Otto Gerber

Otto Gerber (* 1884 in Chemnitz , † 1961 in Erfurt ) was a German seaman , merchant and 1945 Lord Mayor of Erfurt.

Life

He was a sailor on a US merchant ship in the 1920s and lived in San Francisco for a while . He then ran a drugstore with a health food store in downtown Erfurt, Schmidtstedter Strasse 57.

On April 15, 1945, only three days after the occupation of Erfurt by the 3rd US Army under General George S. Patton , he was appointed the new Lord Mayor by the occupying forces. Apparently he benefited from the fact that he himself had never belonged to the NSDAP or one of its organizations, spoke fluent English and, as a well-known businessman, enjoyed a certain reputation among the population. In the first three weeks of his term in office, the war in Germany was not over. Nevertheless, together with the Americans, he succeeded in enforcing the military security of Erfurt by demilitarizing the population, reporting the dismissed soldiers, blocking Reichstrasse 7 and proclaiming a strict curfew from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. without major incidents.

He also successfully coped with the next tasks. The collapsed power grid could be restored in April and the first trains rolled back into the station. The restoration of tram traffic and the restart of the heavily damaged gas network followed in June . To secure the food supply, he ordered all lawns and front gardens, parks and meadows to be planted with potatoes and vegetables . 30,000 cubic meters of rubble had to be cleared from the streets. He countered the unwillingness of able-bodied Erfurters to help with the reconstruction work with the use of loudspeaker trucks and threats of punishment.

In addition, he was primarily responsible for representative tasks, because the actual decisions lay with the occupying power. Criticism of his administration came mainly from the KPD , which, despite a ban on any partisan political activity by the occupying power, had already started to reorganize itself in April as part of an “anti-fascist committee” . She demanded the consistent removal of all proven National Socialists from administration, offices and companies, while his motto was: "All in all, it should be noted that it is not revolution, but evolution that is the order of the day" .

After the withdrawal of US troops from Erfurt on June 3, 1945, agreed at the Yalta Conference , Gerber was dismissed from the Soviet military government four days later by the Soviet city commander Urew and the communist Hermann Jahn was appointed the city's new mayor. Gerber received a letter of thanks from the headquarters of the 5th Division of the US Army with the words: "We are leaving Erfurt with the certainty that there are still worthy people in Germany. At least one: you!"

literature

• Matthias Thüsing: Lord Mayor for 86 days: The businessman Otto Gerber .... In: Thüringer Allgemeine , Erfurt, June 25, 2015

Web links

• Website of the city of Erfurt