 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Hermann Brill" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Hermann Louis Brill | |
|---|---|
 Hermann Brill | |
| Member of theBundestag | |
| In office 7 September 1949 – 7 September 1953 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1895-02-09)9 February 1895 Graefenroda |
| Died | 22 June 1959(1959-06-22) (aged 64) |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party | SPD |
Dr.Hermann Louis Brill (9 February 1895 – 22 June 1959) was a German resistance fighter, doctor of law and politician (SPD).[1]
Brill was born in the small town ofGräfenroda,Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, on 9 February 1895 as the son of a tailor; after finishing school, he attended theHerzog-Ernst-Seminar inGotha to become a teacher. His political career began in 1918, when he entered theIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany; less than two years later, he became a member of theThuringian parliament (Landtag) for the first time, where he stayed until 1933.
However, Brill only stayed a member of the USPD for four years; in 1922, he left the party again and found his new political home in theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) instead. In 1932, Brill was also a member of the federal German parliament (Reichstag).
TheNazis met with resistance from Brill since he first came in contact with them after they became part of the reigning coalition in Thuringia in 1930; Brill was especially opposed to the politics of Nazi minister of the interiorWilhelm Frick, and led a committee of investigation established by the Landtag in 1932 that scrutinised Frick's practices. It was also during this time that he metAdolf Hitler, who appeared as a witness in front of the committee, an experience that led to Brill making the decision to resist Hitler "at any time, anywhere and under every circumstance" ("jederzeit, überall, unter allen Umständen").
Following Hitler's rise to power, Brill left the SPD in May 1933, scandalised by the party executive's passive attitude towards Hitler; one year later, he founded theDeutsche Volksfront, a resistance group, inBerlin together withOtto Brass. Brill also wrote a number of essays and leaflets during this time; he was arrested several times by theGestapo, and after the workings of theDeutsche Volksfront were discovered, was convicted ofhigh treason in 1938 and sentenced to 12 years in prison.[2]
After first being jailed in theZuchthaus Brandenburg-Görden, he was taken to theBuchenwald concentration camp in 1943; following the liberation of Buchenwald on 11 April 1945, he wrote theBuchenwald Manifesto (Buchenwalder Manifest der demokratischen Sozialisten).
The same month, Brill also began creating a plan for the administrative rebuilding of Thuringia for theAmerican administration. In June 1945 he was appointedRegierungspräsident (president of the government) ofThuringia, an office he lost in July after Thuringia became part of theSoviet occupation zone, due to pressure fromWalter Ulbricht. In May 1945 he founded theBund Demokratischer Sozialisten (Federation of Democratic Socialists) in Thuringia, which finally evolved into Thuringia'sSPD branch, with Brill as its first chairman, but after being arrested and interrogated twice by the Soviet administration, he left Thuringia at the end of 1945 and began working for the American administration inBerlin.
In 1948 Brill helped draft a constitution (Grundgesetz) for the new German republic, and from 1949 to 1953, he was a member of the firstBundestag, the parliament of the newly founded Germany, where he representedFrankfurt am Main I. In his last year as a member of parliament, he put through the firstBundesentschädigungsgesetz (compensation law) for those who had been subjected to prosecution based on political views, race or religion.
In later years, Brill taught at the universities ofFrankfurt andSpeyer. He was responsible for the introduction ofpolitical science as a field of study in Germany and wrote several articles pertaining to issues such asGerman reunification.
Hermann Brill died on 22 June 1959 inWiesbaden.
Hermann Louis Brill navigational boxes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
