William Asbury

William Asbury , CMG (* 1889 , † 19th May 1961 in Camberley ) was a British politician of the Labor Party . As a Regional Commissioner or Land Commissioner , he had a great influence on the process of founding the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (1946), the integration of the State of Lippe (1947) and the development of supply, economy, press, parties, legislature, administration and government work in North Rhine -Westfalen (1946–1948) and Schleswig-Holstein (1948–1950).

Life

William Asbury was born to William Asbury from Edingale, Staffordshire . He received his school education in Wakefield . In 1917 he married Mary Bryce, the daughter of James Wright from Sheffield , who gave birth to a son and a daughter. Asbury collapsed and died at the age of 71 after mowing the lawn of his home at 195 Frimley Road in Camberley, Surrey .

The following stations mark his public career:

• 1924–1942: Member of the City Council of Sheffield (1926–1942: Deputy Leader of the City Council ), temporarily chairman of the health and social welfare committee, most recently chairman of the Air Raid Precautions Sub-committee ("Emergency Committee")
• 1930–1932: Member of the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance
• September 1942 to 1945: Deputy Regional Commissioner for Civil Defense, Southern Region , Reading
• 1945: Member of the Assistance Board
• May 1946: Regional Commissioner ( civil governor of the British occupying power ) for the province of North Rhine , Düsseldorf , British zone of occupation in north-west Germany
• August 1946 to 1948: State Commissioner for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia , Düsseldorf
• 1948–1950: Land Commissioner for the Land Schleswig-Holstein , Kiel and Altenhof (near Eckernförde)
• 1950–1961: Member of the National Assistance Board , from 1954 its deputy chairman and collaboration with Geoffrey Hutchinson
• 1951: Awarded Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by George VI.
• 1953–1961: Chairman of the Camberley Working Men's Club

Viewpoint on mass vaccinations

As in the years 1926/1927 in Sheffield a smallpox - epidemic with 800 cases, including one death occurred, and the municipal health department under Frederick Wynne, a campaign was launched for mass vaccinations, Asbury took public the view that the housing and the improvement of Living conditions take precedence over forced vaccination measures .

Working in post-war Germany

In June 1946 Asbury took up his work as Regional Commissioner for the North Rhine Province Region (civil governor for the province of North Rhine ) in the Stahlhof in Düsseldorf. There he took over from Regional Commander (Military Governor) John Ashworth Barraclough (1894-1981) the responsibility for the establishment of a German civil administration in the British part of the Rhine Province divided by the Berlin Declaration in June 1945 . In this task he was subject to the instructions of the Control Commission for Germany / British Element (→ Germany 1945–1949 ). Another important source of directives was an organizational unit in the British Foreign Office that was specially formed for occupied Germany and was headed by Frank Pakenham from 1947 . Until April 1947, John Burns Hynd , Minister for German and Austrian Affairs, had been that point of reference for Asbury. In order to hear the interests of the population of the zone of occupation, the British zone of occupation had set up a zone advisory committee that met monthly . Its deliberations influenced the work of Asbury as well as the views of the still existing Prussian provincial administrations of North Rhine (until 1945 Rhine Province) and Westphalia , which were under the leadership of the chief presidents Robert Lehr and Rudolf Amelunxen .

