Adolf Damaschke

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Adolf Damaschke

Adolf Wilhelm Ferdinand Damaschke (born November 24, 1865 in Berlin ; † July 30, 1935 there ) was a teacher and a leader of land reform in Germany .

Live and act

Adolf Damaschke came from a Berlin carpenter family and grew up in the confined space of a tenement . He didn't even have his own bed until he was 10. When he started school in 1871, there was no regular place at the public elementary school for him due to the rapid population growth . So he first attended a private school at state expense . When he later received a recommendation for a high school, his parents had to refuse because of the expected costs.

As a 15-year-old Damaschke got to know the free church Christ Church and its pastor Paulus Stephanus Cassel . The worship life of this congregation impressed the young people because - according to Damaschke in his memoirs - "everything here was self-won conviction and not a habitual Christianity". Damaschke got involved in the parish and became the head of the Sunday school there .

Elementary school teacher

In 1883, the 18-year-old had the opportunity to train as a primary school teacher on a free space at the Berlin Pedagogical Seminar. Ten years later he took up his first job and then experienced the social hardship of his own childhood one more time - this time from the perspective of the educator. His first public fight was for the freedom of teaching materials . He advocated this in lectures and newspaper articles and came into conflict with his employer, the Berlin magistrate . He was transferred to a sentence. In 1896 he himself asked to be dismissed from school and became a freelance writer : “To separate myself from the immediate school work is the worst sacrifice I make. But I have to serve my social ideals, and in the long run I can only do that if I am completely independent. ”(Damaschke, Memoirs) In 1896 Johannes Lehmann-Hohenberg appointed him editor-in-chief of the Kieler Neue Nachrichten, founded in 1894 .

Life reformer

As early as 1893 Damaschke was appointed secretary of the life reform magazine Der Naturarzt . It was the official organ of the "Federation of associations for public health care". Here he was particularly committed to a healthy and above all abstinent lifestyle. In natural medicine - especially in the healing powers of light, air, water and a simple diet - he saw a quick-acting and at the same time inexpensive contribution to the public health of the industrial proletariat.

Soil reformer

Adolf Damaschke: The Land Reform (1913)

He received an important impetus for his real life theme, land reform , from a lecture by the economist Adolph Wagner , which was about the profits of the land speculators after the war of 1870/1871. The land prices, which rose by up to 30 percent, left thousands of Berlin working-class families who could no longer pay their rents overnight homeless.

Damaschke received a further impulse from the “ German Federation for Land Property Reform ” ( Michael Flürscheim 1888), especially from its magazine Freiland . The realization grew in him that "the accumulation of landed property in the hands of a few has disastrous consequences for all peoples, either directly or in the form of land debt". In 1898 he initiated the establishment of the "Bund deutscher Bodenreformer" (first: " Deutscher Bund für Bodenreform "), of which he was chairman from 1898 to 1935.

In the Bible he discovered a "great example of land reform legislation". Land and land - according to Damaschke with reference to the 3rd book of Moses , chapter 25 - are under divine reservation of title. It is true that people were allowed to use the land that God gave them on loan. However, they were only entitled to the income from their labor, not to the monetary value of the land, the so-called “increase in land yield”. According to Damaschke, this increase in earnings must be skimmed off for tax purposes and made available to the general public. This in turn has the task of using this taxpayer money for the construction of houses and the alleviation of social hardship.

Another source of inspiration for Damaschke was the social reformer Henry George, alongside the soil reform texts . There are certain parallels to the Freiland concept of the economic theorist Silvio Gesell , although both are very distant from each other.

Damaschke tried to put his insights into practice and then founded settlement companies and tenants' cooperatives - for example in Frankfurt (Oder) . He developed an extensive lecture activity and put his thoughts on paper in numerous writings and books. His ideas were spread in Christian circles primarily through the Hamburg Baptist pastor Carl August Flügge . He also had a close friendship with the expansionist, national-liberal social reformer Friedrich Naumann .

Even if Damaschke's ideas could not prevail “on a large scale”, they still had a strong influence on the political thinking and actions of his contemporaries. 76 members of the various political parties in the Weimar National Assembly in 1919 were so-called "Damaschkians". With their help, we succeeded in introducing the following article into the imperial constitution :

  • Article 155. [Land distribution and use] The distribution and use of the land is monitored by the state in a way that prevents abuse and strives towards the goal of providing every German with a healthy home and all German families, especially those with many children, with housing that meets their needs - and to secure commercial homes ... Real estate, the acquisition of which is necessary to satisfy housing needs, to promote settlement and reclamation or to improve agriculture, can be expropriated. The Fideikommisse are to be dissolved. The cultivation and exploitation of the land is a duty of the landowner to the community. The increase in the value of the land, which arises without any labor or capital expenditure on the property, must be made usable for the whole. All natural resources and all economically usable natural forces are under the supervision of the state. Private shelves are to be transferred to the state by way of legislation.

Another political success of Damaschke's land reform movement was the Reichsheimstätten Act of 1920.

Damaschke's supporters were so strong at the beginning of the Weimar Republic that he was chosen as a candidate for the office of Reich President in the event of a popular election . However, since the Reichstag reached an agreement on Friedrich Ebert on October 24, 1922 with the required two-thirds majority , the popular election was constitutionally omitted and with it Damaschke's candidacy.

