Alfred Dang

Alfred Otto Helmuth Dang (born January 5, 1893 in Kaiserslautern , † November 10, 1956 in Buenos Aires ) was a German-Argentine journalist and educator who emigrated to Argentina in 1934.

Life

The Catholic Alfred Dang, who had five other siblings, took part in the First World War as an officer and was awarded the Iron Cross . After the end of the war, he studied German, history and philosophy at the University of Giessen from 1918 to 1921 . In 1919 he joined the SPD and from 1921 worked as an editor for the Volksstimme (Frankfurt am Main) , the Vorwärts , the Danziger Volksstimme and the Frankfurter Zeitung .

In 1920 Alfred Dang married the Jewish secretary Lilli Guckenheimer (1898–1975). The daughter Ilse Ruth, born in 1921, comes from the marriage.

In 1924 Dang received his doctorate. In addition to being an editor, he also worked as a lecturer in workers' education and in the 1920s he founded a permanent monitoring service for the activities of the NSDAP in Hesse.

From 1929 to 1930, Dang was head of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold in Elberfeld and then from 1930 to 1934 a correspondent for the Social Democratic Press Service and Vorwärts in Geneva. He reported on the work of the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization (ILO) . For the 1933 ILO conference, at which Germany was still represented by Wilhelm Leuschner , Dang published internal NSDAP guidelines on trade union policy in March 1933. The conference itself, at which the head of the National Socialist German Labor Front (DAF), Robert Ley , appeared internationally for the first time , ended with a disgrace for the National Socialists.

Alfred Dang, who also headed an aid committee for political refugees in Geneva and worked for exile and foreign press organs, including the Argentinisches Tageblatt , received an invitation in March 1934 from its owner and publisher, Dr. Ernesto F. Alemann. He offered Dang to become a teacher and director of the Pestalozzi School in Buenos Aires , which Alemann co-founded .

Dang accepted the invitation and moved to Argentina with his family. However, there was also a strong colony of "Reichsdeutscher" who felt connected to the Nazi regime in Germany, and a German diplomatic mission abroad that was firmly committed to the National Socialist regime.

"Because of his antifacist work in Germany and Switzerland, Dang was already non grata to the Nazis when he arrived in Buenos Aires in April 1934. The following month, local storm troopers attemted to smash up a school association meeting; on several occasions they threatened Dange's life. The German embassy entreated Nazi agents in Switzerland to find proof (manufactured if necessary) of Dang's misdeeds (sexual if possible). Failing there, Ambassador Thermann recommended to Berlin that the school be declared an 'ideological school' ( Kampfschule ) and that Dang be stripped of German citizenship. This was done in November 1934; Dang was one of the first two Germans in South America so distinguished. "

With his expatriation from the German Reich on November 3, 1934 , Dang was also revoked his doctorate. In 1936 he received the Argentine citizenship.

Like many of his colleagues at the school, including August Siemsen , Heinrich Grönewald and Walter Damus , Dang also took part in anti-fascist work in Argentina and South America as a whole and worked with Das Andere Deutschland , of which he later became an honorary member. "Alfred Dang took a prominent part in the second congress of the newly founded Committee of Struggle Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, held in April 1938 at the Swiss House in Buenos Aires." Like his previously named colleagues, Dang was also a member of the Verband deutscher Teacher emigrants .

He also remained active as a journalist and wrote for the “Argentinische Tagesblatt”, La Prensa (Buenos Aires) and La Nación . In 1943 he took part in the congress of German anti-fascists in Montevideo, organized by Das Andere Deutschland .

As the first and long-standing director of the Pestalozzi School , Alfred Dang remained headmaster from 1934 to 1948 and was again from 1956. In 1946 he stayed temporarily in Germany, in 1949 he became a PEN member.

Alfred Dang died in Buenos Aires on November 10, 1957.

literature

• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life. Saur, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , p. 122
• Hermann Schnorbach: For a 'different Germany'. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1995, 1st edition, ISBN 3-7638-0353-X
• Ronald C Newton: The "Nazi menace" in Argentina, 1931-1947 , Stanford University Press, Stanford (California), 1992, ISBN 0804719292

Web links

• "Brecht and Goethe in the Calle Freire" (80 years of the Pestalozzi School in Buenos Aires)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the biographical data are based on Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (ed.): Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933. P. 122
2. ↑ Röder / Strauss speak very generally of “workers' colleges”. What is probably meant is the Academy of Labor, founded in Frankfurt am Main in 1921 .
3. ↑ Compare this: Reiner Tosstorff: The confrontation between the International Labor Organization and the National Socialists 1933
4. ^ "The Schulverein invited the Tageblatt’s correspondent in Switzerland, Alfred Dang, a combative German socialist in exile in Geneva since 1930, to be the school's first director." (Ronald C Newton: The "Nazi menace" in Argentina, 1931-1947 , P. 157)
5. ↑ Ronald C. Newton: The "Nazi menace" in Argentina, 1931-1947 , pp. 157-158
6. ^ Ronald C Newton: The "Nazi menace" in Argentina, 1931-1947 , p. 159
7. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach : teachers in emigration. The Association of German Teacher Emigrants (1933–39) in the traditional context of the democratic teachers' movement , Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel, 1981, ISBN 3-407-54114-7 , p. 228
8. ↑ Hermann Schnorbach: "For a 'different Germany'", p. 50