Otto Suhr

Otto Suhr
Otto Suhr (centre) at Tempelhof Airport with Berlin children departing for holidays in West Germany, 1955
Governing Mayor of Berlin
In office 11 January 1955 – 30 August 1957
Preceded by	Walther Schreiber
Succeeded by	Willy Brandt
Personal details
Born	21 February 1945 (1945-02-21) Oldenburg, Duchy of Oldenburg, German Empire
Died	West Berlin
Political party	Social Democrats

Otto Suhr (17 August 1894 - 30 August 1957) was a German politician as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He served as the Governing Mayor of Berlin (i.e. West Berlin) from 1955 until his death.

He was born 1894 in Oldenburg and went with his family to Osnabrück when he was nine years old; four years later the family went to Leipzig. Suhr studied economics, history and publishing science, interrupted by his service at the German Army in World War I. From 1922 he worked as a secretary at the Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund trade unions' association and received his doctorate in 1923. After the Machtergreifung of 1933, Suhr worked as a journalist at the Frankfurter Zeitung and other newspapers.

From 1946 Suhr was president of the Berlin Stadtverordnetenversammlung city assembly, and from 1951 until 1954 also of its successor, the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. He had to face the division of the city, when the assembly was forced to move into the Rathaus Schöneberg in the American sector. In 1948/49 Suhr was a deputy at the Herrenchiemsee convention and the Parlamentarischer Rat (parliamentary council) to create a new German constitution. After ratification of the Grundgesetz in 1949 he was elected to the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) of West-Germany, until he resigned his seat in 1952. In the West Berlin election of December 1954, Suhr and the SPD reached an absolute majority of the votes cast. He was elected Regierender Bürgermeister (Governing Mayor) in January 1955, succeeding the Christian Democrat politician Walther Schreiber.

Two years later he died in office in Berlin. In his honour, the biggest and one of the most important institute for political science in Germany - the Otto-Suhr-Institut at the Free University of Berlin, the former Deutsche Hochschule für Politik re-established and led by Suhr from 1948 to 1955, is named after him; as well as a street in Oldenburg (in the district Eversten) and Otto-Suhr-Allee in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg.

Preceded by Walther Schreiber	Mayors of Berlin 1955 – 1957	Succeeded by Willy Brandt
Preceded by -	President of the Landtag of Berlin 1951–1955	Succeeded by Willy Brandt