Adolph Hoffmann

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Adolph Hoffmann (1911)
Relief on the gravestone, Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde . Sculptor: Martin Meyer-Pyritz

Johann Franz Adolph Hoffmann (born March 23, 1858 in Berlin ; † December 1, 1930 there ) was a socialist politician, a member of the Prussian House of Representatives and the German Reichstag as well as the Prussian Minister for Science, Culture and Education.

Life

Hoffmann was an illegitimate child; his mother died soon after he was born. He grew up with his grandparents, in children's homes and with foster parents. He was the foster son of a cloth maker and, after about three years of community school, trained as an engraver and gilder and came to the SAPD via the Berlin Free Religious Community in 1876 , from which the SPD emerged in 1890 . From the 1880s onwards, Hoffmann was first in the Halle area and then a leading party functionary in Berlin. From 1890 to 1893 he worked as an editor for social democratic newspapers in Halle and Zeitz , then as a publisher and bookseller in his hometown.

Hoffmann was a leader in the agitation of social democracy against the churches. As the author of the book The Ten Commandments and the Possessing Class (1891) he was also called "Ten Commandments Hoffmann". In 1897 he published The peaceful social revolution in the beginning of the twentieth century , one as a science fiction is dressed futurological treatise. From 1900 a member of the Berlin city council , he was elected to the Reichstag in 1904 , to which he initially belonged until 1906. In 1908 he was also elected to the Prussian state parliament, making him one of the first eight Social Democratic MPs to move into the second chamber of the state parliament, the Prussian House of Representatives , despite the three-class suffrage . His speeches in parliaments were known for their sharpness and wit.

He, who temporarily headed the Berlin party organization in 1916/17, belonged to the left wing of the SPD and was a co-founder of the USPD in 1917 . During the November Revolution he became - together with Konrad Haenisch (SPD) - Prussian Minister for Science, Art and National Education and appointed Max Hermann Baege as an educational adviser with the rank of Undersecretary in the Prussian "Ministry for Science, Culture and National Education". Because of the quarrels during the Spartacus uprising , Adolph Hoffmann resigned from the ministry on January 4, 1919. As education minister he had, among other things, pushed through the abolition of the church school inspectorate in Prussia. His anti-church statements made during this period aroused fear in the Catholic milieu of a new culture war and were a reason for the success of the Center Party in the elections for the Weimar National Assembly in 1919 and the preservation of church positions as part of the Weimar School Compromise .

In the USPD, too, Hoffmann belonged to the left wing and was re-elected to the Reichstag for this party in 1920. After the split of the USPD until the merger with the KPD , he took over the party chairmanship together with Ernst Däumig and then became a member of the central committee of the (V) KPD . Belonging to the wing of the party around chairmen Paul Levi and Ernst Däumig, he soon resigned from his offices, joined Levi's Communist Working Group (KAG) and returned with them in February 1922, initially to the USPD and at the end of the same year with a majority the party returned to the SPD. Hoffmann worked in the international workers' aid. In 1926 he spoke out in favor of the expropriation of the princes . In 1928 he fought against the entry of the SPD into the grand coalition of Hermann Müller , the Müller II cabinet . Since 1928 he was a member of the Prussian state parliament.

He also wrote poetry under the pseudonym JFA Volkmann.

literature

  • Adolph Hoffmann : In: Franz Osterroth : Biographisches Lexikon des Sozialismus . Deceased personalities . Vol. 1, JHW ​​Dietz Nachf., Hannover 1960, pp. 136-137.
  • Gernot Bandur: Hoffmann, Johann Franz Adolph . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 216-217.
  • Wolfgang Hofmann:  Hoffmann, Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 402 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Walther G. Oschilewski : 'Man is the measure of all things'. On the 50th anniversary of Adolph Hoffmann's death . In: The New Society . Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1980.
  • Gernot Bandur: He had the confidence of the workers . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1987, pp. 246-256.
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Gernot Bandur: Adolph Hoffmann - fiery proletarian volcano . Self-published, Berlin-Weißensee 2000.
  • Gernot Bandur: Adolph Hoffmann's life and work, free religious, socialist publisher and politician . Edited by the Humanist Academy Berlin. Editor: Eckhard Müller, Berlin 2008.
  • Horst Groschopp (Ed.): 'Los von der Kirche!' Adolph Hoffmann and the state-church separation in Germany . Alibri Verlag, Aschaffenburg 2009 (series of publications by the Humanist Academy Berlin, Volume 2) ISBN 978-3-86569-056-2 .
  • Hoffmann, Adolph . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Hans-Wolf Ebert, Volker Heiermann, Lars Hoffmann (eds.): From orphan to minister of revolution 1918, The life of Adolph Hoffmann, autobiographical notes of a social democrat of the 19th century . Pro BUSINESS, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86460-836 0 .

Web links

Commons : Adolph Hoffmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adolph Hoffmann. Berlin "veteran", free thinker for the separation of state and church Humanistic press service
  2. ^ Adolph Hoffmann - the "Ten Commandments Hoffmann" Berlin SPD
  3. ↑ Nessun SAPRA: Encyclopedia of German Science Fiction & Fantasy 1870-1918. Utopica, Oberhaid 2005, ISBN 3-938083-01-8 , p. 127 f.
  4. ↑ Table of contents from page 55.
personal data
SURNAME Hoffmann, Adolph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hoffmann, Johann Franz Adolph (full name); JFA Volkmann (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SAPD, SPD, USPD), MdR, writer, publisher
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1930
Place of death Berlin