Robert Lehr

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Robert Lehr (1950)

Robert Lehr (born August 20, 1883 in Celle ; † October 13, 1956 in Düsseldorf ) was a German politician ( DNVP , CDU ). He was a member of the Parliamentary Council and from 1950 to 1953 Federal Minister of the Interior .

Life

Lehr was the son of Oskar Lehr (1847–1923), who later became the Prussian major general and Luxembourg court marshal.

education and profession

After graduating from high school, he began studying law in Marburg . In 1905 he became a member of the Corps Teutonia Marburg . He moved to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin and later to the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . He finished his studies in 1907 with the first state examination and in 1912 with the second state examination. In 1908 he was promoted to Dr. iur. doctorate with the dissertation: "The Reich Liability Act in its current form compared with the BGB" . In 19089 he married Aenne Steinbach , a factory owner's daughter from Oberbrügge near Lüdenscheid .

From 1912 to 1913 he worked as a judge at the Kassel district court and legal assistant at the Rheydt city ​​administration . In 1913 he joined the administration of the city of Düsseldorf . From the end of 1914 to 1919 he was head of the police department and from 1919 to 1924 he was head of finance. In 1924 he became mayor of the city. Because of his opposition to National Socialism , the National Socialists wanted to depose him. Therefore, in April 1933, they publicly suspected him of fraud and arrested him. He was then replaced in his office by Hans Wagenführ and retired on September 22, 1933 by the Prussian Minister of the Interior. In 1935 he became a member of the resistance group in Düsseldorf - later named after him - which ended their meeting in 1943. He lived as a private citizen in the Sauerland until 1945 .

politics

From 1929 to 1933, Lehr belonged to the German National People's Party (DNVP). After the war ended in 1945 he was one of the founders of the CDU. In October 1945 he was appointed High President of the Province of North Rhine by the British occupying forces . He held this office until August 1946. From 1946 to 1948 he was a member and chairman of the Zone Advisory Council for the British Zone of Occupation. Also in 1946 he became a member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia (until 1950), as its state parliament president in 1946/47. From 1948 he managed - as a member of the board of directors - together with Günther Henle (CDU) within the Deutsche Bank Group, the Rheinisch-Westfälische Bank with a balance sheet total of DM 891 million at the time. In 1948/49, Lehr was a member of the Parliamentary Council and was there Chairman of the Committee for the organization of the Federation and from December 1948 Deputy Chairman of the CDU / CSU - faction .

In 1949 he was elected to the German Bundestag as a directly elected member of the constituency Düsseldorf I , to which he belonged in the first legislative period. From 1949 to 1950 he was Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Internal Administration in Parliament. From 1950 to 1951 he was also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe .

On October 11, 1950, following the resignation of Gustav Heinemann, he was appointed Federal Minister of the Interior to the Federal Government led by Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer , the then largest ministry in the Federal Republic, which ranged from "sport and culture to border and constitutional protection". At the age of 70, he decided not to run again for the 1953 Bundestag election due to reasons of age. On October 20, 1953, he left the federal government.

In June 1951, Lehr filed a criminal complaint against Otto Ernst Remer for defamation, which ultimately initiated the historically significant Remer trial , in the grounds of which it was stated that the “National Socialist state was not a constitutional state, but an unjust state that did not serve the welfare of the German people . (...) Everything that the German people had to endure, starting with the fire in the Reichstag on June 30, 1934 and November 9, 1938, was blatant injustice that needed to be eliminated. ”As a result, the resistance fighters in the Almost no one saw the Third Reich as a traitor in the German public anymore. The widow of the assassin Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg also received an officer's widow's pension from the Federal Republic after the judgment.

Lehr was a sharp opponent of the right-wing radical SRP and was called "Kanonen Lehr" by the press because of his commitment to right-wing extremism . He sued the Bundestag member Fritz Rößler and carried out the Federal Republic's first party ban proceedings against the SRP.

