Adolf Dethmann

Adolf Dethmann (born December 3, 1896 in Neumünster ; † August 6, 1979 in Hamburg ) was a German political scientist, industrial clerk and bookseller.

Childhood, youth and education

Adolf Dethmann was a son of Hans Peter Adolf Dethmann (born February 20, 1865 in Meldorf ) and his wife Katharina Henriette (Henny) , née Boysen (born December 8, 1870 in Flensburg ; † October 1, 1952 in Heikendorf ). The father worked as a businessman and finally as a representative in Neumünster . Around 1916 he was the general agent for the Elmshorn company Wagner-Margarine for northern Germany. The mother worked as a cleaner and wrote an autobiographical novel.

Dethmann attended the Holstenschule from 1907 until he graduated from high school at Easter 1915 . At the beginning of the First World War and later again he volunteered for military service. The army rejected his request due to insufficient physical constitution. He then studied law and political science at the University of Heidelberg. After the end of the first semester in September 1915 he received a call to army service in Neumünster, but never fought at the front. Apparently due to health problems, he spent several months in a hospital. In the spring of 1917 he was released from military service.

From the summer semester of 1917, Dethmann studied law at the University of Kiel. For the winter semester 1918/19, he took political science instead. In the summer semester of 1919 he enrolled at the medical faculty without studying there. During his time in Kiel he lived with the writer Richard Blunck until the summer semester of 1919 . Until the end of the war he worked alongside his studies as an office clerk at the Kaiserliche Werft Kiel. It was here that he probably first saw the angry shipyard workers on the evening before the November Revolution . In December 1920 he received his doctorate in political science under Richard Passow . In his work he dealt with the Marxist theory of council democracy.

Political commitment

At the end of the war, Dethmann was a member of a group of young intellectuals, including expressionist artists, social scientists and left-wing radicals. From around 1917 to 1922 it was a loose association with open external relations. In addition to Blunck, the painter Peter Drömmer was part of the group. Dethmann cultivated a close friendship with both of them and later supported Drömmer financially. Other members were Kurt Albert Gerlach and his assistant Richard Sorge .

During this time, Dethmann attended Bernhard Harms' courses at the Institute for the World Economy . Between 1918 and 1922, a group of people researched here much discussed issues of the labor movement and Marxism. The social scientists working there included Paul Hermberg , Alfred Meusel and Rudolf Heberle . Among the artists and scientists, Dethmann developed the strongest political activities. At the beginning of 1919 he joined the board of the Kiel local branch of the KPD and took over the editing of the party newspaper Spartakus. Organ of the Communist Party for the Province of Schleswig-Holstein . The paper was only published from March to May 1919.

In the KPD, Dethmann was extremely radical. He rejected a return of the communists to the union as well as participation in parliamentary elections and in works councils. Nor did he advocate the centralism aimed at by the Berlin party leadership. During the conflicts he acted both practically and theoretically. In his dissertation he dealt with council democracy as an alternative to parliamentary democracy. He responded to the national communist orientation of Fritz Wolffheim and Heinrich Laufenberg with his idea of ​​an "Anti-National Communist League".

In April 1920 the KPD split. Dethmann then switched to the KAPD and quickly gained influence. In August 1920 he moved to Berlin . In mid-January 1921 he represented the KAPD in Moscow , where he negotiated with the Executive Committee of the Communist International, wanted to see the situation in Russia and find international opponents to the Moscow leadership. A little later, the leadership of the KAPD decided to withdraw from the Communist International.

At the beginning of April 1921, Dethmann returned to Germany, where he found a clearly weakened left-wing radicalism. He founded a Communist Workers' International, but found few supporters in some countries. He was also a member of the Executive Committee of the KAPD, which had five members. Here he mainly dealt with theoretical questions. Karl Schröder and the Dutchman Hermann Gorter supported him. Dethmann wrote a trade union concept in which he canceled the dispute for social improvements and called for a revolution. Due to this concept, the KAP split in spring 1922.

Change to business

Shortly after the split in the KAPD, Dethmann ended his political activities. From September 1922 he worked for about four years as a secretary to the board of directors at the Keula ironworks , and then for several medium-sized companies. In mid-April 1929 he got a job as private secretary at the aircraft manufacturer Hugo Junkers , at the time the largest German and internationally important producer of all-metal aircraft. Here he worked with Drömmer (active here since 1923 as an “artistic advisor” and married to a daughter Junkers) and Blunck (employed in corporate propaganda since 1927).

The trio Dethmann, Drömmer and Blunk influenced Hugo Junkers considerably. Blunck and Drömmer took on important positions in the company's external image, Dethmann developed into Junkers' closest confidante and was able to achieve a change of direction in the management of Junkers Flugzeugwerk AG (IFA). Junkers and Dethmann shared interests in fundamental issues and theoretical considerations, science-based and socio-ethical action.

In December 1931 Dethmann took over the post of director of the IFA. He fired the existing leaders who were former officers of the First World War. The management staff around Gotthard Sachsenberg wanted to politicize and militarize civil aviation. In addition, they had put IFA in a financial situation that threatened its existence.

Dethmann turned out to be a sober and successful entrepreneur. Together with the employees, he saved costs, radically rationalized production and thus ensured the continued existence of the company. Following Junker's request, Dethmann took over the management of the entire group in November 1932. With his renovation and modernization measures, he created the basis for the later mass production, the introduction of which he no longer accompanied.

Dismissal and work as an antiquarian

The state authorities, first and foremost the Reich Ministries for Transport and Military, had viewed Dethmann's dismissals of the air officers with great suspicion and tried to prevent them. Based on his communist history, they constructed the thesis that he was a Soviet agent who wanted to destroy a major German company. After the seizure of power , the National Socialists removed what they saw as problematic leaders of the Junkers factories. In doing so, they created the basis for expropriating the company and converting it to mass production of war aircraft according to state specifications.

In March 1933, the Reich Ministry of Aviation ordered the arrest of Dethmann, Drommern, and another employee. The following investigation against Dethmanns based on suspected treason did not bring any result. Nevertheless, Hermann Göring ordered that Dethmann was no longer allowed to work in any Junkers factories. In addition, he was not allowed to have a residence in Dessau and to maintain no contact with Junkers. In 1933 Dethmann went to Hamburg and worked here in a scientific antiquarian bookshop.

Dethmann was bombed out during the Second World War . He moved to the Plön district. In 1945 he co-founded the KPD. In 1946 he became a member of the district council and deputy district administrator. In the same year he got a full-time position as a department head for the city of Kiel. In 1948 he went to Hamburg again and rebuilt the second-hand bookshop. In 1957 he got a job at the economic authority.

In 1950/51 Dethmann co-founded the Independent Workers' Party of Germany , which however only existed for a short time.

family

Dethmann married Elli Gertrud Käthe Kramer on September 3, 1921 in Kiel (born September 5, 1897 in Hildesheim ; † August 30, 1993 in Hamburg). Her father Cornelius Heinrich Theodor Kramer was a Hildesheim master tailor and married to Sofie Wilhelmine Elisabeth, née Scheefe. The couple had a son.

literature

• Detlef Siegfried : Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 121–125.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 121.
2. ↑ Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 121–122.
3. ↑ Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 121–122.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 122.
5. ↑ Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 122–123.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 123.
7. ↑ Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 123–124.
8. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 124.
9. ↑ Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 124–125.
10. ↑ Detlef Siegfried: Dethmann, Adolf . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 125.