Wendelin Brohm

Wendelin Brohm (born May 11, 1887 in Hainstadt ; † October 31, 1980 in Lauerbach ) was a professional tanner , founder and leader of local groups of the workers' welfare , social democratic local politician in southern Hesse and holder of the Federal Cross of Merit .

biography

Wendelin Brohm was a son of Nikolaus and Barbara Brohm and came from a simple farming background. Coming to Umstadt with his parents from the Odenwald below Breuberg Castle at an early age , he learned the trade of a tanner in the small agricultural town. In 1910 he married his wife Katharina Schimpf from Heubach , who, as he later became politically active a. a. since 1932 chairwoman of the women's union of the Umstädter SPD. The marriage had three children, the eldest son died in World War II .

Since 1912, union operates, he was combatants in the First World War and was still 1918 in France on the Western Front in the position of fighting spilled. Drawn from war experiences and from then on detested the war, he returned to his hometown after a stay in a military hospital and joined the USPD , which had split off from the majority SPD a year earlier, in 1918 , as the head of which he became known in the surrounding area. As one of the initiators, he operated the reunification of the local social democratic groups, which led to reunification in the city on March 6, 1921. The later Hessian member of the state parliament Otto Sturmfels was elected first chairman of the local SPD, Wendelin Brohm as his deputy.

In the municipal council elections in 1922, he was on the list after Johannes Lampe , later mayor of Groß-Umstadt, and was elected to the city council. In 1923 he became the first local chairman of the SPD. Strongly committed to social issues, he founded the local group of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt in 1924 and worked as its chairman until the National Socialists came to power in 1933. From 1926 he worked as an electrician at HEAG . In 1931 he took over the leadership of the Umstadt SPD.

Already exposed to defamation after the Reichstag election in July 1932 , at the end of the year, in addition to arbitrary house searches in front of his apartment in Darmstadt Castle, he was severely mistreated by the Nazis. With the last Reichstag election in March 1933 and the seizure of power by the National Socialists in Umstadt at the end of May 1933 and placed under police supervision by decree of June 28, 1933, he was relieved of all offices and lost his job at HEAG. On the advice of friends, he and his family left the city, which had turned from red to brown, and moved to Lauerbach near Erbach in the Odenwald.

After the end of the National Socialist rule of injustice, he became politically active again. He founded a local group of the SPD in his new community Lauerbach and became its chairman. Later elected to the local council, he was the first alderman of the community until 1960 . As early as September 1946, when the local AWO associations were founded in Erbach and Michelstadt , he and Heinrich Sattler and Gustav Neff from Michelstadt took care of the distribution of aid packages to bombed out and refugees and help with finding accommodation in the Odenwald region. In 1948 he co-founded the district association of the AWO in the district of Erbach and headed it as its chairman until 1958. He was still active as its honorary chairman afterwards.

In 1967, at the age of 80, he was honored by the Federal President with the Federal Cross of Merit for his services . Three years later, he was awarded the district's bronze plaque of honor for his "special services to the public good and the reputation of the Erbach district".

In 1975 he and his wife celebrated the rare anniversary of the Iron Wedding (65 years married). He died very old in 1980 in his last hometown, Lauerbach.

literature

• Peter Füßler: Wendelin Brohm - memory of a social democrat who was forgotten in Groß-Umstadt. In: It began with Adam Zibulsky ... , Festschrift of the SPD local association Groß-Umstadt on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, Groß-Umstadt 2003 (PDF file, 672 kB), pp. 28–32
• Peter Füßler: Wendelin Brohm - a memory , Odenwälder Bote No. 46, year 150, Groß-Umstadt June 11, 2019, p. 6

Individual evidence

1. ↑ It started with Adam Zibulsky ... , Festschrift of the SPD local association Groß-Umstadt on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, Groß-Umstadt 2003 (PDF file, 672 kB), p. 25
2. ↑ "On June 28, 1933, the Hessian State Police Office decreed that SPD officials had to report to the police authority twice a day. If one does not comply, they face protective custody . In Umstadt, this affected: Wendelin Brohm, Peter Hartmann, Georg Reubold, Wilhelm Reinhard, Philipp and Wilhelm Siegler. The former SPD mayor Lampe, who was deposed in 1933, is no longer in Groß-Umstadt at this point. ”From: 1931-1934 on www.spd-gross-umstadt.de ; accessed on June 11, 2019
3. ↑ Start with Help for War Refugees , Darmstädter Echo from February 11, 2019; accessed on June 11, 2019