Wolfgang Straßmann

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Wolfgang Straßmann, 1880

Wolfgang Straßmann (born October 8, 1821 in Rawitsch , † December 6, 1885 in Berlin ) was a German physician , left-liberal politician and social reformer .

Life

Wolfgang Straßmann came from a Jewish cloth merchant family. The father Heimann Straßmann (1797–1881) was a supporter of cultural assimilation and sent his children to a Christian school. His mother was Judith geb. Guhrauer (1795-1875). Wolfgang Straßmann was born with Louise Cohen (1835–89) married. The couple had a son and a daughter named Henriette .

Straßmann attended elementary school in Rawitsch and from 1834 the Elisabet-Gymnasium (Breslau) and the Gymnasium in Lissa . He first studied philosophy in Breslau and then from 1848 medicine in Berlin. During the revolution of 1848 he was a revolutionary and was expelled from the city. In 1849 he joined the Schleswig-Holstein Army as a military doctor . In 1854 he received his doctorate as Dr. med. From 1855 he worked as a general practitioner in Berlin.

Since 1863 he was a member of the city ​​council in Berlin . Between 1877 and 1885 he even served as head of the city council. One of the most important municipal political projects that Straßmann had significantly advanced together with Rudolf Virchow were the Berlin sewage fields for the treatment of wastewater.

In the years 1879–1885, Straßmann was a member of the Prussian House of Representatives in the faction of the German Progressive Party .

He was also director of a cooperative bank in Berlin-Stralau . Straßmann was also the founder and chairman of the Association against Poverty, as well as chairman of the German Association for Poor Care and Charity. On May 29, 1883, he joined the mostly Jewish charity Society of Friends .

As an outstanding Jewish politician, Straßmann was particularly exposed to the anti-Semitic attacks of court preacher Adolf Stoecker . At a mass meeting in 1883, he announced that his movement would "crush Mr. Strassmann with his entire office as a city councilor."

The city of Berlin honored him in 1897 by assigning the street name Straßmannstraße . In 1938 the Berlin magistrate renamed it Ermelerstrasse as an expression of its anti-Semitic stance . The magistrate, democratically elected in 1946, reversed this in 1947.

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He found his final resting place in the Jewish cemetery in Prenzlauer Berg in field G, GA.

literature

  • Bernhard Mann et al. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the Prussian House of Representatives. 1867-1918. Droste, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-7700-5146-7 , p. 378.
  • Wolfgang Paul Strassmann: The Strassmanns. The fate of a German-Jewish family over two centuries . Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2006, ISBN 3-593-38034-X . (Review)
  • Florian Tennstedt: The doctor Dr. Wolfgang Strassmann. A founder of civic activity in the capital of Berlin. In: Claus Leggewie (Ed.): Social Democracy, Civil Society and Citizen Virtues . Festschrift for Adalbert Evers. Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-593-38681-2 , pp. 73-92.
  • Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , p. 159 f. ( Online , PDF; 2.2 MB).
  • The President of the Berlin House of Representatives (ed.): Wolfgang Straßmann. 1821-1885. Revolutionary, physician, social reformer, head of city council, member of the Prussian House of Representatives. Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-922581-25-3 .
  • Wolf Strassmann , in: Ernest Hamburger : Jews in public life in Germany: members of the government, civil servants and parliamentarians in the monarchical era. 1848-1918 . Tübingen: Mohr, 1968, p. 329

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ place of birth indicated in the death register; other sources name Lissa
  2. ↑ Death register StA Berlin VII a, No. 2204/1885
  3. ^ Social Democracy, Civil Society and Citizen Virtues ; Florian Tennstedt, Claus Leggewie; 2008; ISBN 978-3-593-38681-2 ; P. 75 ff
  4. ↑ On this and the following: Karl-Heinz Gärtner, Günter Nitschke, Ines Rautenberg: Berlin street names. A reference work for the eastern districts. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 45. Straßmannstrasse is in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district
personal data
SURNAME Straßmann, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctors and politicians (left-wing liberal)
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Rawitsch
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1885
Place of death Berlin