Albin Mohs

Albin Mohs (born May 16, 1867 in Leipzig , † March 20, 1925 in Berlin ) was a German union leader, chairman of an international union organization and Berlin-Schöneberg local politician.

The time in Leipzig

Albin Mohs was born the son of a barber assistant. After leaving school, he learned the woodworking trade. After completing his apprenticeship, he joined the “Association of German Turners” and soon played a central role in the Leipzig trade union movement. Among other things, he was in front of the Leipzig trade union cartel , the amalgamation of all local free trade unions , from 1896 to 1897 . During this time he worked intensively as a reporter for the Leipziger Volkszeitung . Mohs was initially reluctant to merge with other woodworkers 'unions to form the German Woodworkers' Association , but then finally agreed to the merger.

Multifunctional in Berlin

In 1899 Mohs went to Berlin and worked full-time on the regional board of the unionized woodworkers. In 1900 the unionized butchers won him over as correspondent and editor of their union newspaper “Der Fleischer”. Mohs gave the young union important impulses with his great rhetorical and organizational talent. In 1902 Bruno Poersch commissioned him with "agitation tasks " within the young trade union organization, which was trying to recruit community and state workers. The aid workers' organization was founded in Berlin in 1896 as the “Association of Workers in Gas Works, Wood and Coal Yards and Other Workers” and, after various renaming, culminated in the Association of Community and State Workers in 1906 . The young union found it difficult to recruit qualified officials and therefore relied on proven, non-specialist staff. In 1904 the association had almost 14,000 members. After a brief interlude in Leipzig as Gauleiter, Mohs returned to Berlin at the end of 1905 to take over the management of the union in place of the resigned union chairman Poersch. At the trade union day in the spring of 1906, he was elected union chairman without a candidate. In 1907, after the conclusion of the Socialist Congress in Stuttgart , international delegates met at the end of August to launch an international trade secretariat for the “Workers of Public Enterprises” and decided to entrust the German association with the management of the business. This meant that Albin Mohs took over the management, which he initially managed on a part-time basis. The fruit of his efforts as International Secretary was a pioneering achievement of comparative international trade union statistics, which appeared in various languages.

Mohs had a hard time in the free trade union German "union family". The philosophy of the "Association of Community and State Workers": Those who work jointly in municipal and state-owned companies could only protect their economic interests vis-à-vis the joint employer through a joint company organization. The German trade unions rejected this point of view and claimed the right to recruit skilled workers (metal workers, wood workers, etc.) for their organization themselves. They openly threatened the association with expulsion from the general commission of the trade unions in Germany . Mohs met the demands of the general commission, which significantly weakened his standing in the association. With almost 40,000 members, Mohs' union had reached a respectable size in 1910. In 1909, however, the largest strike by community workers in Kiel , with which Mohs wanted to achieve better working conditions, was lost. Mohs did not remain undisputed in the organization. In particular, his authoritarian leadership style met with criticism. In 1909 he was defeated by the Mannheim Gauleiter Richard Heckmann in the election for union chairman with 25:26 delegate votes. Heckmann, however, did not accept the election because of the close result. Mohs remained chairman. In 1912 Mohs prevailed with a majority of one vote against the Berlin chairman Emil Wutzky . In the German trade union history of the empire with its distinctive structures of loyalty, these tight battle votes were singular and caused a great stir. Mohs continued to play a prominent role in the then still independent community of Berlin-Schöneberg . From 1910 to 1913 he acted as 2nd chairman of the SPD local association Schöneberg . In 1913 he moved into the local parliament, which was elected according to the three-class suffrage. In the Reichstag constituency of Teltow-Beeskow-Storkow-Charlottenburg he held important functions in the social democratic education committee. The members sent him to the SPD party conference from September 15 to September 21 in Chemnitz .

Outsider and figure of integration

A compromise was reached on the 7th day of the Association of Community and State Workers in Hamburg in May 1914 . Mohs was employed full-time as the head of the International Trade Secretariat of the “Workers in Public Enterprises”. The German organization took over the costs. Richard Heckmann took over the chairmanship of the "Association of Community and State Workers". Immediately after the outbreak of war, his organization adopted an extremely nationalist stance. The argumentation of the executive committee: The war had made an international secretariat obsolete, the executive committee demanded its dissolution. Mohs, on the other hand, relies on a vote of the majority of the member states to keep him in office. The conflict dragged on throughout the war. Mohs became critically ill during this time. At the beginning of 1917, the German federation withdrew from the trade union international. Mohs, however, continued as chairman of the international organization and maintained friendly contacts with the Belgian and Dutch organizations.

After the November Revolution , Mohs was a member of the Great Berlin Workers 'and Soldiers' Council as a Schöneberg delegate . As an outsider, however, he played an important role in the return of the German organization to the international trade union community at the congress of “Personnel in Public Services and Companies” in Amsterdam in October 1919 . From October 1919 Mohs had been a paid social democratic district councilor in Berlin-Schöneberg and in this capacity was responsible for the Schöneberg employment office. On January 1, 1925 on the basis of the staff reduction regulation sent into temporary retirement. Albin Mohs died on March 20, 1925 in Berlin of serious heart disease.

literature

• Walter Nachtmann: 100 years of ÖTV. The story of a union and its predecessor organizations. Union printing and publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1996. ISBN 3-922454-43-7

Web links

• The Union. Organ for the interests of workers in urban companies. Retrieved January 18, 2016 . 
• Rüdiger Zimmermann : Albin Mohs . In: Biographical Lexicon of the ÖTV.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Albin Mohs: Loon- en arbeidsverhoudingen in gemeentediensten en -bedrijven der schillende lande. Noted after van de landelijke organisatiesLoon- en arbeidsverhoudingen in gemeentediensten en -bedrijven der verschillende landen. Noted towards van de landelijke organisaties . International Secretariat of Workers in Public Enterprises, Berlin 1913.