Kurt Blaum
1884 - 1970

Kurt Blaum was born on April 10, 1884 in Strasbourg (Alsace), which was part of the German Reich at the time. His parents were the professor Dr. Rudolf Blaum and his wife Martha Wöhler. Kurt Blaum had four siblings: Ernst, a graduate engineer and architect who died in the First World War; Rudolf Blaum, a mechanical engineer who worked for Atlaswerke in Bremen; Elisabeth, a deaconess who worked as a matron in a Hamburg hospital; and Marie, a teacher in Mannheim. According to the address book of the city of Strasbourg from 1884/85, the Blaum family lived at Universitätsplatz 6. Rudolf Blaum held the title of "senior teacher", later the title of professor. He taught at the Imperial Lyceum in Strasbourg and published, among other things, an "English grammar and exercise book for secondary schools" and a Latin treatise on Valerius Maximus entitled "Quaestionum Valerianarum specimen". Rudolf Blaum was a democrat and an active gymnast, mountaineer and skier.

After graduating from the Imperial Lyceum in Strasbourg in 1903, Kurt Blaum completed his military service as a one-year volunteer in the Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment 131 in Strasbourg and became a reserve officer. He then studied law and political science at the universities of Kiel and Strasbourg. In 1908, he passed his state examination in law and received his doctorate in political science with a thesis on "Das Geldwesen der Schweiz seit 1789" (The Swiss Monetary System Since 1789) published by Karl J. Trübner in Strasbourg. His doctoral supervisor was the economist Georg Friedrich Kapp. At this time, his parents lived at Universitätsplatz 7. Dr. Kurt Blaum was listed in the Strasbourg address book of 1911 as a trainee lawyer with the address of Strauss Dürkheim street 15. He, therefore, no longer lived in his parents' house.

Kurt Blaum and his wife Hanna Blaum, née Escher, had a son named Werner Blaum. According to the historical address books, the family lived at Paul Ehrlich street 55 in Frankfurt on the Main from 1935 to 1937. After that, the Blaum family lived in Oberursel, a city in the Taunus mountains north of Frankfurt.

Dr. Kurt Blaum worked in the Strasbourg city administration as Administrative Director of the Strasbourg Poor Relief Office from 1912. The following year, he became the socio-political department head of his native city. From August 1914 to 1916, Kurt Blaum did military service, initially in the Vosges mounains, then in Belgium and later again in the first German snowshoe battalion in the southern Vosges. Even before May 1915, when Italy entered the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, Kurt Blaum arrived in the South Tyrolean Alps with Bavarian-Austrian snowshoe troops. He had reached the rank of captain. After a nervous breakdown and subsequent stay in a sanatorium, he returned to work in Strasbourg and headed the social policy department of the city administration. For example, Kurt Blaum had special municipal kitchens set up for the poor. He published several works, such as "Eine Landes-Arbeitsnachweis-Ordnung für Elsass-Lothringen" (A Provincial Work Certificate Order for Alsace-Lorraine) in 1917, which was published by the Landeszentrale für Arbeitsnachweis in Elsass-Lothringen, and the brochure "Das armenpflegerische Existenzminimum in Strasbourg 1906-1910" (The Minimum Subsistence Level for the Poor in Strasbourg 1906-1910) in 1918 on behalf of the Poor Council.

In January 1919, Kurt Blaum was expelled from Strasbourg by the French as a German. He then worked as a lecturing councillor and government councillor in the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior in Stuttgart, mainly in the field of youth welfare. He had already published a small work on this subject in Strasbourg: Ziele und Aufgaben der Jugendpflege. Nach einem Vortrage von Kurt Blaum (Goals and Tasks of Youth Care. Based on a lecture by Kurt Blaum). In 1920, there was a famine in Vorarlberg (Austria). As a result, the Württemberg Youth Welfare Office under the direction of Dr. Kurt Blaum, in cooperation with the German and Austrian Alpine Club, looked after endangered schoolchildren from Vorarlberg for eight weeks in the children's recreation camp on the Heuberg. This recreation camp for children was run by the "Kindererholungsfürsorge Heuberg" (Children's recreation care Heuberg) association, which Kurt Blaum had co-founded.

