Waldemar Ossowski (politician)

Waldemar Ossowski (born January 9, 1880 in Bobrek , Province of Silesia , † March 28, 1959 in Gadderbaum ) was a German politician and journalist . Ossowski became a member of the Silesian Provincial Parliament for the SPD in 1922 and a member of the Prussian State Council in 1922 and 1926 to 1930 . From 1929 to 1933 he was the chief of police in the Opole administrative district .

Life

Ossowski first attended elementary school and learned the profession of plumber from 1894 to 1897 . From 1897 to 1900 he went on tour as a journeyman plumber , having joined the SPD in 1898 and became a member of the German Metalworkers' Association . From 1900 to 1902 he attended the technical center and worked as a technician for several years after graduating . In 1903 Ossowski became an employee of the People's Watch , a social democratic daily newspaper in Breslau .

In 1906 he took over a workshop in Hindenburg in Upper Silesia as a self-employed master plumber , which he was able to expand into a medium-sized company. In 1916 he became the owner of a metal goods factory in Hindenburg. In the course of time he was appointed as a member of the magistrate, city ​​councilor and head of the city council assembly, as well as community mayor . He was a member of the Prussian State Council from April to December 1922, but was not re-elected in the elections to the Upper Silesian Provincial Parliament at the end of December 1922. However, Ossowski was re-elected to the Prussian State Council in February 1926, a mandate he held until January 1930. Since 1922 he was also a member of the Provincial Parliament, the Provincial Council and from 1926 on the Provincial Committee of Silesia.

Ossowski became a permanent employee of the Volkswillen magazine in Katowice and an advisory board member to the Upper President in Opole . In July 1929 he was commissioned to take over the administration of the police headquarters in Opole. In November 1929 Ossowski himself was appointed police chief of Upper Silesia. In July 1932 he was put into temporary retirement and in September 1933 he was dismissed as chief of police. At the end of January 1933, after the National Socialists came to power , he fled to Czechoslovakia , first to Freiwaldau , and later to Kaplitz and Prague . Ossowski was under police protection because there were kidnapping attempts to Germany.

In exile he had contacts with Otto Straßer, among others, and was a staunch opponent of SOPADE . In April 1937 he emigrated to Bolivia , where he took over a craft business in Cochabamba . He joined the non-partisan association Das Andere Deutschland and worked for August Siemsen 's magazine of the same name . Ossowski became a member of the Association of Free German Cochabama and in August 1943 co-founder of the umbrella organization Landesverband Alemania Democratica en Boliva. Connecting it to the Latin American Committee of the Free German by Paul Merker , however, failed because of the influence of the association The Other Germany.

Waldemar Ossowski returned to Germany at the end of the 1940s, where he settled in Bad Salzuflen . He died on March 28, 1959, at the age of 79, in Gadderbaum, a current district of Bielefeld .

literature

• Joachim Lilla : The Prussian State Council 1921–1933. A biographical manual. With a documentation of the State Councilors appointed in the “Third Reich” (= manuals on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 13). Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-7700-5271-4 , page 116.

Web links

• Waldemar Ossowski in the German biography
• Entry about Ossowski, Waldemar in the Federal Archives / files of the Reich Chancellery - Weimar Republic.