Adolf Berthold Ludwig Grimme (31 December 1889 – 27 August 1963) was a German politician, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He was the cultural minister in the Free State of Prussia during the later years of the Weimar Republic and after World War II, during the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany. During Nazi Germany, he was arrested as a member of the German Resistance and sentenced to prison. After the war, he filed a legal complaint against the judge who had condemned him and others. After years of delays, the case was dropped by the prosecutor.
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Life before 1945
Grimme was born in Goslar, Prussian Hanover, the son of Louise, née Sander (1858–1952) and Adolf Grimme (1854–1906), a train station master. In 1908, he began studying philosophy and German studies, attending the University of Halle, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Göttingen. He was also involved in the free student reform movement. He finished passing his state exams in philosophy in 1914. In 1922, he became a member of the SPD. He began teaching in 1924. He then became a senior teacher (Oberstudienrat) in Hanover and in 1925, he became the superintendent in Magdeburg.
Grimme became the assistant minister at the Prussian Ministry of Culture (officially, the Ministry of Science, Art and Education, and a year later, the vice president of the provincial school council of Berlin and Mark Brandenburg. In 1930, he became the successor to Carl Heinrich Becker, serving as the last culture minister of the democratically elected state government of Otto Braun in Prussia. He was removed from this position on 20 July 1932 when the state government was deposed by Franz von Papen in the Prussian coup. He sat as a member of the Landtag of Prussia from the election of April 1932 until that body was dissolved by the Nazis in October 1933.