Otto Benecke (Ministerial Officer)

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Otto Benecke (born December 11, 1896 in Braunschweig , † July 19, 1964 in Bad Nauheim ) was a German administrative lawyer , ministerial official and cultural politician .

Life

The son of a government councilor attended elementary school and the Wilhelm grammar school in Braunschweig and, after graduating from high school, took part in the First World War as a volunteer in 1914. From 1919 to 1921 he studied law and political science in Göttingen , became a member of the local Association of German Students (VDSt) and was elected in 1919 as the first AStA chairman and founding chairman of the umbrella association of the German student body (DSt). In this capacity, Benecke played a key role in drafting the Prussian ordinance on the formation of student bodies from 1920, which recognized the elected student committees as official representatives for the first time and gave them the right to self-administration and to levy mandatory contributions. Benecke was convinced that students who take on responsibility and learn democratic rules are motivated to help shape the free and democratic development of a society even after completing their studies. In the so-called “constitutional dispute”, Benecke was one of the supporters of the “citizenship principle”, according to which all German nationals should belong to the student body regardless of their ethnic-religious origin, while the majority of the delegates propagated the ethnic and racist Aryan principle . This and his turn to Weimar democracy increasingly divided Benecke from the VDSt, from which he left in 1922.

After completing his doctorate, Benecke worked in the Prussian Ministry of Culture from 1921 to 1928 , among other things as personal advisor to long-time minister Carl Heinrich Becker . This attested to Benecke that he had what it takes to be a minister himself, but saw him more in the interior department and therefore recommended that he switch to the German Association of Cities in order to gain the necessary administrative experience there. In 1928 Benecke became an alderman and head of the cultural department there. He remained in this position even after the National Socialists came to power, when the Association of Cities was forcibly merged with the other central municipal associations to form the German Association of Municipalities . Since Benecke had already headed the working group for concerts since 1931, in 1934 he became a member of the administrative committee of the Reich Chamber of Music and head of the Office for Concerts , a joint institution of the Reich Chamber of Music and the German Municipal Association. On June 1, 1940, he joined the NSDAP ; his membership number was 7,621,908.

From 1946 until his retirement in 1951, Benecke worked again at the re-established German Association of Cities and at the same time directed the fortunes of the German Stage Association (1947–51) and the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Kunst (1949–51).

From 1951 until his death, Benecke played a leading role in the reconstruction of the Max Planck Society as a senator and executive board member . Since 1953 he was also a member of the German UNESCO Commission and for two years SPD councilor in Göttingen.

During this time, Benecke continued to feel connected to the student self-administration and particularly supported the social and refugee work of the Association of German Student Unions (VDS), which was newly founded in 1949 . In his honor, the Otto Benecke Foundation eV , which emerged from the former social welfare office of the German Federal Student Association in 1965 . V. his name.

In 1956 he was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit.

literature

  • Marc Zirlewagen: Biographical Lexicon of the Associations of German Students, Vol. 1: Members A – L. Norderstedt 2014, ISBN 978-3-7357-2288-1 , pp. 43-45.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated August 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.obs-ev.de
  2. ↑ Zirlewagen p. 44.
  3. ^ Obituary in: Der Städtetag, Issue 8/1964, p. 394.
  4. ^ Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 378.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Benecke, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, ministerial official and cultural politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1964
Place of death Bad Nauheim