The social democrat who became the voice of divided Berlin
“People of the world, look upon this city! You cannot, you must not, forsake us!”
Ernst Reuter was a German politician whose path from social democracy through communism and back reflected the upheavals of twentieth-century Europe. After Nazi persecution and exile in Turkey, he returned to Berlin and joined municipal administration to a practical social-democratic politics. During the Berlin Blockade, he gave West Berliners’ resolve an international voice and helped make the divided city a symbol of freedom and self-government. His career also reveals the tensions of a generation that moved from revolutionary radicalism toward democratic local government.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1912Joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany
- 1918–1919First chairman of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
- 1921First secretary of the Berlin district of the Communist Party of Germany
- 1926–1931Berlin city councillor for transport
- 1931–1933Mayor of Magdeburg
- 1935–1946Lecturer in urban planning at Ankara University and adviser to the Turkish government
- 1947Elected mayor of Berlin, without Soviet consent
- 1948–1953Mayor of West Berlin, Governing Mayor from 1951
Related historical events
Exile in Turkey and the Ankara years as a municipal scientist, 1935-1946
After the Nazis took power in 1933, Reuter was forcibly removed as mayor of Magdeburg and was detained twice in Lichtenburg concentration camp, where he suffered severe mistreatment. The National Socialist authorities persecuted him as a political opponent, and even after his release in 1934 he had to leave Magdeburg. He emigrated via Britain and reached Ankara on 4 June 1935.
In Turkey, Reuter worked in the economic ministry from 1935 to 1939 and then in the transport ministry in 1939, reorganising tariffs for the railways and coastal shipping. He learned Turkish to work with local colleagues, but could not fully use his abilities because, without a staff, he had to carry out much of the administrative work himself. From 1938 he began lecturing on urban planning and urban construction at the reformed Ankara higher school of administration, and from 1940 he worked exclusively there after all German experts were dismissed from the Turkish ministries. In 1941 he was appointed professor of municipal science, and from 1944 he also served as an adviser to Istanbul's shipping and harbour administration.
He published two Turkish-language professional books on urbanism and municipal finance. Rather than academic originality, he brought a pronounced pragmatism, transmitting Western ideas along with his own experience from Berlin municipal politics, and his discussion-style teaching, which invited students to interrupt him and question established authority, trained a generation of administrators, officials and town planners. In these years he was an exile who survived Nazi persecution among rival great powers, before returning to post-war Berlin to become the politician who personified the divided city of the Cold War.