Otto Faust

Otto Faust (born February 27, 1897 in Berlin , † April 23, 1955 in West Berlin ) was a German politician ( SPD ). He was a city ​​councilor in Berlin and mayor of Weimar .

Life

Faust was still in teacher training when he was drafted into military service in 1914 . He remained a soldier in the First World War until 1918 . In 1919 he joined the SPD, completed his training and was hired as a teacher in 1920 . He was active in the free thinker movement and on the board of the Federation of Free School Societies. Faust was a member of the Working Group of Social Democratic Teachers in Germany and later of the Union of German People's Teachers (GDV), and in 1927 he was appointed to the press committee of the GDV board. In 1932 he founded a free teacher sports association that worked closely with the Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund . In 1930 he became the rector of the secular collecting school on Putbusser Straße in Wedding , in the establishment of which he had previously played a key role.

From 1929 to 1933 he was city ​​councilor for constituency 15 Weißensee , Pankow , Reinickendorf . In the early elections in March 1933 he was re-elected as city councilor. Since he had recently been elected district chairman of the SPD in his residential district of Weissensee, he had to report to the police every day from March to October 1933. Faust resigned his mandate as city councilor at the end of March 1933 because his freedom of movement was severely restricted by the obligation to register. In autumn 1933 he was dismissed from school by the National Socialists for political reasons. The pension to which he is entitled has been reduced. In November 1933 his house was searched and Faust arrested. He was ill-treated at the police station and detained for a few days.

Faust was almost continuously unemployed until 1937. Faust had to give up a job as an unskilled factory worker at the Alfred Teves company in Berlin-Wittenau in the summer of 1936 after a few weeks. The Gestapo had demanded his dismissal because the company was doing aircraft construction contracts and "enemies of the state" were not allowed to be used. He later found a job as an insurance agent for a short time. It was not until 1938 that he found a long-term job in a telecommunications technology factory, the owner of which refused to fire him when the German Labor Front asked for it. In 1944 Faust was evacuated to Zittau with this company . There he was arrested in August 1944 as part of the “ Aktion Gewitter ” and held for ten days in the local court prison. He was then released because his company, with the support of the armaments command, objected to his arrest. The company was relocated to Thuringia in 1945 .

After the liberation , Hermann Brill , who was commissioned by the responsible US military administration to set up a civil administration, initially employed Faust as deputy district administrator, and in November 1945 Faust was appointed Lord Mayor of Weimar.

Faust participated in the re-establishment of the SPD in Thuringia and in 1946 became a member of the SED . After the first municipal election in October 1946, Gerhard Hempel ( LDP , 1903–1991) replaced him as Weimar Mayor. Faust worked in various offices in the service of the state of Thuringia until 1948 . In January 1947 he took over the office for new citizens in the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior . In this position, Faust exposed himself "too strongly for a policy of clear promotion of expellees , with which he not only overwhelmed the state budget, but also the willingness of the local population to redistribute". At the Eisenach Conference of the Central Administration for German Resettlers (ZVU) on 16./17. In June 1947, Faust was sharply criticized by ZVU Vice President Philipp Daub , as he assessed the economic survival strength of the Soviet Zone as negative and spoke out in favor of accepting Western economic aid. After Soviet criticism of his administration, Faust was deported to the district administrator's post in Hildburghausen in September 1947 . Faust came more and more into opposition to the line of the SED, which finally, like many other former Social Democrats, expelled him from the party in 1948. Faust returned to Berlin and fled from Weißensee to the western part of the city in May 1949. There he was again headmaster in the Wedding district .

literature

• Wolfgang Stöhr: Teachers and Labor Movement. Formation and politics of the first teacher union organization in Germany from 1920–1923 . Volume 2. Verlag Labor Movement and Social Sciences, Marburg 1978, p. 13
• Christine Fischer-Defoy (Ed.): Put in front of the door. Berlin city councilors and members of the magistrate persecuted during National Socialism from 1933 to 1945 . Active Museum Association, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-018931-9 , p. 184.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Expellees and "Resettled Policy". Integration conflicts in post-war German societies and assimilation strategies in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1961 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, pp. 195f.