Albert Südekum

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
October 1918: The Reichstag deputies Matthias Erzberger , Albert Südekum and Otto Arendt leaving the Reichstag building in Berlin

Albert Oskar Wilhelm Südekum (born January 25, 1871 in Wolfenbüttel , † February 18, 1944 in Berlin ) was a German journalist and politician ( SPD ). He exposed himself in the party as a representative of reformism and advocated alliances with reform-minded middle classes.

Life and work

Albert Südekum first attended the village school in Weißenhasel (Hessen-Nassau), then the citizen school and the ducal-Brunswick high school in Wolfenbüttel . After graduating from high school in 1891, he began to study economics and political science in Geneva , Munich , Berlin and Kiel , which he obtained in 1893 with a doctorate as Dr. phil. finished. From 1893 to 1894 he did his military service in the Emperor Alexander Guard Grenadier Regiment No. 1 . After joining the SPD during his studies under the influence of Georg von Vollmar and Ferdinand Tönnies , he joined the editorial team of Vorwärts as a trainee in 1895 , before taking over the deputy management of the Leipziger Volkszeitung in 1896/97 . Further stations in his career were the chief editorship of the Franconian Daily Mail ( Nuremberg ) (1898 to 1900) and the Saxon workers newspaper ( Dresden ) (1900 to 1903). In 1900 he founded the SPD magazine Kommunale Praxis ; From 1908 to 1930 he was co-editor of the municipal yearbook alongside Hugo Preuss , Otto Most and Rudolf Schwander and thus made a name for himself as one of the leading municipal experts in his party. Albert Südekum paid particular attention - first as a local politician, then as a member of the Reichstag - to housing policy . He opened his book Großstädtisches Wohnungselend , published in 1908, with the preface “You can kill a person just as easily with an apartment as with an ax.” This sentence was quoted frequently, among other things. a. by Heinrich Zille , so that the quote is sometimes mistakenly attributed to him.

In 1904 he married Anneliese Zuelzer (1872–1948), a niece of the “coal baron” Fritz von Friedlaender-Fuld , with whom he had three children: Irmgard (1905–2002), Rosemarie (1906–2002) and Lothar (1908–2002) .

Member of the Reichstag since May 1900, he quickly made a name for himself as one of the most active parliamentarians of the SPD and one of the most prominent representatives of parliamentary group rights. The deputy chairmanship of the budget commission of the Reichstag, one of the most important political offices that the SPD parliamentary group had to assign, reflected this importance as well as the praise that the government and political opponents repeatedly gave to his expertise. As a budget and local politician, Südekum sought a reform-oriented alliance strategy with the liberals, through which the main goal, the democratization of the empire, was to be achieved.

With the outbreak of the First World War he uncompromisingly placed himself in the "service of the fatherland". The declaration on the approval of war loans, which was read out on August 4, 1914 by the reluctant party chairman Hugo Haase, was largely inspired by him. Due to its closeness to the government, it acted as a kind of informal link between the Social Democratic party executive and the Reich leadership and, along with Friedrich Ebert , Philipp Scheidemann and Eduard David, belonged to the leadership circle of the majority social democracy . As an “agent” of the Foreign Office , he undertook political missions in Italy , Sweden and Romania to strengthen the neutralist wings of the fraternal socialist parties. The term “southern humiliation” then advanced to an internationally used catchphrase and earned it the irreconcilable hostility of the revolutionary left. Südekum was a member of the German Society in 1914 , the Association of Like-Minded People and the German National Committee .

Albert Südekum as Prussian Finance Minister in Sakrow near Berlin (1919)

After defeat and the revolution, he was entrusted with the management of the Prussian finance department in November 1918 - initially together with the independent social democrat Hugo Simon , and independently since January 1919. In the course of the reshuffle of the Prussian state government after the Kapp Putsch in 1920, he had to vacate his post as Prussian finance minister and - after a brief interlude as state commissioner for the Greater Hamburg question in 1921/1922 - switched to business. Since 1926 he was a member of the board of the Deutsche Zündholz -verkauf-Aktiengesellschaft , and since 1930 of the German Zündwarenmonopoly . He held numerous positions on the supervisory board and was a member of the board of directors of the Association for the Defense against Anti-Semitism .

Relieved of all posts in 1933, he followed political developments with growing resignation and became involved in the resistance group around Wilhelm Leuschner , Ernst von Harnack , Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Jakob Kaiser .

The assessment of Südekum by contemporaries and researchers is controversial: While the word “Südekum” for Lenin denoted the “type of self-satisfied, unscrupulous opportunist and social-chauvinist”, Ernst von Harnack wrote - a year before his execution - in his letter of condolence to Südekum's widow: “ How will I miss him, the sanguine, despite all the suffering, always positive and hopeful fatherly friend! With him went one of the last politicians I looked up to. The full responsibility for the future of our beloved fatherland now rests on us younger people. And how bitterly difficult it will be to do it justice. "

