Waldemar Becké

Waldemar Becké (born December 15, 1878 in Harburg (Elbe) , † May 16, 1947 in Bremerhaven ) was a city ​​director and Lord Mayor of Bremerhaven.

biography

Becké was the son of the railway director Albert Becké in the then Prussian Harburg (now part of Hamburg ). He studied law in Leipzig and Göttingen . In Leipzig he became a member of the St. Pauli University Choir ( German Choir ). From 1907 was employed in the Prussian judiciary and then in the city administration in Hanover . As early as 1908 he took up his work as a council assessor in the city administration of Bremerhaven. In 1909 he was Stadtsyndicus , 1911 City Council, 1912 Bremen's bailiff in Bremerhaven and 1913 city manager.

In 1912 he married Gertrud Brüel, the great-granddaughter of the port construction director Jacobus Johannes van Ronzelen .

After his military service in World War I , he was city ​​director in Bremerhaven. In November 1918, Becké and the Committee for Local Affairs , formed by the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council , demanded the creation of a unified Lower Weser town in order to remedy the "damage and deficiencies felt by the working class of the population resulting from the state and communal separation of the economic area on the right bank of the Weser “ To fix. In 1919 he demanded in a memorandum approved by the city ​​council “the complete political unification of the three cities [meaning Bremerhaven, Lehe and Geestemünde ] with their immediately adjacent districts of the communities of Wulsdorf , Schiffdorf , Langen and Imsum ” . The memorandum received attention in Bremen , Prussia and the Reich. However, the negotiations failed in 1919 due to resistance from Geestemünde, which did not want to become Bremen.

In 1923 he was elected Lord Mayor of the city. He was committed to deep-sea fishing , the first town hall on the Geeste, the animal grottos , the school camp in Barkhausen (Bad Essen) , social housing and the Bremerhaven town theater .

The National Socialists dismissed Becké and put Julius Lorenzen ( NSDAP ) in his place. Becké had to leave Bremerhaven. After the Second World War he returned to Bremerhaven seriously ill. Efforts to re-elect him mayor failed because of his illness. He died in May 1947 and was buried in the Bremerhaven cemetery in Wulsdorf .

The Waldemar-Becké-Platz in Bremerhaven bears his name. The progressively designed development on the square and on Scharnhorststrasse from 1928 was created by today's municipal housing company (STÄWOG), also on the initiative of Becké.

See also

→ Main article : List of the Mayors of Bremerhaven

literature

• Georg Bessell: Becké, Waldemar. In: Otto Heinrich May (Ed.): Lower Saxon Life Pictures. Volume 5, 1962, p. 40.
• Klaus Becké (ed.), Florian Heidtmann: Van Ronzelen, Becké and Bremerhaven. Wirtschaftsverlag NW, Bremerhaven 2009.
• Hermann Wenhold : Becké, Karl Alfred Waldemar. In: Historical Society Bremen, State Archive Bremen (Ed.): Bremische Biographie 1912–1962. Hauschild, Bremen 1969, p. 28 (column 1) to p. 29 (column 2).
• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . Volume 2, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
• Matthias Loeber: Waldemar Becké and the merger of the Lower Weser towns. 100 years ago: the amalgamation is maturing for concrete urban development . In: Men from Morgenstern , Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 829 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven January 2019, p. 1–2 ( digitized version [PDF; 3.9 MB ; accessed on June 18, 2019]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Paul Meißner (Ed.): Alt-Herren-Directory of the German Singers. Leipzig 1934, p. 21.