In the period that followed, there was strong resistance to his reform ideas. The political parties turned away from Damaschke because he remained non-party. The big daily newspapers refused to support him for fear of losing their well-funded advertisers. He was even publicly suspected of disguised communism.

Damaschke as a Christian

Title page of a tract on Damaschke's land reform, published in the Friedensboten-Bücherei, Vol. VII (edited by the Baptist preacher CA Flügge)

The Bible was for Damaschke not only of impulses of his reformist ideas, but also "guide to a fulfilled life." He made his faith particularly strong in the person of Jesus Christ . Until the end he publicly stood up for his beliefs. When at a meeting of the Society for Prehistory and Prehistory the view was taken in 1934 that Indo-European people had to break away from Semitic Christianity , Damaschke replied in his - by the way, last public - speech: "Is it really true that the Indo-European people have different Looking for sources of strength? Let's go through castles and huts! When German human hearts look for consolation and strength in very high and very difficult hours, in the highest development or in the most painful renunciation and despair, then it is not Hermann the Cheruscan , not Otto von Bismarck , not Master Ekkehard , not Fichte or Lagarde , then it is it is always the image of Jesus Christ, in which the greatest joy is ennobled and deepest pain ends in a reconciling way. ... Every effect presupposes a corresponding cause - a unique effect a unique cause. But this cause was and is called: Jesus Christ. "

Damaschke was also familiar with internal struggles and doubts. It was thanks to Friedrich Naumann, with whom the National Social Association connected him - according to Damaschke - that he "got solid ground under his feet again". With him he got to know the “Christianity of the good Samaritan”, “which knows that it is responsible before God for the fate of its brother”.

Appreciations

The appreciation of his work was not lacking. Towns and villages named districts, streets, squares, bridges and allotment garden settlements after the land reformer.

The universities of Münster (1919), Berlin (1925) and Gießen (1925) awarded him an honorary doctorate in law, medicine and theology.

Private

Damaschke was married to Julie Gelzer, a daughter of the Jena philologist Heinrich Gelzer , and had 3 daughters since 1904 .

From 1907 he lived in Werder (Havel) near the train station in today's "Adolf-Damaschke-Straße".

He died after a serious cancer illness in 1935 and was buried in Werder (Havel). On his tombstone is the biblical phrase: "We know that we have come from death into life because we love the brothers".

Portraits

  • One-sided cast bronze plaque 1919, 110 × 78 mm. Medalist : Rudolf Bosselt (1871–1938). Front: ADOLF DAMASCHKE - Bearded chest image in Rock to right on the right edge signed : RUD. BOSSELT 1919. Literature: Vera Losse, 1995, No. 120.

Works

  • Tasks of municipal politics. From community socialism. Gustav Fischer, Jena, 5th, essential. exp. Edition 1904
  • Yearbook of land reform , quarterly books, Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1905–1942
  • History of Political Economy. A first introduction. Gustav Fischer, 2nd through. Jena 1905, frequent new editions. until 1929
  • Popular rhetoric. Experience and advice. Gustav Fischer, Jena 1911
  • The land reform. Fundamental and historical information on understanding and overcoming social hardship. 1915, 1922
  • History of Oratory. A first introduction. Gustav Fischer, Jena 1921
  • Rise or fall? A lecture on land reform by Dr. Adolf Damaschke. Federal publishing house d. ö. Soil reformer, local group Salzburg. Zaunrith'sche Buchdruckerei, Salzburg. 17883. Salzburg 1923
  • as publisher: Kriegerheimstätten, a question of fate for the German people. Lecture given by AD, Chairman of the Association of German Soil Reformers and the “Main Committee for Warrior Homes”. in public meeting convened by the German National Association for Austria on January 8, 1916 in Vienna. Series: Social Issues of Time, 66th Verlag Bodenreform, Berlin 1916, 1917. Appendix: Peter Rosegger and Richard Weiskirchner on Kriegerheimstätten.
  • Out of my life . Grethlein, Leipzig 1924
  • Turning point. From my life, second volume , Grethlein, Leipzig 1925
  • with Johannes Wehrmann: Land reform, moral hardship: The community . Messenger of Peace Library, 7th Christian Tract Society. Publishing house of the German Baptists , Kassel undated (1928)
  • A struggle for socialism and nation. From the struggle for land for every national. Dresden 1935

See also

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Michael Stolleis and Dieter Simon (eds.): Legal history in National Socialism. Contributions to the history of a discipline . Tübingen 1989. p. 17. Online p. 17
  2. ↑ for example Lingen (Ems)
  3. ^ "He was looking for a refuge" , Märkische Allgemeine , November 24, 2015, p. 23
  4. ↑ 1 John 3:14
  5. ↑ The lecture was initially sold individually in high editions (23,000 copies) by the “Verlag des Deutschnationalen Verein für Österreich”, then there was this new edition. in the series of publications of the association with appendix. In the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . Total circulation 120000
  6. ↑ Corresponds to: "Friedensbotenheft", 45, 46, 72, 52, 36, 37

Web links

Commons : Adolf Damaschke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Damaschke, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Damaschke, Adolf Wilhelm Ferdinand (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Educator and a leader in the land reform movement
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1935
Place of death Berlin