Rudolf Beckmann

The title of this article is ambiguous. On the SS member see Rudolf Beckmann (SS member) .

Rudolf Beckmann (born March 24, 1903 in Münster ; † May 30, 1992 in Nordhorn ) was a German entrepreneur and politician.

Life and work

The son of the Münster-based liqueur manufacturer and businessman Wilhelm Beckmann attended the Paulinum grammar school and the Brilon Petrinum , where he graduated from high school at Easter 1923. From 1923 to 1926 he studied law in Münster and Freiburg . He became a member of the Catholic student association KStV Markomannia Münster and KStV Rheno-Palatia Freiburg. In November 1926 Beckmann passed his legal traineeship exam in Hamm , but continued to study in Würzburg , where he received his doctorate in June 1929. In addition, he completed his legal training. This was followed by the assessor exam in Berlin in May 1930 .

The lawyer worked from 1930 to 1931 as an assessor in the role of legal advisor at the Landesbank in Münster , then until 1933 in the finance department. Beckmann then worked for the Provinzial-Feuersokietät Westfalen until 1934. In 1934 he was transferred to the State Insurance Institution of Westphalia, where he was promoted to the State Administrative Council. Politically, he supported the right-wing liberal German People's Party . Beckmann gave up his legal career on January 1, 1936 and joined the spinning and weaving mill B. Rawe & Co. a month later as a result of family ties with his wife . The company founded by Bernard Rawe (1864–1950) in 1888 had weathered the global economic crisis well and in 1933 employed over 1200 people in Nordhorn. In the subsequent economic upswing, the company expanded strongly. In addition to insolvent companies in Nordhorn, plants from Rheda , Metelen , Castrop-Rauxel , Enger and finally from near Vienna were added to the growing company. In October 1937 the Nordhorn factory employed 1570 people, making Rawe the smallest of the three large local textile factories. As an authorized signatory Beckmann gained professional experience in the new branch until 1938, when he became a personally liable partner and managing director.

After 1945, Beckmann first took care of the reconstruction and then the survival of the textile factory B. Rawe GmbH & Co, whose fate he played a major role as managing director and main partner from 1938 to December 1972. In 1950 the textile factory employed around 3,600 people in various branches in Westphalia , and by 1963 the number had risen to around 6,000.

As Nordhorn's leading entrepreneur, Beckmann also played a key role on the employers 'side in the great six-week Nordhorn textile workers' strike of 1953. A high point of his work was the big celebration for the 75th anniversary of the Rawe company in September 1963, which was attended by the district president and well-known representatives of the state and federal government. At that time the company had more than 6,000 employees in Nordhorn and in 14 branch offices and was one of the most important companies in Europe in its line of business. The company survived the shrinking process of the German textile industry that began in the mid-1960s , but had to take into account the changing market conditions and part with some business areas that were no longer viable against the competition from overseas. In 1988 the number of employees had decreased to 1,350.

In 1972 Beckmann left active corporate policy, but remained the main shareholder of the company until 1989, which in the 1990s was the only one of the large Nordhorn textile factories - albeit with the loss of jobs, with state funding and with the help of a connection to the Wisser Group. could survive economically. Ultimately, however, this traditional plant also had to give up in 2001.

Public offices

After the Allied troops marched into the county of Bentheim , Beckmann, who had helped to prevent the ordered destruction of Nordhorn, especially the industry, in the last days of the Nazi regime, was appointed district administrator by the British military government on April 20, 1945 April also appointed mayor of Nordhorn. In these functions he started the reconstruction of the city and its democratic administration. However, on June 30, 1945, he resigned from the mayor's office for reasons of time. Beckmann organized the British-ordered move of the district administration from Bentheim to Nordhorn, where the British military administration was also located. He achieved that the Nordhorn textile industry was not dismantled, but was the first in its branch in Germany to start work again.

In December 1945 the duties of the district administrator were divided and the British gave him the choice of either the new office of honorary political district administrator or the post of full-time senior district director. Beckmann decided in the district assembly of December 3, 1945 for the office of the district administrator and founded a textile office at the district administrator with the support of the local textile industry . This successfully obtained orders for the Grafschafter textile industry from the Allies and took care of the procurement of foreign raw materials and machine spare parts.

The office of district administrator was also given to him by the first freely elected Grafschafter Kreisag in 1946. After the first party political groups had formed in Bentheimer Land, Beckmann joined the new Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). As their party member, he was re-elected as district administrator in October 1947. The consolidation of his position - the “Lower Saxony State Party” and the SPD had abstained from voting in his re-election last year - had a lot to do with his leading role in rejecting Dutch territorial claims, which he intensified after his re-election. Beckmann held the position of Grafschafter District Administrator until November 27, 1948. On that day he resigned both the office of the district administrator and his district council mandate in order to devote himself more to other political tasks and the rebuilding of the Rawe company.

As Grafschafter district administrator, Beckmann was confronted with the pressing problems of the tense German-Dutch relationship. To compensate for the enormous material damage that the Germans had caused in the Netherlands during the war, not only were voices loud among the western neighbors calling for the annexation of large parts of the border area , but the Allied military authorities immediately ordered that the German border residents along a restricted zone had to vacate the areas. As a result of the close family ties across the national border, numerous German farmers owned land in the Netherlands and, conversely, Dutch people in Germany. As an immediate reaction to the war damage caused by the Germans in the Netherlands, these so-called tract lands of the Germans, i.e. the property of German farmers on the Dutch side of the border, were confiscated without replacement. The term Traktatländer comes from the Meppener Grenztraktat of 1824, a contract between the Kingdom of Hanover and the Kingdom of the Netherlands , which also dealt with these property issues.

