Wilhelm Ahrens (politician, 1878)

Friedrich Wilhelm Ahrens (born May 9, 1878 in Oschersleben an der Bode , † November 6, 1956 in Berlin ) was a German printer , health insurance official and local politician of the SPD in Berlin.

Life

Wilhelm Ahrens grew up as the son of the field supervisor Wilhelm Ahrens and his wife Maria geb. Sanderling in Oschersleben. The father died when the son was only two years old. Wilhelm Ahrens Jr. attended a civic boys' school and then learned the profession of typesetter. Then he went on a journey.

He finally settled in Charlottenburg near Berlin, where he worked as a typesetter and book printer from 1896. In 1897 he became a member of the Association of German Book Printers , where he joined the board in 1900. Since 1899 he was a member of the SPD. From 1904 he was a member of the board of directors of the General Local Health Insurance Fund of Charlottenburg, whose chairmanship he held from 1905, an office that he would hold for almost three decades. He also worked on the central commission of the Berlin health insurance companies. Ahrens founded a printing company in 1912, which he was able to successfully expand in the following years. In the same year he became chairman of the Association of Berlin Health Insurance Funds and the Province of Brandenburg.

Wilhelm Ahrens developed into a central figure in the social democratic health insurance movement, first at the municipal and regional level, then also at the national level. In doing so, however, he represented the employers' side and also knew how to combine the association's activities with his economic interests by securing print jobs in this way. In addition to the association's activities, Ahrens was involved in local politics in Charlottenburg, where he was elected to the city council in 1911. In 1916 he was appointed unpaid city councilor.

In 1920 Ahrens fought the Kapp putschists by distributing self-printed leaflets. From this activity he developed numerous personal contacts with leading SPD politicians, including Friedrich Stampfer and Otto Wels .

From 1920 Ahrens served as an unpaid city councilor in the new magistrate of Greater Berlin . He was also elected a member of the Berlin city council. In the magistrate, he mainly campaigned for the fire brigade and worked in the park and garden department as well as in the exhibition, trade fair and tourism office.

In the course of the 1920s, Ahrens' association activities continued to grow. From 1924 he was chairman of the Main Association of German Health Insurance Funds and from 1928 he was also chairman of its Berlin-Brandenburg Provincial Association and the Berlin Company Health Insurance Fund. He was also chairman of the supervisory board of Heilmittelversorgung deutscher Krankenkassen AG. From 1925 he was also a member of the board of directors of the Bank of Workers, Employees and Officials in Berlin. From 1929 Ahrens was a deputy member of the Prussian State Council .

Gravestone of Wilhelm Ahrens in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Wilhelm Ahrens lost all of his political and honorary posts. The Gestapo temporarily arrested him. He anticipated the expropriation of his printing works by handing it over to his son. In 1933 Ahrens retired to Geltow near Potsdam , where he lived until the end of the Second World War . Despite surveillance by the Gestapo and another imprisonment in 1935, Ahrens took part in illegal gatherings of SPD comrades such as Eugen Ernst , Helmut Lehmann and Erich Flatau in Geltow . Ahrens was arrested again briefly in 1944 as part of the grid action .

After the end of the war, Wilhelm Ahrens returned to Charlottenburg . There he founded the Westkreuz print shop together with his son in 1946 and subsequently worked again as a freelance printer in Berlin. On the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1953 he was awarded the honorary title of City Elder of Berlin .

He was born with Martha since 1899. Eisemann married. The son mentioned came from the marriage. Martha Ahrens died before 1948.

Wilhelm Ahrens passed away in November 1956 at the age of 78 in Charlottenburg. He was buried in the local state-owned cemetery Heerstraße in today's Berlin-Westend district . The final resting place of Wilhelm Ahrens (grave location: II-W12-23) is dedicated to the State of Berlin as an honorary grave .

literature

• Hans-Jürgen Mende : Ahrens, Wilhelm . In: Ders .: Waldfriedhof Heerstraße. A cemetery guide . 2nd Edition. Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-936242-09-6 . Pp. 61-62.
• Ahrens, Friedrich Wilhelm . In: Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the History of German Social Policy 1871-1945 . Volume 2: Social Politicians in the Weimar Republic and National Socialism 1919 to 1945 . Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 . P. 1.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 483.
2. ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018) . (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 1. Retrieved on December 12, 2019.