Wilhelm Burchard-Motz

Burchard-Motz, painted by Anita Rée (before 1933)

Wilhelm Amsinck Burchard-Motz (born July 4, 1878 in Hamburg ; † January 13, 1963 there ) was a German lawyer and politician .

Life

Wilhelm Amsinck Burchard was the eldest son of the Hamburg Senator Johann Heinrich Burchard and his wife Emily, nee. Amsinck . He attended the Johanneum , passed his Abitur there in 1895 and then studied law in Heidelberg (where he joined the Corps Vandalia ) and Berlin , with semesters abroad in Lausanne and Cambridge . In 1899 he returned to Hamburg. After military service and legal clerkship in Hamburg, he joined the still existing law firm Esche Schümann Commichau in Hamburg in 1904 , in which his father was already a partner and which his son Heinrich Burchard-Motz later also joined as a partner. In 1925 he had his name changed to Burchard-Motz.

In November 1934, Burchard-Motz was appointed director of the Hamburger Feuerkasse , an office that he held until the end of the “Third Reich”. From 1935 he was also a board member of the Daniel Schutte Foundation , which has been offering apartments for older people since 1892. In the last days of the Second World War, at the request of Reich Governor Karl Kaufmann, he took part in the negotiations for the surrender of Hamburg to the British without a fight. He was also present at the official handover of the city to the British on May 3, 1945.

In the 1950s, Burchard-Motz was Vice President of the German Golf Association and Chairman of the Hamburg Country and Golf Club in the Lüneburg Heath .

Political activity

Burchard-Motz was a member of the National Liberal Party during the German Empire and temporarily, at least in 1918, its state chairman for Hamburg, with Peter Stubmann as deputy. He was a member of the Hamburg citizenship from 1913 to 1919 for the constituency of Finkenwerder. He joined the parliamentary group of the right wing , which in 1916 was renamed the faction of the National Liberal Party .

When the National Liberals were reorganized into the German People's Party , he became a member of this new party in 1918. On April 1, 1933, on the occasion of a Bismarck memorial ceremony, Burchard-Motz initiated the self-dissolution of the DVP in Hamburg and called on all party members to join the NSDAP , which more than three quarters of the members did in the following days.

Public offices

On March 18, 1925, Burchard-Motz became Senator for Trade, Shipping and Commerce (→ Hamburg Senate 1919–1933 ). In the election of September 27, 1931, the incumbent Senate lost its majority in the citizenship, but since no new Senate could be elected, the old Senate continued to run the business.

When the bourgeois parties DVP, State Party and DNVP negotiated with the NSDAP in January 1933 to form a Senate coalition, Burchard-Motz was in discussion for the office of First Mayor. However, the negotiations failed due to resistance from Mayor Carl Wilhelm Petersen (DDP). After the seizure of power of the NSDAP in the Reich on 30 January 1933 the power of the Nazi party in Hamburg changed. The Reich did not intervene directly in Hamburg with emergency decrees, but the pressure was increased. On March 3, the SPD senators resigned. Two days later, after the Reichstag election , the town hall was occupied by SA units. In the citizenship, the bourgeois parties agreed in the following days to form a government with the NSDAP. This should not reflect the distribution of power in the citizenry, but should be formed according to the distribution of votes in the Reichstag election of March 5, 1933. In Hamburg, a coalition senate was initially formed from the NSDAP, DNVP and DVP, to which Burchard-Motz belonged as second mayor from March 8, 1933 (→ Hamburg Senate under National Socialism ). On November 8, 1934, he was dismissed from the Senate.

literature

• Wilhelm Poppelbaum: Burchard-Motz, Wilhelm Amsinck . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 69-71 .
• Hamburg in the Third Reich, seven contributions. Ed. State Center for Political Education Hamburg, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-929728-42-7
• Hamburg 1945, end of the war, hardship and a new beginning, Hartmut Hohlbein. Edited by the State Center for Political Education Hamburg, Hamburg 1985
• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871 - 1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 419

See also

• Family history Amsinck

Individual evidence

1. ^ Treue, Wilhelm , legal, economic and tax advice in two centuries, Esche Schümann Commichau , Zur Geschichte einer Hamburgischen Sozietät, 3rd edition 1997, ISBN 3-00-001424-1 , pp. 28 ff., 53 ff.
2. ^ Website of the Daniel Schutte Foundation .
3. ↑ Oliver Schirg: By night and fog: Hamburg's surrender. In: Hamburger Abendblatt, April 18, 2015, pp. 20–21 ( online ).
4. ↑ Der Spiegel of September 9, 1959.
5. ↑ National Liberal Association Hamburg: Hamburg's Economic Future, Hamburg 1918, p. 24
6. ↑ The social democratic Hamburger Echo already presented a list of senators on January 19, 1933 with Burchard-Motz as the first mayor at the top