Beckmann acted as the initiator of the German opposition to the Dutch territorial claims and called the "Bentheim Borderland Committee" into being. The government presidents concerned, representatives of 16 districts from the federal states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia as well as delegates from the city of Emden took part in the establishment in the former Grafschafter district town. At the founding meeting on February 12, 1947, the so-called Bentheim Declaration was passed, which rejected the Dutch wishes for a border correction and demanded the return of the tract land. At Beckmann's request, the Lower Saxony cabinet met demonstratively in the Bentheimer Land to support the “Bentheim Border Region Committee”. The North Rhine-Westphalian state government also supported the "Grenzlandausschuß".

Ultimately, the rejection of Dutch territorial claims was achieved. In 1949 Lower Saxony only lost 189 hectares to the Netherlands, mainly from the county of Bentheim, which had to cede 160 hectares with two farms and six residents. In April 1949 the Allies gave the Dutch a total of 23 parts of territory with approx. 68 km² in which around 9,600 people lived. However, the Dutch territorial claims could be used by the districts involved to raise public funds for the previously neglected border region.

After it was foreseeable as early as 1950 that the far-reaching demands of the Dutch annexation would not be enforceable, the work of the “Borderland Committee” concentrated primarily on the question of the treaty land and the already annexed lands or on reparations for the German owners concerned. In 1960 the Netherlands decided to return 94 percent of the area annexed in 1949 by means of a German-Dutch compensation treaty that came into force in 1963. The former owners of the tract countries were offered the repurchase of the land that was still state-owned. After largely successful work, the “Bentheim Borderland Committee” finally disbanded on February 12, 1964 under the leadership of Beckmann.

Honors

The entrepreneur's commitment to German-Dutch reconciliation was rewarded on the Dutch side in February 1961 with the appointment of the Dutch consul in Osnabrück . Beckmann was also the holder of the Great Cross of Merit (June 1953) with a star (1967) and shoulder ribbon (1973) of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Great Cross of the Lower Saxony Order of Merit (May 1963), holder of the State Medal of the State of Lower Saxony (February 1964) and the Golden Stüve Medal (March 1968) and Commandeur in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau (November 1968).

Publications

• The concept and position of the inheritance owner in inheritance proceedings. (= legal and political dissertation in Würzburg 1929), Münster 1929.
• The district administrator speaks. In: Heinrich Specht (ed.), Bentheimer Jahrbuch 1946 (= Das Bentheimer Land, vol. 29), Osnabrück / Paderborn 1946, pp. 12-19.
• 10 years of the Bentheim Border Committee. In: Herbert Asche, 10 Years Bentheim Border Committee, o. O. (1957), pp. 6-18.
• Maintaining relations between the Federal Republic and the Netherlands. In: Herbert Asche, 10 Years Bentheim Border Committee, o. O. (1957), pp. 29-30.
• Location and development of the commercial economy in the Grafschaft Bentheim district. In: Yearbook of the Heimatverein der Grafschaft Bentheim 1959 (= Das Bentheimer Land vol. 49), (Bentheim o. J.), pp. 57–62.
• Accountability report of the chairman of the Bentheim border region committee. Consul Dr. Rudolf Beckmann, on the occasion of the final meeting of the committee on February 12, 1964 in Bentheim, in: Yearbook of the Heimatverein der Grafschaft Bentheim 1965 (= Das Bentheimer Land vol. 58), Bentheim o. O., pp. 171–182.
• The "problem area" Emsland deserves special attention. In: Niedersächsische Wirtschaft vol. 45 issue 6/7, 1965, pp. 538-540.

swell

• German Biographical Archive NF Microfiche No. 89 p. 29.
• Herbert Asche: The Bentheim Borderland Committee 1947-64. In: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbund, Vol. 11/1964, Lingen 1965, pp. 56–67.
• Emsland landscape for the districts of Emsland and Grafschaft Bentheim (Hrsg.): The Emsland development. A handout for teaching in seventh to tenth grades. Sögel 2000, pp. 32-33, 47-48.
• Christof Haverkamp, ​​The development of the Emsland in the 20th century as an example of state regional economic development. Edited by the Emsland landscape (= Emsland / Bentheim. Contributions to the history, vol. 7), Sögel 1991, pp. 85, 88–91, 277, 298.
• Christof Haverkamp, ​​The Bentheim Border Region Committee 1947–1964 and German-Dutch Relations, in: Emsländische Geschichte, Vol. 15, Haselünne 2008, pp. 56–90.
• Georg Kip, Five Years Bentheim Border Region Committee, in: Yearbook of the Heimatverein der Grafschaft Bentheim 1953 (= Das Bentheimer Land vol. 41), edit. by G. Kip, oOuJ, pp. 104-108.
• Horst G. Kliemann / Stephen S. Taylor (eds.), Who´s Who in Germany, Munich 1956, p. 72.
• Helmut Lensing, Art. Beckmann, Dr. Rudolf, in: Studiengesellschaft für Emsländische Regionalgeschichte (Ed.), Emsländische Geschichte Vol. 11, Haselünne 2004, pp. 236–245.
• Andreas Röpcke : Who's who in Lower Saxony. A political-biographical guide of the British occupying power 1948/49. In: Lower Saxony Yearbook for State History. Volume 55, Hildesheim 1983, 243-310, pp. 259-260.
• Aloys Schaefer / Erhard Müller / Klemens Tietmeyer, 40 years CDU Grafschaft Bentheim. Published by the CDU Grafschaft Bentheim, Nordhorn 1986.
• Who is who? The German who's who. XII. Edition of Degeners Who is it? Edited by Walter Habel, Berlin 1955, p. 60 (as well as in the following editions).
• Der Spiegel of March 8, 1947, p. 3.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 103, June 5, 1973.