British policy at this time consisted of founding states , including the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (→ founding of North Rhine-Westphalia ), in order to rebuild and reorganize public life in British-controlled post-war Germany according to British ideas on this political basis . In this context and on the basis of the law of occupation , Asbury exercised important executive and control functions and participated in fundamental consultations and decisions. For example, accompanied by Henry Vaughan Berry, on July 24, 1946, he visited Rudolf Amelunxen, the Upper President of the Province of Westphalia in Munster , in order to offer him the appointment of the first Prime Minister of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, after a committee of the British occupying power met in a meeting in the Stahlhof on July 22, 1946 under the leadership of Noel Annan had agreed on this candidate. Under Asbury's supervision, Amelunxen's first cabinet began work on August 30, 1946, and the Appointed State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia on October 2, 1946. In a memorandum dated August 1, 1946, Asbury had previously made it clear that the state government only has those powers which it has delegated to it. He also reserved the final decision on the personal and political composition of the cabinet, which on his instructions became an all-party government from December 5, 1946 ( Cabinet Amelunxen II ). At the end of 1946, Asbury, on instruction from Brian Robertson, suggested that Karl Arnold, as an advocate of the socialization of key industries, became Deputy Prime Minister in the Amelunxen II cabinet to deal with Konrad Adenauer's CDU economic policy (→ Social Market Economy ), which was promoted by the British Labor politician and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin was judged critically to give a counterweight within the party. Asbury was also responsible for various steps taken by the British occupying power to integrate the state of Lippe into North Rhine-Westphalia and to prepare and implement dismantling operations . On October 16, 1947, Asbury presented Karl Arnold, who was elected Prime Minister in June 1947, with the "Revised Industrial and Reparations Plan", which listed 682 businesses in the bizone , including 262 in North Rhine-Westphalia, on a dismantling list. In January 1948 Asbury was transferred to Schleswig-Holstein , where he held the same position until the summer of 1950 as the successor to Hugh Vivian Champion de Crespigny , about whose lifestyle there had been complaints. His residence there was Gut Altenhof .

Web links

• Attachments in the portal sheffieldhistory.co.uk : William Asbury - Sheffield and Other Obituaries 1961 (PDF, 273.58 KB)
• The heads of the British military government in 1946 , photos in the portal nrw.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The position was of the same rank as a British Army General.
2. ↑ Tim Willis: Vaccination: Politics, the press and public health ( Memento of the original from June 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Wellcome History . Issue No. October 21, 2002, p. 2; PDF, accessed on the wellcome.ac.uk portal on July 7, 2014 
3. ↑ Military governors and state commissioners of the federal states 1945–1953 , listing on the maegges.net portal , accessed on July 7, 2014
4. ^ Düsseldorf - the young state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia . Website from August 2005 in the duesseldorf.de portal , accessed on July 7, 2014
5. ^ Marcus Schüller: Reconstruction and rise of the Cologne fair 1946-1956 . Dissertation University of Cologne 1997, Contributions to Company History, Volume 8, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07402-3 , p. 90, footnote 304 with further references ( online )
6. ↑ Kurt Düwell: Speech on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia by members of the German-British Society, Working Group Düsseldorf ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 7, PDF, manuscript from September 14, 2006, accessed on the debrige.de portal on July 7, 2014 
7. ^ Clemens Amelunxen: Forty years of service in the social constitutional state . Series of publications of the Legal Society eV Berlin, Issue 110, Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, ISBN 3-11-011704-5 , p. 34 ( online )
8. ↑ Wolfgang Trees, Charles Whiting, Thomas Omansen: Three years after zero. History of the British Zone of Occupation 1945–1948 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1978, p. 150
9. ^ Wilhelm Ribhegge: Prussia in the west. Struggle for parliamentarism in Rhineland and Westphalia 1789–1947 . Verlag Aschendorff, Münster 2008, p. 649
10. ^ Karl Teppe: Biography Rudolf Amelunxen (March 26, 2004, boarding school portal "Westphalian History") in the portal lwl.org , accessed on July 8, 2014
11. ↑ James C. Van Hook: Rebuilding Germany. The Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945–1957 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, p. 73 ( online )
12. ↑ Minutes of the “Final Ceremonial Session” of the Lippe Landtag on the occasion of its self-dissolution as part of the connection to North Rhine-Westphalia in the Landtag in Detmold on January 21, 1947 . Website in the portal lwl.org , accessed on July 7, 2014
13. ^ Martina Köchling: dismantling policy and reconstruction in North Rhine-Westphalia . Klartext Verlagsgesellschaft, Essen 1995, ISBN 978-3-8847-4262-4 , p. 129
14. ^ Portal Rhenish History: Epochs and Events from 1945 ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Chronicle in the portal rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de , accessed on July 8, 2014 
15. ^ Kurt Jürgensen, Gerhard Garms: The British in Schleswig-Holstein 1945-1949 . Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1989, pp. 55, 79, 152
16. ↑ Eider comrades. Free from Holstein . Article of August 14, 1948 (Der Spiegel, 33/1948) in the portal spiegel.de , accessed on July 7, 2014