Adam Hornbach

Adam Hornbach (* 5. March 1873 in Straßbessenbach ; † 12. December 1959 in Cologne ) was a German Christian trade unionists , who because of his anti-fascist stance in the crosshairs of 1933 after the Nazis came.

Life and work in the empire

Adam Hornbach was born the son of a Catholic stadium commander of the gendarmerie . National sentiments prevailed in the parental home. Hornbach attended the elementary school in Bad Brückenau for 7 years and then the advanced training and evening school at the same location for 3 years. Then he learned the trade of a bookbinder.

From 1896 to 1898 he did his military service with the 9th Infantry Regiment in Würzburg and was released as a non-commissioned officer . After the end of his service, he applied as a gendarme and was trained at the gendarmerie school in Munich . Until 1901 he worked as a gendarme in the Bad Kissingen district office and in Würzburg.

Since 1901 he was back in Hamburg as a bookbinder working in Hamburg, he joined the free trade union German bookbinder Association at. The exit from the free trade union organization took place because of their anti-religious basic attitude. The Franconian passed his master craftsman examination in Hamburg and joined a large bookbindery as a department head. On March 17, 1906, Hornbach in the Hanseatic city became a member of the Christian Graphical Central Association, founded in 1904 and based in Cologne , which primarily united Christian bookbinders, lithographers and lithographers and had its organizational bases in the Rhineland , Westphalia , Bavaria and southern Baden . The central association was thus in competition with the free trade union German bookbinder association and the association of lithographers, lithographers and related professions . In 1906 the Christian organization had 1,360 members.

Hornbach acted from August 11, 1906 as secretary and from February 1907 as cashier of the Hamburg local group. In August 1907 he was elected provisional 1st Hamburg chairman. With 40 members, the local group in the so-called "red Hamburg" was the largest paying agency outside of the Christian union strongholds. The relatively high level of organization made it possible for him to be recognized as an equal representative in the Hamburg collective bargaining negotiations. In 1907, the Hamburg chairman was the first representative of his association to conclude a collective agreement (together with the free trade union rival organization), which earned him recognition from Christian trade unionists across the country. The regular election to the office of Hamburg chairman took place on January 17, 1908. In addition, from February 14, 1907, he held the office of second secretary in the Christian union cartel Hamburg .

Hornbach moved to Cologne in June 1908 , where he was hired full-time as an association secretary to support the chairman. The 2nd General Assembly of the Central Graphical Association from May 28 to 29, 1909 in Würzburg elected Adam Hornbach as its 1st full-time chairman after the previous chairman Joseph Hillen had voluntarily resigned from his office. The new chairman of the association received unanimous votes for his re-election at all association days until 1933. He belonged to the closer leadership group of the Christian trade union movement, which led the Christian individual trade unions for a quarter of a century. The delegates of the VII. Congress of the Christian trade unions in Germany sent him in 1909 to the association committee; he also held this office until 1933. In 1932 elected to the main board of the association at the 13th congress of the Christian trade unions in September 1932 in Düsseldorf .

The association chairman was drafted immediately after the war began in September 1914 and served as a deputy sergeant (later as a sergeant and deputy officer) in a railway auxiliary battalion in the western theaters of war. In his absence, the organization was headed by Lorenz Sedlmayr . During the war, Hornbach worked as a correspondent for the trade union journal Graphic Voices , where he already commented on questions of collective bargaining policy for the coming post-war period.

Weimar Republic

Hornbach took over the association's board again in February 1919. After Lorenz Sedlmayr left the association, he was also briefly head of the association from May 1921 to December 1922. After the November Revolution, Hornbach pleaded for a complete merger with the Christian Gutenberg Bund in order to achieve a Christian industrial union for all “paper workers”. After initially good chances of a merger, his efforts failed due to resistance from the Christian printing union. The Graphische Industrieverband , founded in January 1919 , remained a cartel association with two independent individual trade unions, which steadily lost its importance until the end of the Weimar Republic. The cartel association was headed by the printer Paul Thränert as 1st chairman and the bookbinder Paul Hornbach as 2nd chairman until 1933 .

Hornbach played a prominent role in the international merger of Christian trade unions. Elected to the international board of directors as 2nd secretary at the founding congress of the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Graphic Industry from June 16 to 19, 1920 in Berlin . Re-election as 2nd secretary to the board of the industrial association at the 1st International Congress from August 14th to 15th, 1921 in Stuttgart . Hornbach retained this electoral office until 1933.

At the beginning of the Weimar Republic , Hornbach's organization had around 9,000 members (including 30% women). The increased number of members resulted from the acquisition of unskilled skilled workers in the paper mills in the Düren area. The Graphical Central Association however had (about 3000) to the Christian these members after violent border disputes Central Association of Christian Factory and Transport Workers Germany exits. After severe membership setbacks during the inflation, Hornbach's union slowly recovered (1930: 5,300 members).

He owed Hornbach's undisputed position in the association to his reputation as a tariff expert. The material improvement of his professional colleagues was his main focus. He worked closely with the free trade unions . For religious and ideological reasons, however, another type of collaboration was out of the question.

time of the nationalsocialism

In August 1933, Hornbach was arrested because he was suspected of having leaked material for a brochure against DAF boss Robert Ley to his Christian trade union international in Utrecht ; then questioned 19 times in the Gestapo building in Cologne for years. The bookbinder was in regular contact with the resistance group of Christian trade unionists in Cologne around Jakob Kaiser , who had met since 1934 in the former trade union building "Deutsches Haus". In March 1938 Hornbach found work again and was employed by the Kolping family in Cologne. After the assassination attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944, the Gestapo cracked down on Hornbach during interrogations in order to blackmail Jakob Kaiser's whereabouts. Hornbach went into hiding in Thuringia at the end of 1944 .

post war period

Even after the end of the war, Hornbach continued to work in the general secretariat of the Kolping family . He was appointed a member of the denazification appointment committee for the Cologne administrative region . A petition to the Aid Office for Politically Persecuted People of the City of Cologne to be recognized as politically persecuted was unsuccessful in 1946, although the 1st chairman of the Cologne CDU , Johannes Albers , had campaigned for him. Only with the Federal Compensation Act of 1956 was he retrospectively awarded a pension. In 1952, on his 75th birthday, IG Druck und Papier commemorated Hornbach as one of the fathers of the unified trade union .

Adam Hornbach died in Cologne on December 12, 1959 .

literature

• A quarter of a century Graphischer Zentralverband. Verlag Graphischer Zentralverband, Cologne 1929.
• Heiner Budde: The alternative. Neither capitalism nor socialism. The development of Christian social politics in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic. With images of life from former Christian trade unionists and politicians. CDA-Verl., Königswinter, 1987, ISBN 3-924647-02-X .
• Rüdiger Zimmermann: Adam Hornbach 1877-1959. In: From the printing association to the unified union. 150 years ver.di . Berlin 2016, pp. 86–87.

Web links

• Rüdiger Zimmermann : Biographies of the leading editors and chairmen of the Central Graphical Association (including forerunners). Retrieved June 23, 2015 . 
• Graphic voices 1905-1933. Retrieved June 23, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hamburg State Archives, holdings Political Police, 331-3, No. S 14548 (Adam Hornbach).
2. ^ District government Düsseldorf, Adam Hornbach compensation file, ZK 19637.
3. ↑ printing and paper. Central organ of the Printing and Paper Industry Union, Vol. 4, No. 5, March 1, 1952, p. 101.