Wilhelm Spiritus

Wilhelm Spiritus, 1875

Wilhelm Spiritus (born February 24, 1854 in Cologne , † December 27, 1931 in Bonn ) was Lord Mayor of Bonn.

Life

Spiritus came from a Protestant, middle-class family and after graduating from high school in 1872 studied law in Heidelberg , where he was a member of the Corps Rhenania , at the University of Strasbourg and at the University of Bonn . In 1875 he passed the trainee exam, whereupon he was appointed court trainee at the beginning of September of this year. In February 1880, Spiritus finally passed the great state examination for lawyers. After his studies he returned to Cologne and worked as an assessor at the Cologne district court . In the fall of 1886 he switched to an administrative career, initially as a legal assistant with the city administration of Cologne. From 1887 he was an alderman of the Lord Mayor Wilhelm von Becker . From there he successfully applied for the office of Lord Mayor of Bonn, to which he was unanimously elected by the city council on May 17, 1891 and introduced on July 18, 1891. During his tenure he drove the development of the city in many areas. Particularly noteworthy is the construction of Bonn's first Rhine bridge .

In 1892 he was appointed to the city's presentation as a member of the Prussian manor house . Also from 1892 he was a member of the Provincial Parliament and from 1909 its chairman. In 1896 he had his own villa built on the Rhine, the Villa Spiritus .

Because of his special commitment to Bonn during the First World War , the Bonn city council elected Wilhelm Spiritus Mayor for life on April 16, 1915, which is unique in the history of Bonn. At the request of the city council, he initially managed the business during the British occupation, but then withdrew. After Fritz Bottler was elected Spiritus' successor by the city council on December 15, 1919, his term of office ended on December 31.

Wilhelm Spiritus died in Bonn in 1931 and was buried in the southern cemetery there. His successor in the office of Lord Mayor was Fritz Bottler .

The son Paul Spiritus aspired to a career as a Prussian administrative officer and, after his serious war injury had healed from 1919–1920, was district administrator of the Westprignitz district in the province of Brandenburg.

Honors and honors

As a special recognition of his services, the city council granted him honorary citizenship of the city of Bonn on July 1, 1920 and the law faculty made him an honorary doctorate.

In 1932 the bank of the Rhine between the Second Fährgasse and the Dahlmannstrasse in Gronau was named Wilhelm-Spiritus-Ufer in his honor .

literature

• Philip Rosin: Honored Mayor and nationalist propagandist: Wilhelm Spiritus (1854–1931) as Lord Mayor of Bonn in peace and in war . In: Dominik Geppert , Norbert Schloßmacher (Ed.): The First World War in Bonn. The home front 1914–1918 (= publications of the Bonn City Archives , Volume 72; Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Stadtarchiv Bonn: Bonner Geschichtsblätter: Yearbook of the Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Volume 65/66). Bonn 2016, ISBN 978-3-922832-82-9 , pp. 171–188.
• Dietrich Höroldt , Manfred van Rey (ed.): Bonn in the Imperial Era 1871–1914. Festschrift for the 100th anniversary of the Bonn Homeland and History Association . Bonn 1986.
• Heinrich Blumenthal: The Villa Spiritus in Bonn . In: Rheinische Heimatpflege . Vol. 31, 1994, pp. 128-131.
• Heinrich Blumenthal: Wilhelm Spiritus, a Rhenish Prussian. In: General-Anzeiger . Issued May 5, 1993.
• Jürgen W. Schmidt: The district administrators of the Westprignitz district from 1860 to 1920. In: Messages from the Association for the History of Prignitz . Volume 12. Perleberg 2012 pp. 5–60 (especially p. 47–60 on the Spiritus family).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Philip Rosin: Honored Mayor and nationalist propagandist: Wilhelm Spiritus (1854–1931) as Lord Mayor of Bonn in peace and in war .
2. ^ Wilhelm-Spiritus-Ufer in the Bonn street cadastre