Wilhelm Pockels

Wilhelm Pockels (born July 19, 1832 in Wolfenbüttel ; † January 13, 1904 in Braunschweig ) was Lord Mayor of Braunschweig from 1879 to 1904.

life and work

He was born as the son of Wolfenbüttel city council Wilhelm Pockels († 1876). From 1833 he worked as district director in Holzminden , where the young Pockels attended grammar school. After graduating from high school in Holzminden, he studied law at the University of Göttingen from 1850 to 1853 , where he joined the Corps Brunsviga . From October 1, 1853, Pockels served in the Duke of Brunswick Field Corps in Brunswick. After he had passed the first state examination in law, he became a legal candidate at the ducal city court in Braunschweig in January 1854. At the end of 1854 he was transferred to the local court in Holzminden at his request and later worked as a lawyer for the public prosecutor's office in Holzminden. On January 26, 1858 he became mayor of Seesen , where he was elected unanimously. During the four-year term in office, he passed his second state examination in law in July 1859 . In Seesen he was made an honorary citizen on December 1, 1863 . The following day he began working as a Braunschweig Police Assessor. In May 1873 Pockels was appointed director of the Wolfenbüttel prison. In Wolfenbüttel he was also elected city councilor in 1875. On February 20, 1878 he became police director in Braunschweig, before he was elected mayor there in March 1879 to succeed Caspari . he won the mayoral election in the second ballot with 17 of 33 votes against his opponent Rittmeyer, who was the son-in-law of the previous mayor. on May 1, 1879 he took office as Lord Mayor. Pockels had been a member of the Braunschweig State Parliament since 1881 , of which he became President in 1898. On July 9, 1897, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the law faculty of the University of Göttingen.

Braunschweig is becoming a big city

In 1890, the number of inhabitants exceeded the limit of 100,000, making Braunschweig a major city . The necessary expansion of the infrastructure begun under his predecessor Caspari was continued under Pockels. The municipal sewage system and the sewage fields were laid out from 1879, the main cemetery was opened in 1887 and the new town hall designed by Ludwig Winter was completed in 1900 . Several school buildings were built and parks such as Prinz-Albrecht-Park (from 1903) were created. For the development of the outer city a site plan was drawn up in 1889 by the city geometer F. Knoll.

Pockelsstrasse in the central campus area of ​​the Technical University of Braunschweig has been named after him since 1905 .

family

Pockels was married twice. Six years after his first wife Fanny died on August 15, 1864, he married Susanne Weinkauff. His second wife bore him seven children.

literature

• Norman-Mathias Pingel: Wilhelm Pockels. In: Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon. published on behalf of the city of Braunschweig by Luitgard Camerer, Manfred RW Garzmann and Wolf-Dieter Schuegraf with special assistance from Norman-Mathias Pingel, Braunschweig 1992, page 182, ISBN 3-926701-14-5
• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 19th and 20th centuries. Hanover 1996, page 465
• Henning Steinführer , Claudia Böhler (Ed.): The Braunschweiger Mayors. From the establishment of the office in the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. oeding print GmbH, Braunschweig 2013, ISBN 978-3-941737-68-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Camerer, Garzmann, Schuegraf (ed.): Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon. Braunschweig 1992, p. 182