In December 1921, he became Lord Mayor of the city of Hanau as a member of the liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP). Here he was primarily involved in the expansion of the port, but also in housing construction. He published the "Festschrift zur Eröffnung des Mainhafen[s] der Stadt Hanau" (Festschrift for the Opening of the Main Harbor of the City of Hanau), which was officially opened on October 25, 1924, after more than two years of construction. This was followed in 1929 by the volume on "Die Stadt Hanau, der Main- und der Kinziggau" (The City of Hanau, the Main- and Kinziggau), edited by Kurt Blaum and Erwin Stein, in the series monographs of German cities. He contributed articles on municipal administration, municipal economic policy and municipal cultural policy, for example. Interestingly, his wife Hanna Blaum-Escher also published a section in this book on "Das Grün in Stadt und Umgebung" (The Greenery in the Town and Surrounding Area).

Under pressure from the National Socialists, Dr. Kurt Blaum was suspended as Lord Mayor in April 1933 and retired on 28 December 1933 because he had been a member of the liberal DDP party. During the Second World War, he was a military economics officer from 1941 and, as a conscripted plant manager from 1942 to 1944, managed an aircraft engine research plant in Oberursel, where he lived. This was the aircraft engine development department of Klöckner Humboldt Deutz AG, which had moved from Cologne to Oberursel in 1941 and developed a 16-cylinder aircraft engine with 2,700 hp. The Oberursel plant had previously mainly built engines for trucks and tractors.

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Dr. Kurt Blaum served as provisional Lord Mayor of Hanau for a few weeks from May 1, 1945, before being appointed Second Mayor of Frankfurt on the Main by the American military government in June 1945. Just four weeks later, he was sworn in as Mayor of Frankfurt by the American military governor. Kurt Blaum became a member of the newly founded conservative party named Christian Democratic Union (CDU). At the beginning of August 1946, the Social Democrat Walter Kolb was elected Lord Mayor of Frankfurt on the Main in his place.

Kurt Blaum's leadership as Mayor of Frankfurt on the Main was controversial, particularly because of his negligent denazification of the city administration, as he tended to place greater importance on a functioning administration than on the application of the denazification laws. He was also accused of having an authoritarian management style. From 1946, Kurt Blaum was a member of the Board of Directors of the bank named Frankfurter Sparkasse of 1822, and was also President of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft from 1946 to 1964. He was heavily involved in the organizational reconstruction of the Hessian Red Cross, of which he was the first post-war president from 1947 to 1952. In the "Deutschen Verein für öffentliche und private Fürsorge e.V." (German Association for Public and Private Welfare), founded in 1880, Kurt Blaum was not only a member of the main committee from 1916 to 1933, but also from 1946 to 1953 as well as a member of the board and deputy chairman of the association from 1946 to 1951. Kurt Blaum was actively involved in numerous associations and organizations after 1945, but also continued to work as a journalist. In 1959, for example, he published the booklet "Die Finanzierung der Hauptentschädigung des Lastenausgleichs" (The Financing of the Main Compensation of the Equalization of Burdens act) in the publication series of the Zentral-Verband der Fliegergeschädigten, Evakuierten und Währungsgeschädigten (Central Association of Allied Airstrike Victims, Evacuees and Currency Victims).

The former mayor of Hanau, Dr. Kurt Blaum, who was forced to retire on 28 December 1933 for political reasons, became a member of the Frankfurt on the Main section according to the Nachrichten-Blatt No. 2 of February 1934 of the Frankfurt section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club. As he is referred to there as "Oberbürgergerm[eister]" (mayor), the recommendation for admission was probably made before December 1933. In February 1936, his wife Hanna Blaum and his son Werner Blaum, then a student, also became members of the Frankfurt on the Main section. Kurt Blaum was awarded the "Silver Edelweiss" for 25 years of membership in the Alpine Club at the 1937 Annual General Meeting. This was due to his joining the section in his home town of Strasbourg in Alsace (then German Reich) before the First World War, but he is missing from the Strasbourg section's list of members from 1910 - only his father Rudolf Blaum is listed there. Unfortunately, we do not have the Strasbourg membership list of 1912. At the annual general meeting in March 1952, Kurt Blaum was nevertheless honored by the Frankfurt section for his 40 years of membership in the German Alpine Club.

Kurt Blaum's father, Dr. Rudolf Blaum, had already been active in the Strasbourg section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club since 1887. In 1900, for example, he gave a lecture in the section on "Forays and Standquartier in Ötzthal". In the Strasbourg annual report for the period 1896 to 1901, numerous alpine tours and summit ascents are noted for him. In 1895 he climbed the 3499m high Dreiherrenspitze in the Venediger group, in 1896 the 3905m high Ortler, in 1897 the 3369m high Schwarzenstein in the Zillertal Alps, in 1898 the Spiegelkogel massif in the Ötztal Alps, in 1899 the 3497m high Schrankogel in the Stubai Alps, in 1900 the Zugspitze and in 1901 the Säntis and the Churfirsten in the Appenzell mountains. Kurt Blaum therefore had a mountaineering role model in his father.

