Reutlingen, which had already been caused by several air raids Allied associations was badly hit in early 1945.

On April 24, 1945, four German hostages were shot by the French military in Reutlingen. The day before, a French soldier had died in what the French military government considered an assassination attempt, but was probably a traffic accident. As a result, Kalbfell, who was already acting mayor of Reutlingen at the time, was repeatedly accused of being jointly responsible for drawing up the list of hostages to be shot. Kalbfell himself denied this all his life, saying that he only found out about the shootings afterwards. A court case before the Tübingen Regional Court in 1951, which he himself initiated, certified that he had not participated in the selection. To this day, however, rumors to the contrary about a personal involvement of Kalbfell remain.

Kalbfell was Lord Mayor of Reutlingen from 1945 to 1973. This period is known in the city to this day as the "Kalbfell era" , which also saw the construction of the Reutlingen town hall (Oskar-Kalbfell-Platz 21). He also served until 1947. Acting District Administrator of the district Reutlingen . He was also a member of the Advisory State Assembly and the State Parliament of Württemberg-Hohenzollern from 1946 to 1952 and then until 1968 in the State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg , where he represented the constituency of Reutlingen . He also belonged to the German Bundestag , to which he was also directly elected in Reutlingen , in its first legislative period from 1949 to 1953.

Family and private

Oskar Kalbfell was married to Rosa Kehrer. The marriage had two children. In Reutlingen, he lived at Herderstrasse 12 after the war.

Memberships, honorary positions and awards

Kalbfell was a member of the Broadcasting Council at Südwestfunk and president of the German Association of Cities . He also held other positions on the board of the German Association for Housing, Urban Development and Spatial Planning, the Association of Municipal Enterprises and, since 1952, the administrative committee of the State Surveying Office.

In 1955 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1973 he became an honorary citizen of the city of Reutlingen. 1976 Prime Minister gave him Hans Filbinger the Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg .

The Oskar Kalbfell Foundation is named after him, the purpose of which is to provide “financial support for gifted children from Reutlingen families with low incomes” . The central square in Reutlingen is also called Oskar-Kalbfell-Platz . The sports hall at the Friedrich-List-Gymnasium in Reutlingen is also named after him.

literature

  • Hans-Georg Wehling : Oskar Kalbfell. a Lord Mayor and his city . Verlag-Haus Reutlingen Oertel and Spörer, Reutlingen 1997, ISBN 3-88627-202-8 .
  • Werner Ströbele : The Reutlingen resistance group. Approach to the forms of opposition in the circle around Oskar Kalbfell and Georg Allmendinger during the Second World War using new sources and reports. In: Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter. NF Vol. 34, 1995, ISSN  0486-5901 , pp. 381-407.
  • City administration Reutlingen / school, culture and sports department / local history museum and city archive (ed.): Reutlingen 1930–1950. National Socialism and the Post-War Period. Catalog and exhibition on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. Heimatmuseum, Reutlingen 1995, ISBN 3-927228-61-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 150 years of the SPD: After the war, "Kalbfell-Stadt". In: Reutlinger General-Anzeiger . May 23, 2013. Retrieved May 25, 2013 .
  2. ^ Oskar Kalbfell. In: Munzinger biography. Retrieved May 25, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Hostage murder. K. determined it that way . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1950, pp. 7-10 ( Online - Nov. 15, 1950 ).
  4. ↑ Rehabilitated . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1951, pp. 4 ( online - September 19, 1951 ).
  5. ↑ Facts and background information on the shooting of the hostages in Reutlingen in 1945 . In: Reutlinger General-Anzeiger from April 16, 2005

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Calfskin, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdL, MdB, Lord Mayor of Reutlingen
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Betzingen , Kingdom of Württemberg , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1979
Place of death Reutlingen , Baden-Württemberg , Federal Republic of Germany