Richard Timm

Richard Timm (born October 1, 1892 in Berlin-Friedrichshain ; † May 30, 1983 ) was a local politician ( SPD ) and district mayor in the Neukölln district .

Richard Timm was a son of the basket maker Christian Timm from Teterow and Pauline, née Kanski. He attended elementary school and trained as a carpenter . As early as 1907 he joined the “Association of Apprentices and Young Workers Berlin” and - after the association was banned in 1908 - the “Central Office for Working Youth in Germany”. In 1910 he also joined the German Woodworkers' Association (DHV) and the SPD. In the 1912 Reichstag election , Timm was an election assistant for the SPD and happened to be able to hand over the voting recommendation to Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in front of the polling station in Berlin's Jägerstrasse . In 1913 he became the youth representative of this "central office", further youth representatives were also Willy Scholz and Walter Maschke .

During the First World War , Timm was drafted in 1915 and employed as a radio operator at the large radio station in Königs Wusterhausen . In 1917 he took part in the campaign in Palestine and was then interned . He returned to Berlin in 1919 and became chairman of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) in Berlin. He initially worked as a youth carer in the Neukölln district office until he became the full-time youth secretary of the German Woodworkers' Association in 1922. In 1930 Timm became managing director of the federal school of the General German Trade Union Federation in Bernau near Berlin .

With the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Timm lost his job and became unemployed. In 1935 he was able to find a job as a manager at a window and building cleaning company. He kept in constant contact with other members of the resistance against National Socialism , especially Wilhelm Leuschner , Max Habermann and Jakob Kaiser . With the wave of arrests following the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , Timm was also arrested in September. In the main hearing in the People's Court , he was sentenced to three years in prison in March 1945 and was transferred to the Brandenburg prison. On April 27, 1945 he was liberated by the Red Army .

Since Wilhelm Dieckmann died unexpectedly, Timm was elected as the new district mayor by the district assembly (BVV) in the Neukölln district in September 1947. In October 1949 he resigned from office as he was appointed to arbitrate labor disputes at the Berlin magistrate . A year later, he called the Federal Minister Jakob Kaiser to speakers in the House of Parliament in the Federal Allee . Timm later got involved with the Europa-Union Deutschland and the German Society for the United Nations . In 1952 he was appointed Personnel Director of the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), in 1959 he retired for reasons of age.

literature

• Walther G. Oschilewski : A man in the flow of time - Richard Timm , Westkreuz printing and publishing house, Berlin / Bonn 1975.
• Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , pp. 120-123. (Short biography).

Web links

• Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung - FDGB-Lexikon - biography