The red Becker - from enemy of the state to imperial politician
Of the Cologne mayors of the last two centuries, only Hermann Heinrich Becker left his library to the city. The private library, originally comprising 15,000 volumes, contained, in accordance with Becker's educational and professional path, primarily legal, political and economic literature. In addition, he collected many works on German history, Westfalica and pamphlets on 19th century politics. Except for about 600 volumes, which were shelved under the shelfmark "BECK", this large collection has been incorporated into the shelving system of the City Library, whose holdings are now part of the USB.
Hermann Heinrich Becker (1820 - 1885)
Becker, who was born on 15 September 1820 in Elberfeld, grew up in Soest, Westphalia. After his secondary school years in Soest, Dortmund and Duisburg, he studied law at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin until 1847. He completed his studies with a doctorate. Becker moved from Berlin to the Bonn District Court and from there to the Cologne District Court in 1848. He soon found himself in the middle of the struggle of the democratic movement, which was particularly active in the Rhineland. Among the trials subsequently conducted against Becker was the sensational "Cologne Communist Trial". Whereas he had previously been able to obtain acquittals through brilliant defence speeches, he was now sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Becker was not allowed to settle in Cologne again after serving his sentence. His political career took him to Dortmund, where he became a member of the Prussian House of Representatives in 1862, before becoming Lord Mayor of Dortmund and a member of the Prussian House of Lords in 1870. In 1875 he was finally appointed Lord Mayor of Cologne. One of the most important events of his ten years in office was the demolition of the old Cologne city wall. On 9 December 1885, Hermann Heinrich Becker died as a result of a tuberculosis infection. He was buried in Cologne's Melaten cemetery.
"Der rote Becker" in the Cologne collection of newspaper cuttings 1840 - 1969 >>
Biographical Notes:
Beckers political path and the Cologme communist process
The mayor of Cologne owed his nickname "the red Becker" to his red hair and his communist past. In the 1840s, Becker was part of the radical democratic and national revolutionary circles. He also worked as a correspondent for the liberal Leipzig "Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung". Immediately after his arrival in Cologne, the court clerk at the Cologne district court began his political involvement. He joined the "Association of Workers and Employers" and became a member of the "Cologne Citizens' Militia". In 1848, the year of the revolution, he was arrested for the first time. In 1849/50 he founded the "Westdeutsche Zeitung", successor to the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung", banned under the editor Karl Marx. He was soon dismissed from the Prussian service for "blameworthy conduct". In 1851, Becker published a volume of "Gesammelte Aufsätze" by Karl Marx. In October 1852, the main trial began against eleven members of the Communist League who had been in prison for months. Marx's "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was read out in full in the courtroom and was part of the indictment. However, the defendants managed to largely refute the charges against them. Before the end of the trial, a forged "original minute book" of the "Party Marx" was presented to the court. Whether the forgery was relevant to the verdict is disputed. Instead of already obvious acquittals, draconian sentences were ultimately imposed. H. H. Becker was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in a fortress. He served his sentence from November 1852 to November 1857 in Stettin and in the Danzig fortress of Weichselmünde. Karl Marx condemned the Cologne Communist Trial in his "Revelations on the Communist Trial at Cologne" of 1853. Hermann Becker's career could only take place after his change of heart to become a liberal politician - he joined the German Progress Party - under the new Prussian ruler Wilhelm I. Although the latter had called for brutal harshness towards the Berlin barricade fighters in 1848 ("Kartätschenprinz"), he condemned his brother's bias towards the "faithless" Rhinelanders.
1881: Demolition of the Cologne city fortifications under Lord Mayor Becker
After the victorious war against France, the rayon restrictions of the Prussian fortress of Cologne (since 1815) were abandoned. The area in front of the city fortifications that had to be kept free was now allowed to be built on. For this reason, from 1881 onwards, the enormous city fortifications, which had been continually extended and rebuilt since the Middle Ages until the beginning of the 19th century, were blown up and demolished. Only a few remains of the walls (Hansaring, Sachsenring), three large gate towers (Eigelsteintor, Hahnentor, Severinstor) and a few towers (Bayenturm, Bottmühle, Ulrepforte, Weckschnapp) have been preserved. After the wall on the Rhine side had already been demolished in the years 1850-1860, the first breach was made on the land side at Gereonshof. Soon afterwards, the newly constructed Ringstrasse was built in front of the former moat. The main defence line of the city was now formed by the forts built in the same year on the Militärringstraße.
"What our forefathers had to build so that Cologne would become big, we have to blow up so that Cologne will not become small." (From the speech of Lord Mayor Becker before the first blasting on 11 June 1881.)
Selected Literature
- Beßelmann, Karl-Ferdinand: Hermann Heinrich Becker (1820 - 1885), in: Kölner Sammler und ihre Bücherkollektionen in der Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Cologne, 2003, Signature: 30A2183
- Herres, Jürgen: Der Kölner Kommunistenprozess von 1852, in: Geschichte in Köln. Zeitschrift für Stadt und Regionalgeschichte, 50/2003 online version. (PDF file; 103 KB)
- Kühn, Walter: Der junge Hermann Becker, Dortmund, 1934, Signature: U34/899
- Melis, Francois: Zur Geschichte der Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung und ihrer Edition in der Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Magdeburg, 2012., Signature: 41A4977