Karl Hamann

Dr. Karl Hamann
Karl Hamann (1950)
Born	4 March 1903 Hildesheim, Province of Hanover, Prussia, German Empire
Died	6 June 1973 Munich, West Germany
Occupation	Politician
Political party	LDPD

Karl Otto Hamann (4 March 1903 in Hildesheim – 16 June 1973 in Munich) was a German politician. Between 1948 and 1952 he was chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of (East) Germany (LDPD) and also the German Democratic Republic's Minister for Trade and Supply.

In December 1952 he was arrested, stripped of his positions and imprisoned. Following his release, in May 1957 he was able to flee to West Germany, but he never again engaged in public politics.

From 1922 till 1927 Hamann studied Agricultural Sciences at Hohenheim, Bonn and Berlin. Subsequently he became the head of Employment Offices in Schwerte, Hörde and Dortmund, and, in 1931, of a relocation co-operative in Thuringia. In 1933 he was awarded a doctorate from the University of Bonn for a dissertation entitled "The Labour Market in the Westphalian Agriculture Sector". From 1935, following a series of company directorships, he lived as an independent farmer near Römhild in Thuringia.

After the war his Thuringian home found itself in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany which was in the process of mutating into the German Democratic Republic, politically separated both from West Germany and from those parts of the former country which, following the border changes agreed by the Potsdam conference now found themselves in Poland and the Soviet Union. Back in 1933 Hamann had been a supporter of the SPD (moderate socialist party) but now, in 1946, he joined the Liberal Democratic Party of (East) Germany, becoming the party's regional Chairman for Thuringia.