In May 1935, Kurt Blaum was appointed lecturer, succeeding Dr. Ernst Wildberger, who now acted as the section's legal advisor. Barely a year after joining the Frankfurt section, he was already active on the board. In accordance with his function, he reported on lectures in the section's Nachrichten-Blatt, for the first time in December 1935 on "The conquest of the high mountains for skiing" by the government councillor Lohmüller from Nuremberg and later, for example, in February 1936 on "In winter on Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa" by Else Neber from Pirmasens. Kurt Blaum was also active as a speaker in the section: on April 9, 1935, he gave a lecture on "The German Alpine Corps in the Dolomites in 1915" and on October 29, 1940, on "The Vosges, a German low mountain range". He also repeatedly reviewed books in the Nachrichten-Blatt, even during the Second World War. His introduction to "The White Mountain. My Experiences on Mont Blanc" by Ludwig Steinauer appeared in April 1941.

In the spring of 1937, Blaum also took over the arrangement and organization of lecture series by individual speakers in the southwest German sections of the Alpine Club as "Lecture consultant of the Gaue XII/XIII" in the German Reichsbund für Leibesübungen. The main committee invited Kurt Blaum to the general meeting of the German and Austrian Alpine Club in Graz in July 1939 to take part in special discussions within the lecture communities.

Blaum also led hiking trips, for example on July 7, 1935, together with the section's treasurer, banker Georg Seelbach, a hike from Obersailauf to Bad Orb, which was described as a "marching exercise through the northern Spessart", and on October 11, 1936, another Spessart hike from Bad Orb to Gelnhausen, again together with Georg Seelbach. 80 people took part in the latter hike. As Kurt Blaum was still active as a guide on Spessart hikes later on, for example in July 1937 together with Dr. Max Tasche, he seems to have been one of several guides responsible for this low mountain range. However, he was not limited to the Spessart, as he led a hiking group through the Lahn Valley in June 1939 (again with Max Tasche) and a Taunus hike from Bad Homburg via Dillingen, Wehrheim and the Batzenbaum back to Bad Homburg with Heinrich Deibel in July 1940.

For the extraordinary general meeting on July 7, 1936, Dr. Blaum, as "legal advisor", had worked through the standard statutes for the purposes of the section, which were prescribed for all associations united in the national-sozialist "Reichsbund für Leibesübungen". He thus worked in the legal field alongside Dr. Ernst Wildberger, who had been appointed to the section's advisory board as a legal advisor in 1936 by "section leader" Dr. Rudolf Seng. At the general meeting in February 1937, Seng appointed Dr. Blaum as a member of the advisory board, responsible for lectures and legal matters. He replaced Dr. Wildberger, who no longer held an official function in the Frankfurt section. Consequently, Kurt Blaum belonged to the close circle of the section leadership from 1937 at the latest and retained his offices during the Second World War. There is also evidence that he was a member of the section's Council of Elders in the 1940/41 financial year--alongside Rudolf Seng (leader), Max Moritz Wirth, Curt Weißgerber and Georg Seelbach.

Kurt Blaum composed verses for the inauguration of the Frankfurt section house in Oberreifenberg, which were printed in No. 5 of the Nachrichten-Blatt of June 1937. They end with the words "Because our heart glows so hot for Germany, / Bergheil! Comrades from Edelweiss!". This proves that he had come to terms with the political situation in Nazi Germany. Like many others, he welcomed the German Reich's forced annexation of Austria in March 1938. On the front page of No. 4 from April 1938, there is a poem by Kurt Blaum in which Hitler is praised for this. As a native of Strasbourg, he particularly praised the victory over France and the "return" of Alsace to the German Reich in his article "Deutsche Vogesen" (German Vosges mountains) in the Nachrichten-Blatt, No. 4 of October 1940.

After the end of the Second World War and the re-establishment of the Frankfurt on the Main section in 1946, Dr. Kurt Blaum was elected second chairman and remained so until 1951, after which he continued to work on the section's committee. This shows how firmly he was anchored in the section through his work since 1935. He also became active in the main committee of the German Alpine Club. From 1951 to 1957, he was primarily involved in regaining the huts on Austrian soil for the German sections. He was also a member of the sub-committee for huts and trails for ten years from 1950.

In May 1950, his granddaughter Waltraud Blaum, then a student living in Oberursel, also became a member of the Frankfurt section. His son Werner Blaum only became a member of the Frankfurt section again in 1953. We do not currently know when he left the section. In 1953, the Blaum family lived in Waldschmidt street in Frankfurt.