Sporkhorst, Eduard
Civil servant, mayor of Dotzheim
Born: March 18, 1879 in Kettwig in front of the bridge (today Essen-Kettwig)
died: June 28, 1951 in Wiesbaden

After attending elementary school, he began an administrative apprenticeship in his birthplace in 1893. This was followed by a steady rise through the ranks to become mayor of Dotzheim (opens in a new tab).

After the incorporation of Dotzheim by the city of Wiesbaden in 1928, Sporkhorst initially remained head of the Dotzheim administrative office and then took over the management of the municipal Miethaus GmbH for a year. This was followed by positions as head of agriculture, forestry, market administration and field police as well as head of the occupation and war damage office.
Sporkhorst continued his career even after the National Socialists seized power in 1933. However, his relationship with the NSDAP was not without tension. Sporkhorst joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 and described himself as a "believer in God", i.e. the religious identification formula preferred by the National Socialists. However, according to a report from the NSDAP Gauleitung Hessen-Nassau to the NSDAP Reichsleitung, Sporkhorst was expelled from the party again in October 1934.

The reason for this expulsion is not known. The extent to which complaints about Sporkhorst's official conduct towards National Socialists played a role must remain unclear. In any case, there were complaints about Sporkhorst's conduct on duty. He probably also came into conflict with a member of the supervisory board of Städtische Miethaus GmbH regarding the allocation of cheap housing to old NSDAP campaigners.

Sporkhorst was also employed by the city of Wiesbaden after his retirement in 1936. He took over the management of the office for Wehrmacht affairs. He was regarded as an administrative expert and had earned the trust of NSDAP Lord Mayor Erich Mix due to his many years of work for the city, who issued him with a power of attorney and authority to issue instructions for his area of responsibility in 1939.

Sporkhorst played an inglorious role in a court case against former members of the Dotzheim SPD local group before the political senate of the Kassel Higher Regional Court on February 10, 1941. Eduard Sporkhorst, who was summoned to testify as a former mayor, claimed in court that one of the defendants, the former SPD city councillor Albert Müller, was a communist and had worked against the National Socialists.

In the course of the trial, the court considered the accusations to be proven, partly on the basis of Sporkhorst's statements. The defendants were sentenced to several years in prison. Although the convicts themselves assumed after the war that the OLG trial in 1941 had been a show trial and that Sporkhorst's testimony was therefore of secondary importance in determining the verdict, it remains obvious that the former mayor deliberately aligned the defendants with the KPD and thus provided the court with argumentative support. After the war, when the former convicts pointed out Sporkhorst's conduct in the trial to the mayor of Wiesbaden, he justified and relativized his conduct in 1941. In this context, he also denied that he had applied to join the NSDAP immediately after the National Socialists' "seizure of power". An investigation initiated against Sporkhorst by the legal department of the city of Wiesbaden had no consequences.

Sporkhorst evidently continued his work after the American occupation as part of the German emergency administration of Wiesbaden. As an administrative expert, he headed the Office for War Damage. In November 1945, however, Sporkhorst had to leave his post on the orders of the American occupation forces after a report appeared in an American newspaper that criticized the US military government's overly lenient behaviour towards the Germans and reported, among other things, on Eduard Sporkhorst, who had allegedly distributed furniture for war victims preferentially to former National Socialists.

However, Sporkhorst's skills as an experienced civil servant were apparently so important to the city administration that Lord Mayor Krücke applied for the reinstatement of his civil servant in November 1945, which was approved by the Americans in February 1946. However, Sporkhorst was only finally denazified on November 17, 1949 in Group 4 ("fellow travelers").

An appeal he applied for was no longer heard. Eduard Sporkhorst remained head of the occupation, occupation costs and war damage office of the city of Wiesbaden until 1950.

In the Dotzheim district, Hans-Böckler-Straße was renamed Sporkhorststraße by resolution of the city council on February 23, 1967.

The Historical Expert Commission appointed by the City Council in 2020 to review traffic areas, buildings and facilities named after people in the state capital of Wiesbaden recommended the contextualization of Sporkhorststraße due to Sporkhorst's memberships in several National Socialist organizations (NSDAP, NSV, RLSB, NSRL, RDB) or National Socialist aligned organizations (Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland). Sporkhorst made a false statement in a political trial against several Social Democrats and was thus actively involved in the conviction of these people.