Kolb was born in 1902, the son of businessman Eduard Kolb and Celementine Kolb (née Stichter). The family resided in Bonn, where Kolb attended Beethoven Gymnasium and later studied law at the University of Bonn. He joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) whilst a student in 1920. In 1922, Kolb formed the Republican Student Cartel, an organisation promoting liberal ideas and opposing antisemitism.
In 1923, Kolb was arrested by French authorities occupying the Rhineland, completing his first state exams during his detention. By 1924, he had begun working as a judicial clerk. In 1932, Kolb became the “Landrat” (district administrator) of the Herrschaft Schmalkalden district in Hesse.
Due to his criticism of National Socialism, Kolb was removed from his political duties, officially attributed to “cost-cutting”. He initially considered emigrating but ultimately decided against it, opening a law firm in Bonn where he defended political prisoners, leading to multiple arrests. In 1941, Kolb was drafted into the Wehrmacht. In 1944, he was falsely linked to the Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Hitler and subsequently arrested. He escaped from a prison transport in 1945 and remained in hiding until the war’s end.
After the war, Kolb became Mayor of Düsseldorf between 1945 and 1946. On 25 July 1946, he was elected Mayor of Frankfurt, the first such election since the Nazis took power in 1933 (two mayors had been appointed by US forces previously). A major focus of Kolb’s mayorship was the reconstruction of Frankfurt, which had suffered significant damage from allied bombing. He initiated the rebuilding of Frankfurt’s Old Town, overseeing the reconstruction of the Römer, Frankfurt Cathedral, and the Goethe House. Kolb also worked to revive the Messe Frankfurt and rebuild Frankfurt Airport.
During his time as mayor, several sports associations were founded in Frankfurt, including the German Football Association and the German Gymnastics Association. In 1946, Kolb encouraged Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Friedrich Pollock, intellectuals who had been in exile in the USA, to return to Frankfurt. They subsequently re-established the Frankfurt School at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1951. Kolb also instructed the Frankfurt City Archives to collect files relating to the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era in 1946, leading to the Commission for Research into the History of Frankfurt's Jews being established on 17 May 1961.
Kolb attempted to secure Frankfurt as the capital of West Germany, but these efforts were unsuccessful, with Bonn ultimately chosen in 1949. He was re-elected as Mayor of Frankfurt in 1954, but had begun to suffer from diabetes and heart problems.
Kolb’s involvement with the Stauffenberg plot, though inaccurate, led to his arrest in 1944 and subsequent escape in 1945. This incident highlights the risks he took opposing the Nazi regime.
Kolb married Anna Maria Elisabeth Trimborn in 1932. They had two children: a daughter who died after one day, and a son born in 1944 who died aged 17 in 1961. Kolb died of heart failure on 20 September 1956, at the age of 54. Over 100,000 people followed his coffin, demonstrating his popularity with the people of Frankfurt. He is buried at Frankfurt Main Cemetery.
The Walter-Kolb-Stiftung was founded in 1959 to provide grants for further education. In 1960, a school in Unterliederbach was named after Kolb. The Walter Kolb Memorial Prize, awarded by Goethe University Frankfurt for outstanding dissertations, has been presented since 1957. The long-form study of Kolb’s political thought and the full impact of his mayorship belongs to scholars of post-war German history rather than this article’s corpus.
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