Fonts

  • Darwin. His life, his teaching and its meaning. After Alphonse de Candolles. Siegbert Schnurpfeil, Leipzig 1893.
  • About Malthus ' law and the population problem of communist society. Inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate from the high philosophical faculty of the Königl. Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. L. Hansdorff, Kiel 1894. Digitized
  • Down with the usury! After a speech at the Saxon Court in Nuremberg on February 25, 1901. Fränkische Tagespost, Nuremberg 1901.
  • Guide through the laws on the retirement of officers and on the supply of the lower classes of the Reichsheeres, the navy and the protection troops. Forward, Berlin 1906.
  • Urban housing misery. Hermann Seemann's successor, Berlin 1908.
  • The financial reform of 1909 and the parties in the Reichstag. Forward, Berlin 1910.
  • The capital gains tax. Reich Law of February 14, 1911. Forward, Berlin 1911.
  • Yes or no? Social democracy and direct imperial taxes. Extended edition of the report at the Jena party congress. Volksstimme, Frankfurt am Main 1913.
  • People and institutions. Excerpt from the lecture by Reichstag member Dr. Südekum. Held in the student collection at Kristiania on April 13, 1918. Kirste & Sieberth, Kristiania 1918.
  • Capital and profit sharing as the basis of planned business management. Julius Springer, Berlin 1921.
  • As co-editor: Concise dictionary of communal sciences. 4 volumes. Fischer, Jena 1918–1924.
  • As co-editor: Municipal Yearbook. 22 volumes. Fischer, Jena 1908–1930.
  • As co-editor: For Greater Berlin. Vita, Berlin 1912.
  • As editor: Kommunale Praxis. Journal for local politics and community socialism. Kaden & Comp., Dresden 1 (1901) -6 (1906).
  • As editor: Kommunale Praxis. Weekly for local politics and community socialism. Forward, Berlin 7 (1901) -21 (1921).

Translations

  • Renard, Georges: Is Man Free? Philipp Reclam, Leipzig 1893.
  • Leroy-Beaulieu, Pierre: The Chinese question. Wigand, Leipzig 1900.
  • Jaurès, Jean / Jules Guesde: On the brotherly dispute in France. Two speeches on the tactics of social democracy given in Lille on November 27, 1900. Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung, Dresden 1901.
  • Jaurès, Jean: Socialist Studies. From theory and practice. Socialist monthly books, Berlin 1902.
  • Vandervelde, Emile: The development towards socialism. Socialist monthly books, Berlin 1902.
  • Jaurès, Jean: France and Germany. A speech for peace. Freudenberger, Würzburg 1903.
  • Hunter, Robert: The Misery of the New World. Concordia, Berlin 1908.
  • Sanders, William: English Local Government and Its Achievements. Forward, Berlin 1908.

literature

  • Südekum, Albert . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Volume I: Deceased Personalities . JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, p. 306.
  • Herbert Gottwald : Südekum, Albert. In: Biographical Lexicon on German History. From the beginning until 1917 . Edited by Karl Obermann u. a. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1967, pp. 457–458.
  • Dieter Fricke , Herbert Gottwald: Südekum, Albert Oskar Wilhelm . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 449-450.
  • Willibald Gutsche : Südekum and the others. Supplementary material on the role of right-wing leaders of German social democracy in the First World War . In: Journal of History . 18th year, Berlin 1970, 1173-1188. ISSN  0044-2828
  • Südekum, Albert . In: Lexicon on the past and present of the Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. On behalf of the Society of Friends of the Herzog August Library. Paul Raabe on February 29, 1992 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1992, ISBN 3-447-03233-2 , p. 151.
  • Max Bloch: Albert Südekum (1871–1944). A German social democrat between the empire and dictatorship. A political biography. Droste, Düsseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-7700-5293-6 .
  • Max Bloch: Albert Südekum's role in the territorial disputes between Hamburg and Prussia 1921/22. Pp. 77-87. (PDF; 1.1 MB)
  • Max Bloch: New Documents on the Origin of the Peace Resolution of the Reichstag. Albert Südekum's letters from the July crisis in 1917. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 62nd vol., Heidelberg, Berlin 2014, pp. 329–353.
  • Max Bloch (ed.): Albert Südekum. Comrade, citizen, patriarch. Letters to his family 1909–1932 . With a foreword by Michael Wolffsohn . Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-412-50627-8 .

Web links

Commons : Albert Südekum  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert Gottwald, p. 457.
  2. ^ Franz Osterroth, p. 306.
  3. ^ Reichstag handbook .
  4. ^ Hans Jürgen Teuteberg , Clemens Wischermann : Everyday living in Germany 1850–1914. Images - data - documents . Coppenrath, Münster 1985, ISBN 3-88547-277-5 , p. 369 and p. 409–410 ( Südekum's application on the housing issue at the SPD party congress in Lübeck 1901 ).
  5. ^ Max Bloch: Albert Südekum (1871–1944). A German social democrat between the empire and dictatorship. A political biography. Droste, Düsseldorf 2009, p. 134 ( Contributions to the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 154)
  6. ^ Max Bloch: Albert Südekum (1871–1944). A German social democrat between the empire and dictatorship. A political biography. Droste, Düsseldorf 2009, p. 361 ( Contributions to the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 154)
personal data
SURNAME Südekum, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Südekum, Albert Oskar Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and politician (SPD), MdR, Prussian Minister of State
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Wolfenbüttel
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1944
Place of death Berlin