Massenkeil, Joseph Jakob Adolf

Grammar school teacher

Born: 26.05.1891 in Lorchhausen

died: 16.03.1987 in Bad Godesberg

Massenkeil studied Latin, Greek and German in Freiburg im Breisgau, Berlin and Münster/Westphalia and received his doctorate with a thesis on the "Westfälischer Merkur". In April 1920, he took up a position as a teacher at the Lyzeum am Schlossplatz in Wiesbaden, where he worked until it was destroyed by the Allied air raid at the beginning of 1945. In addition, he was active both as a writer and politically and founded the "Nassauische Heimat". The paper was published monthly in the "Rheinische Volkszeitung", an organ close to the Catholic Center Party, for a total of five years.

He also served as chairman of the Wiesbaden Center Party. As a representative of this party, he sat in the Nassau municipal parliament until 1933. Due to his political commitment, he was arrested in August 1944 as a result of "Aktion Gewitter", a reaction of the Nazi state to the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944. Unlike many other prisoners, Massenkeil was soon released.

After the end of the war, he worked as a senior government and school councillor at the Wiesbaden regional council and became head of the church and schools department at the Montabaur regional council at the end of 1947. From 1950, he taught in Wiesbaden at the Städtisches Realgymnasium, now the Oranienschule, and then at the Diltheyschule. His last position here was as principal. Massenkeil also made a name for himself as an editor of school textbooks and author of works on the history of newspapers in the Rhineland and Hesse-Nassau.