Kurt Adams

Kurt Adams (15 December 1889 – 7 October 1944) was a Hamburg SPD politician and an educationalist.

Following the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in July 1944 Kurt Adams was one of several thousand high-profile non-Nazis arrested and detained by the government during August. He died a couple of months later at the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Life

Stolperstein at Rathausmarkt 1 of Dr. Kurt Adam in Hamburg-Altstadt, Germany Kurt Adams was born at the tail end of 1889. His father was a merchant. He attended two secondary schools, first the "Vor dem Lübeckertor Realschule" and then the "auf der Uhlenhorst Realschule", before progressing to university. His university level studies took him to universities in Göttingen, Freiburg, the Humboldt (Berlin) and Greifswald. Subjects studied were German, French and History. He received his doctorate in 1912 for a dissertation entitled "Otto Ludwig´s Theories on Drama". The next year he took a job with the Hamburg City Schools Service, also teaching at the Albrecht-Thaer School, and became committed to the cause of education reform.

Kurt Adams joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) while still a student. Between 1924 and 1933 he was a member of the Hamburg Parliament. More than once he stood for election to the national Reichstag, but his name was towards the bottom of the SPD party list and he was never elected.

After losing his public service employment Adam worked briefly for a cinema news-sheet, before taking on a small coffee distribution business in Hamburg's Nikolaifleet (in the city's old harbour quarter). The coffee business brought him into contact with a number of politically like-minded individuals, and his little trading office quickly became a Hamburg meeting point for SPD and Communists, whose party activities had become illegal in 1933. Adams was able to help fellow victims of Nazi persecution, including and Rudolf Klug. In addition to coffee, the little business became a distribution point for illegal political leaflets, some of which Adams himself distributed, using his bicycle.

Recognition Kurt Adams Square ("Kurt-Adams-Platz") in Hamburg's Lohbrügge quarter was named to commemorate and honour Adams In the German Democratic Republic, in 1958, a postage stamp was issued featuring a portrait of Kurt Adams. On 8 June 2012, a series of individual stolpersteine memorial tablets were unveiled in front of the Hamburg City Hall for murdered members of the Hamburg Parliament. One of these was for Kurt Adams. Another tablet, similar in style but more succinct in content, is set at the entrance to Terminal 2 of the city airport.