Paul Lembke

Paul Lembke (born April 12, 1860 in Lutterstorf ; † September 19, 1939 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ) was a German administrative lawyer and Lord Mayor of the city of Mülheim an der Ruhr from 1904 to 1928 . Under his administration as district administrator, the large incorporations came about, as a result of which Mülheim became a major city in 1908 .

Live and act

Lembke was born in Lutterstorf (also: Luttersdorf) in Mecklenburg, the son of a manor owner . After attending school and passing the matriculation examination at the Katharineum in Lübeck , he studied law at the Universities of Strasbourg, Heidelberg and Berlin and completed his studies with a doctorate. From 1884 to 1887 he completed his legal preparatory service as a court trainee in order to then continue his training as a government trainee in the higher service in the Prussian state administration. Training stations were the district offices in Hirschberg and Kreuznach and the district governments in Koblenz and Königsberg. After passing the exam, he was transferred to the Mülheim district office in 1890 as a government assessor. Later he worked in the government in Düsseldorf under the government president Georg Freiherr von Rheinbaben . It was to him that Lembke owed his appointment to the provisional district administrator of the Mülheim an der Ruhr district on July 10, 1899 , which was followed by the final appointment as district administrator on January 15, 1900.

Tomb in the Mülheim main cemetery

At Lembke's instigation, the rural communities of Styrum , Speldorf , Broich , Saarn and Holthausen were incorporated into the Mülheim township in 1904 . On January 1, 1904, Lembke took over the office of mayor of the now independent city of Mülheim, for which the city council elected him on September 8, 1903. Although Mülheim only in 1908 reached the mark of 100,000 inhabitants and thus should be a metropolis, Lembke was already a hold office until the title upper awarded mayor.

With negotiating skills and foresight, Paul Lembke succeeded in his almost 25-year term in office in driving Mülheim's metropolitan area with further incorporations (1910, 1920) and with major construction projects. During his time as Lord Mayor, the construction and inauguration of the eye clinic (1907), the synagogue (1907), the Bismarck tower (1909), the Raffelberg salt bath (1909), the Sparkasse (1909), the Raffelberg racecourse (1910), the main train station (1910), the Schloßbrücke (1911), the Stadtbad (1912), the new town hall (1915) and the town hall (1926). Thanks to his good connections to large-scale industry - especially coal mining - he succeeded in bringing the first Kaiser Wilhelm Institute outside of Berlin to Mülheim. Today's Max Planck Institute for Coal Research was inaugurated on July 27, 1914.

Lembke died on September 19, 1939, around 11 years after he had left office. A street in Mülheim's Kahlenbergviertel still bears his name today.

Honors

• 1911: Name of "Lembkestrasse" in Mülheim-Holthausen
• 1928: Awarded honorary citizenship

literature

• Kurt Unbehau: The honorary citizens of the city of Mülheim an der Ruhr . Mülheim an der Ruhr, 1963, pp. 41-49.
• Helmut von Wedelstädt: Dr. Paul Lembke: 1860-1939 . In: Aule Mölmsche - Portraits of citizens of Mülheim. Edited by the Mülheim civil society "Mausefalle", Mülheim an der Ruhr 1973, pp. 13-17.
• Kurt Ortmanns: On the way to the big city - Mülheim under the Lord Mayor Dr. Paul Lembke . In: 900 years of Mülheim an der Ruhr: 1093–1993 (Journal of the History Association, issue 66), Mülheim an der Ruhr 1993, pp. 393–403.
• Thomas Emons: Lord Mayor Dr. Paul Lembke, chairman of the history society from 1906 to 1939 . In: Journal of the Mülheim an der Ruhr history association, issue 76/2006, pp. 125–127.

Other sources

• City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, holdings 1550/51 (Mülheim personalities)
• City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, holdings 1440 / 90.00 (newspaper article)

Web links

• Mülheim's mayor from 1808 until today
• Paul Lembke's election as Lord Mayor
• Mülheim street names: Lembkestraße