Otto Kortüm

Otto Kortüm (* 1891 ; † 1966 ) was a German politician. He was the first Lord Mayor of the Hanseatic city of Stralsund after the end of the Second World War . He was a member of the Pomeranian Provincial Parliament , tax officer and tax advisor.

Life

From 1918 he worked in the Reich Postal Administration and from 1922 in the Reich Finance Administration as a tax secretary.

In 1918 he became a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). From 1924 to 1933 he was an unpaid councilor in Stralsund; on March 12, 1933 he was elected as a representative of the SPD in the Stralsund Citizens' College.

In July 1933 he was arrested and taken to the Sonnenburg concentration camp. In his capacity as police director, Lord Mayor Carl Heydemann campaigned for the release of Kortüm and other people, so that Kortüm was released again in August 1933. He then works as a tax advisor.

On May 1, 1937 Otto Kortüm joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). To Otto Bartels , the managing director of the social democratic newspaper “ Der Vorpommer ”, he stated the reasons for joining the party that “(…) there was no other choice for him (…)” and that “(…) he had to camouflage himself ". Despite this party affiliation, he was still in contact with worker functionaries and from 1943/1944 was a member of a resistance group against National Socialism .

After the city of Stralsund was taken by the Red Army on May 1, 1945, Kortüm was appointed Lord Mayor by City Commandant Formenko, despite the fact that the commandant was a member of the NSDAP. He negotiated with the German troops who had withdrawn to the island of Rügen and Dänholm . Otto Kortüm was exempt from the removal of all National Socialists from public offices, which the city commandant demanded from July 29, 1945; he was responsible for the execution of this order. By order of the Soviet commander Colonel Sidorow on September 1, 1945 Otto Kortüm was "released from his position as Lord Mayor" on August 27, 1945. In an affidavit dated July 8, 1952 in Hamburg , Otto Kortüm stated that he had collapsed in mid-August 1945 due to charges from denunciations ; the denunciations had been directed against him by “criminals” who were in political office and from the communist side. In fact, the allegations were launched by former NSDAP party members and the former head of the criminal police.

In 1949 Otto Kortüm moved to West Germany.

literature

The Stralsund City Archives keep Otto Kortüm's daily records from his time as Lord Mayor.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ published in: Marko Michels: Einheitszwang , 1999, page 434
2. ↑ Detlev Brunner: Stralsund. A city undergoing systemic change from the end of the German Empire to the 1960s , publications on SBZ / GDR research in the Institute for Contemporary History Oldenbourg, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2010, pages 29, 67-68