Werner von Melle

Werner von Melle, 1905

Werner von Melle (born October 18, 1853 in Hamburg ; † February 18, 1937 there ) was a Hamburg lawyer, senator and mayor .

family

Werner von Melle was born in Hamburg as the second child of the businessman and later Senator from Hamburg, Emil von Melle, and his wife Maria, a daughter of Senator Heinrich Geffcken . In 1880 he married Emmy Kaemmerer, a daughter of the businessman Heinrich Kaemmerer and Emilie Goßler. Emilie Goßler was a daughter of Hermann Goßler . The marriage resulted in three daughters, Maria (1881–1963), married to the son of the pastor of the same name, Georg Behrmann , Alida (1885–1967), who married the Germanist Conrad Borchling , and Emilia (1889–1958), married hunters.

Life

Melle studied in Göttingen Law and was awarded a doctorate in 1876th He was enrolled as a lawyer in Hamburg on November 1, 1876 and was admitted as such until 1886. He joined the legal practice of Drs. Heinsen and R. Mönckeberg in 1876 and later acted as legal consultant to the head of the Maritime Office, he was also the representative of the secretary of the Deputation for Trade and Shipping. He also wrote articles for the Hamburg correspondent . In 1886, at Emil Hartmeyer's request, von Melle became editor of the Hamburger Nachrichten and thus gave up his work as a lawyer. In 1891 von Melle was appointed a member of the presidium of the high school authorities and appointed to the Senate syndicus on June 17 . On September 26, 1900 von Melle was elected to the Hamburg Senate and in 1904 appointed as President of the High School Authority. For the calendar years 1914 and 1917 he was elected Second Mayor by the Senate and, on a rotating basis, First Mayor for 1915 and 1918 .

Werner von Melle lived for a long time at Graumannsweg 30a in Hamburg-Hohenfelde and moved to Rondeelteich 43 in Hamburg-Winterhude on April 1, 1911 . Even if he did not live in St. Pauli, he was still an honorary member of the St. Pauli Citizens' Association and chairman of the church council of the Gnadenkirche (Hamburg) in St. Pauli-Nord , consecrated in 1907 . He advocated commissioning Carl Otto Czeschka for his new glass art window in the form of two triptychs "The Creation" and "Birth of Christ" (1911-1919), which were destroyed in 1943.

He was independent and was part of the pre-war Senate than in Hamburg in November 1918 to November Revolution came. The Workers 'and Soldiers' Council for Greater Hamburg took power in Hamburg on November 6, 1918 after brief battles with ten dead. Heinrich Laufenberg and Wilhelm Heise have been at the head of this council since November 12, 1918 . They deposed the old Senate on the same day. However, they reinstated him on November 18, 1918 as a purely administrative body. Von Melle remained First Mayor from January 1, 1919, and only after the election of the first free and democratically elected citizenship on March 16, 1919 and the first session on March 24, 1919, he resigned as First Mayor on March 27, 1919. In the newly elected Senate , he was re-elected as a non-party senator. The Senate, which, as in the old law, chose the mayor from among its members, re-elected him as First Mayor for the term of office from March 30, 1919 to December 21, 1919. Following this term in office, he continued to serve in the Senate until 1921.

Gravestone Werner von Melle , Ohlsdorf cemetery

Von Melle came up primarily with questions of education. In 1907 he founded the Hamburg Scientific Foundation ; As a start-up financing for this he won his former classmate, the later gold and diamond magnate Alfred Beit , who donated the basic capital of two million marks. About the Foundation supported by Melle before the First World War , the public lecture beings and was the "driving force behind the founding of the university plans". Von Melle was partly responsible for the fact that the citizenship approved a building site on the Moorweide for the construction of the lecture building donated by Edmund Siemers . These institutions - including the Hamburg Colonial Institute , the first state university in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg - later became the University of Hamburg . In 1919 von Melle played a key role in collaboration with Rudolf Ross in the law establishing the University of Hamburg and the Hamburg Adult Education Center.

Melles' grave is in the Ohlsdorf cemetery , location Z10.

Awards

Friedrich Wield : Bust of Werner von Melle in the main building of the University of Hamburg

• 1917: Honorary doctorate from the theological faculty of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• 1921: Rector magnificus honoris causa of the University of Hamburg
• 1928: Honorary doctorate in political science from the University of Hamburg

In memory of Werner von Melle, a Werner von Melle bust was placed in the main building of the University of Hamburg . The Hamburg university campus is also called Von-Melle-Park .

Works

• The development of the public poor in Hamburg. Hamburg 1883.
• Gustav Heinrich Kirchenpauer. A picture of life and time. Hamburg 1888.
• The Hamburg constitution. Hamburg 1891.
• Thirty years of science in Hamburg, 1891–1921. Reviews and personal memories. 2 volumes, Hamburg 1923.
• Childhood memories. Hamburg 1928.
• From the academic high school to the Hamburg University. In: Society of Friends of the Fatherland School and Education System (ed.): Hamburg in its economic and cultural significance for Germany. Hamburg 1925, pp. 124-131.

literature

• Gerhard Ahrens:  von Melle, Werner. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 20 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Myriam Isabell Richter: City of Mann - University. Hamburg, Werner von Melle and a century of life's work. Part 1: The man and the city (= patrons of science. Vol. 18). Hamburg University Press, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-943423-42-6 ( full text online ).

Web links

Commons : Werner von Melle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Werner von Melle  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Werner von Melle in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Werner von Melle in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Digitized estate of Werner von Melle

Remarks

1. ↑ German Gender Book No. 27, 1914, p. 73
2. ↑ Anna Priebe: Series “Name Sponsorship” - Werner in front of Melle The University as a Lifetime Achievement , uni-hamburg.de, September 5, 2018
3. ^ Myriam Isabell Richter: City of Man - University. Hamburg, Werner von Melle and a century of life's work. Part 1: The man and the city (= patrons of science. Vol. 18). Hamburg University Press, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-943423-42-6 ( full text online, see family table of Melle, p.340 / 341 )
4. ↑ Gerrit Schmidt: The history of the Hamburg legal profession from 1815 to 1879 . Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3923725175 , p. 372.
5. ↑ Hamburg address book 1911 (SUB).
6. ↑ CO Czeschka estate in the MKG Hamburg.
7. ↑ Foundation city and bourgeoisie: Hamburg's foundation culture from the Empire to National Socialism , Michael Werner, De Gruyter Oldenbourg (2011), p. 80ff
8. ^ Henning Albrecht: Alfred Beit. Hamburger und Diamantenkönig , Hamburg 2011 (Patrons for Science Volume 9 http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/purl/HamburgUP_MfW09_Beit Volltext, S. 114f)