Wolfgang Strassmann

Wolfgang Straßmann (8 October 1821 – 6 December 1885) was a German physician and liberal politician. He fought in the March Revolution of 1848 and the First Schleswig War. In 1877, he became a member of the Prussian House of Representatives and from 1875 to 1885, he was the President of the Berlin town Council.

Biography

Wolfgang Straßmann was born to Heiman Straßmann (1797–1881), a Jewish scholar, and Judith née Guhrauer (1795–1875) in Rawitsch, Kingdom of Prussia (Rawicz, Poland), where he attended elementary school. His secondary education took place in Lissa (Leszno, Poland) and at the Elisabet-Gymnasium in Breslau (Wrocław).

Straßmann started to study philosophy at the University of Breslau but moved to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin to study medicine. He worked for Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in his clinical clerkship. On 12 August 1848, Straßmann walked along the Unter den Linden in a group of revolutionaries which started to wrest Prussian cockades from other promenaders. At the Café Kranzler, he finally addressed the crowd, declared the Hohenzollern dynasty "no longer worthy of the throne of Prussia" and proclaimed the German Republic. He was arrested the same day, sentenced to six weeks imprisonment and banished from Berlin.

Straßmann was elected as a member of Berlin's city council representing the German Progress Party in 1863, from 1875 until his death in 1885 he was the council's President. He collaborated with Rudolf Virchow and was especially active in the field of medical care and education of the poor. Straßmann initiated the construction of septic drain fields in Berlin. the Straßmannstrasse in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg was named in his honor on 4 August 1897 and, after being renamed by the Nazis in 1938, again in 1947.