The so-called “teaching draft” for a new federal electoral law ( BT-Drs. I / 4090) was named after Lehr , which provided for 242 members to be elected in one-man constituencies and 242 members via a federal list, with each voter having a main and should receive an auxiliary vote that he was not allowed to give to the same party. Since this construct would have favored the bourgeois parties over the SPD , which at the time had no partner for the auxiliary votes, it was criticized as a "coalition protection law". Dolf Sternberger wrote in an editorial: "Guy, do you want for forever govern?" . The draft was withdrawn by the federal government soon afterwards.

Lehr died three years after retiring from active politics. Part of Lehrs bequests can be found in the Federal Archives Koblenz, in the Düsseldorf City Archives (holdings 4–27) and in the Kösener Archives in the Institute for Higher Education at the University of Würzburg (holdings N 6).

Social Commitment

From 1947 to 1956, Robert Lehr was the first president of the German Forest Protection Association (SDW). In 1952 he also took over the chairmanship of the Marburg University Association from Paul Duden , which he held until his death. He was also chairman of the Industrie-Club Düsseldorf , chairman of the supervisory board of Gothaer Feuerversicherungsbank and deputy director of Parkhotel AG Düsseldorf .

Awards

literature

  • The man from the gutter, Trial report from Argus (Hamburg) , cia.gov, Die Weltbühne , IX. Year from June 2, 1954, pp. 693–695)
  • Walter Först: Robert Lehr as Lord Mayor. A chapter of German local politics. Econ, Düsseldorf 1962.
  • Walther Hensel : Robert Lehr. In: Christian Democrats from the very beginning. Bonn 1966, pp. 211-241.
  • Brigitte Kaff:  Lehr, Robert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 112 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Eleonore Sent: Dr. Robert Lehr (August 20, 1883– October 13, 1956). Mayor of Düsseldorf, Lord President of the North Rhine Province and Federal Minister of the Interior. In: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch. Contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine. Vol. 78, 2008, pp. 88-115.
  • Stefan Marx: Robert Lehr (1883-1956). Member of the State Parliament, North Rhine-Westphalia. In: Günter letter , Hans-Otto Kleinmann (Hrsg.): In responsibility before God and the people. Christian Democrats in the Parliamentary Council 1948/49. Herder, Freiburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-451-29973-5 , pp. 245-260 (PDF).

Web links

Commons : Robert Lehr  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Blue Book of the Corps Teutonia in Marburg 1825 to 2000. Marburg 2000.
  2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 102/937.
  3. ^ The Reich Liability Act in its current form compared with the BGB , Robert Lehr, Heidelberg, Univ., Diss. (1909)
  4. ↑ Robert Lehr (1883–1956) Member of the Landtag, North Rhine-Westphalia , Stefan Marx, kas.de, p. 248 (accessed on July 31, 2020)
  5. ↑ Thomas Eicher, Barbara Panse, Henning Rischbieter : Theater in the "Third Reich". Theater politics, program structure, Nazi drama. Kallmeyer, Seelze Velber 2000, ISBN 3-7800-0117-9 , p. 104; Chronicle 1933 at the Düsseldorf City Archives .
  6. ↑ Robert Lehr , German Resistance Memorial Center , (accessed July 31, 2020)
  7. ^ Brigitte Kaff: Robert Lehr. In: Günter letter , Brigitte Kaff, Hans-Otto Kleinmann (ed.): Christian democrats against Hitler. From persecution and resistance to the Union. Herder, Freiburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-451-20805-8 , pp. 337-343, quotation p. 338.
  8. ^ Die Deutsche Bank, 1870–1995 by Lothar Gall, p. 485
  9. ↑ https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-25657540.html
  10. ↑ Peter Maxwill: Right-wing radicals SRP: Secret ins Reich. In: Spiegel Online , one day , March 2, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Lehr, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DNVP, CDU), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Celle
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1956
Place of death Dusseldorf