Adam Frasunkiewicz

Adam Frasunkiewicz (* December 23, 1873 in Bromberg ; † July 31, 1923 in Bremen ) was a trained shoemaker and, as a determined opponent of the First World War, developed into a revolutionary. As an exponent of the left wing of the USPD , he assumed a leading position in the Bremen Soviet Republic and, after it was broken up, worked as the party's district secretary. After the SPD merged with the USPD in September 1922, he quickly lost influence and lost his party office.

Life

Professional development and party career in the SPD before the First World War

Born as the son of a shoemaker in a Catholic environment, he learned his father's trade and went on a hike. In 1897 he settled in Bremen and joined the free trade union and the SPD, in which he was heavily involved. He renounced his Catholic faith. Around 1903 he became self-employed as a shoemaker. In early 1909 he moved to the Prussian factory suburb of Hemelingen , where he took over the branch expedition of the Bremer Bürger-Zeitung . In the same year he was elected to the community committee by the workers with an overwhelming majority. From September 1913 to March 1914 he completed the last course at the central party school of the SPD in Berlin. In April the general assembly of the Social Democratic Party Association Hemelingen (869 members) appointed him 1st chairman.

Activity and protective custody in the First World War

After the outbreak of the First World War, Frasunkiewicz, who was not suitable for military use because of a curvature of the spine, became an opponent of the war. In the summer of 1915, for example, he signed the “open letter” designed by Karl Liebknecht to the Reichstag parliamentary group and the party executive of the SPD. In party meetings he agitated against their truce policy and called for a return to the class struggle. In April 1917 he probably took part in the founding congress of the USPD in Gotha . His local Hemelinger club joined the new party with a large majority. He was taken into protective custody in mid-August 1917 and was held in the remand prison in Bremen until October 31, 1918.

Activity in the Workers and Soldiers Council of Bremen and in the Soviet Republic

On the evening of November 6, 1918, Frasunkiewicz gave a lengthy address from the balcony of the Bremen town hall to workers, sailors and soldiers gathered in the market square. He asked them to elect delegates for the planned workers 'and soldiers' council . He was a leading member of the subsequently formed action committee. He campaigned vehemently for a purely council system and opposed the convening of a constituent national assembly , which he called "the nation's gravedigger". As a delegate of the Bremen Workers' Council at the 1st Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in Berlin (December 16-21, 1918), he belonged to the radical minority. The communist members of the Bremen Workers 'and Soldiers' Council ( International Communists of Germany ) regarded him as a liaison to the USPD. In this role he again proclaimed the Soviet Republic on January 10, 1919 from the balcony of the town hall. In the executive body, the nine-member council of people's representatives , the Reichstag deputy Alfred Henke (USPD) took over the chairmanship, Frasunkiewicz acted as his deputy. His motion to prevent the election of the National Assembly on January 19 in Bremen did not find a majority in the plenum of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council. After the Soviet republic had failed after just a few days due to the credit freeze imposed by the banks, government troops in Verden / Aller prepared to put them down militarily. Frasunkiewicz was a member of the second delegation that negotiated with the military on the night of February 1-2. Despite extensive concessions, it achieved nothing. The government troops defeated the Soviet Republic militarily on February 4, 1919 and established a “Provisional Government” consisting of five majority Socialists.

Activity as district party secretary of the USPD and member of the Bremen citizenship

Frasunkiewicz was detained for two days in March 1919 and spent several weeks in pre-trial or protective custody from April 22 to June 9. In August 1919, the executive committee of the newly formed Northwest party district (approx. 14,000 members) appointed him party secretary. In this capacity he worked tirelessly and appeared as a speaker at numerous meetings of his party and political opponents. At the beginning of October 1919, a spy in the government protection force counted him, unlike the more moderate Alfred Henke, among the leaders of the radical party wing. In the autumn of that year he was one of the well-known supporters of the USPD joining the Communist International and agreed in principle as a party congress delegate. A year later he voted against it at the Halle party congress because he sharply rejected the 21 conditions for admission that Lenin had now set up. Thus he belonged to the minority, the so-called residual USPD, which continued to exist as an independent party. In any case, it had only had to accept a comparatively small loss of members in the north-west district and in Bremen still had more members than the SPD. After the general election on June 6, 1920, Frasunkiewicz moved into the Bremen state parliament as a member of the strongest parliamentary group. He was a sharp-tongued speaker, but rarely spoke up. In a new election on February 20, 1921, he missed a new mandate with list position 26 on the candidate list. After the murder of the democratic center politician Matthias Erzberger on August 26, 1921, Frasunkiewicz took a vehement position against well-known Bremen USPD functionaries such as Alfred Faust , Hans Hackmack and Alfred Henke because they had campaigned for their party's entry into a coalition government at the Reich level with civil participation . While they stood up for the defense of the endangered republic, he continued to advocate sharp class struggle . Even after the assassination of the Reich Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau on June 24, 1922, which the workers' organizations responded to with warning strikes and mass rallies, he retained his skeptical attitude towards the coalition option that was being discussed again. He no longer opposed the decision of the USPD Reich leadership to merge the two social democratic parties announced on July 19. After the reunification in September / October 1922, he held the position of party secretary for several months and appeared as a conference speaker, but increasingly lost his influence. In March 1923 he announced that the district secretariat in Bremen had been closed. Immediately afterwards he took over a position as warehouse keeper for the consumer cooperative “Vorwärts” in the Bremen rural community of Arsten . On April 28, 1922 he moved back into the Bremen citizenship as a replacement for the retired Alfred Henke. On February 22, 1923, the plenum rejected an application for the waiver of his immunity because he had given a class-struggle speech at a funeral and "mocked Christianity".

Private life and death

Little is known about Frasunkiewicz's personal life. On April 27, 1920, he married 18-year-old Lucie Steinbach, who came from a working-class family in Bremen. On January 17, 1921, she gave birth to a son who was named after the father Adam. At the end of July 1923, Frasunkiewicz suddenly fell ill with an intestinal disease. He died on July 31 in the Bremen club hospital after an operation. Alfred Henke gave the funeral speech in the crematorium of the Riensberg cemetery .

literature

• Ulrich Schröder: Adam Frasunkiewicz and the split in the Hemelingen social democracy in the First World War. In: Year Book for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Issue 2 (2015), pp. 128–143.
• Ulrich Schröder: Adam Frasunkiewicz - shoemaker, opponent of war, prisoner, revolutionary, party secretary, warehouse keeper: a political biography. In: Bremisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 96 (2017), pp. 102–143.
• Rebecka Schlecht: Two voices on the revolution. Adam Frasunkiewicz and Theodor Spitta. In: Eva Schöck-Quinteros, Ulrich Schröder, Joscha Glanert (Hrsg.): Revolution in Bremen. "The whole German Reich stands against us." , From the files on the stage, Vol. 14, Bremen 2018, ISBN 978-3-88722-760-9 , pp. 13–34.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bremer Bürger-Zeitung , December 9, 1918.
2. ↑ State Archive Bremen-4,65-220, Bl. 209, RST / I c, Tgb.-Nr. 2464, report of October 4, 1919.
3. ^ Negotiations of the Bremen citizenship from 1923, recorded in shorthand, p. 52 f.