Otto Heinemann (association official)

Otto Heinemann (born September 26, 1864 in Eschwege ; † April 4, 1944 in Schwelm ) was a German authorized signatory of the Krupp company , a local politician in Essen and a leading functionary of the company health insurance system during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic . He was the father of the third President of the Federal Republic of Germany Gustav Heinemann .

Life

Otto Heinemann was born the son of Friedrich Heinemann and his wife Amalie (née Schilling). The father was a butcher . Otto completed an apprenticeship at the tax office of the Eschwege district. From 1885 to 1887 he did his military service as a top gunner. He then worked at the Kreissparkasse in Eschwege, among others. Between 1892 and 1900 Heinemann was the savings and city treasury controller in Schwelm. In 1899, Gustav Heinemann was born as the first of three sons Otto and Johanna Heinemann. In 1900 he joined the Krupp company. There he was initially an assistant and in 1913 became head of the office for workers' affairs. Since 1923 he was, among other things, responsible for the company's health insurance fund as an authorized signatory.

Heinemann was politically liberal . He was a member of the free-thinking Rüttenscheid Citizens' Association and the National Association in the Essen constituency. From 1904 he was a councilor in Rüttenscheid. After the incorporation, he was a city councilor in Essen from 1905. Since 1904 he was a founding member and part-time managing director of the Association of Rhenish-Westphalian Company Health Insurance Funds. From 1907 Heinemann was a managing board member of the Reich Association of Company Health Insurance Funds. After the November Revolution he was a member of the works council commission of the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie and the Federation of German Employers' Associations.

In 1931 Heinemann retired from Krupp. He published an autobiography Memorabilia. In this his love for his north Hessian homeland, especially Eschwege, becomes clear. He not only describes his not always easy childhood and youth, but also the compensation for difficult hours in the community of gymnasts in the Eschweger Turn- und Sportverein from 1848 and on hikes with friends in the beautiful nature of the Werra Valley and its surroundings. For his services he was honored with the Order of the Crown, 4th class.

The Heinemann family is an example of social advancement in Germany. The first Heinemann generation is embodied by a poor butcher and his wife in Eschwege in North Hesse, who laboriously got their family through time with house slaughtering and meat sales from house to house. The second Heinemann generation represents Otto Heinemann, who was able to work his way up from an elementary school student in Eschwege to becoming an authorized signatory in a large company. The third Heinemann generation represents Gustav Heinemann, who, now with an academic education, became a board member of a large industrial company, well-known politician and minister and finally even head of state of the Federal Republic of Germany.

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , p. 66 f. ( Online , PDF; 2.2 MB).
• Walter Henkels: Order of the Crown 4th Class - The life of the authorized signatory Otto Heinemann. Econ, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1964.
• Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff, Hermann Strasser : Heads of the Ruhr. 200 years of industrial history and structural change in the light of biographies. Klartext, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0036-3 , pp. 180-184.

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Heinemann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography on the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung website