Alfred Eberlein

Alfred Eberlein (born May 19, 1916 in Altmittweida , Saxony , † August 20, 1982 in Bochum ) was a German librarian.

Life

Alfred Eberlein was born the son of a single textile worker. From 1922 to 1931 he attended elementary school in Plauen , Vogtland . He then completed an apprenticeship as a lawyer clerk until 1934 and before 1933 became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth . Because of the threat of persecution, he had to flee temporarily to Czechoslovakia after the National Socialists came to power. From 1935 to 1942, interrupted by periods of unemployment, he worked as a lawyer clerk, clerk and statistician. In 1943 he was called up for military service, which he did in the administration due to tuberculosis disease. In 1944 he was dismissed from military service because of “unfit for military service”. His wife and two children were killed in a bombing raid on Plauen in 1945.

After the end of the war, he joined the SPD in 1945 . After the forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED in April 1946, he became a member. In 1947 he obtained his higher education entrance qualification in a special educational institution in Zwickau and studied sociology, economics and philosophy at the University of Rostock until 1951 . His interest in librarianship prompted him to be appointed head of the central library of the GDR government in 1951. He took part in a two-year advanced training course at the Berlin State Library and passed his specialist examination for academic library service under the later General Director Horst Kunze . Because of his participation in the protest movement in June 1953 , he was politically disciplined and removed from his position as head of the government library. In 1954 he returned to Rostock, where he became acting director in 1956 and director of the university library in 1970. In 1970 he received his doctorate from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg with a bibliography The press of the working class and social movements. From the 1830s to 1967 . The special bibliography of the German-language workers' press was published from 1968 to 1970 as a five-volume edition by Akademie-Verlag Berlin. In August 1971 he was arrested for allegedly illegal purchase and exchange deals with university libraries from the Federal Republic and sentenced to ten years in prison in 1972 in a closed political process before the Rostock District Court. In the process he was accused of " social democracy " among other things . He was released in January 1973 as part of a general amnesty on the 23rd anniversary of the founding of the GDR. In 1975 he managed to move to the Federal Republic with his wife. From 1975 to 1976 he was the publishing director at Detlev Auvermann Verlag in Glashütten , Taunus. In 1977, on the intercession of Hans Mommsen and Kurt Koszyk, he became head of the library of the newly founded Institute for the History of the Labor Movement at the Ruhr University in Bochum . Shortly before his death in 1982 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. It was not until 1996 that the Rostock regional court overturned the verdict passed against him in 1972, and he was fully rehabilitated.

After moving to the Federal Republic of Germany, Eberlein worked on an expanded and improved new edition of his bibliography for the German-language workers' press, most recently with the support of the German Research Foundation . He could no longer finish his work, and it was completed by his wife Ursula Eberlein. It was published as an eight-volume edition in 1996. The bibliography, which comprises around 37,000 titles, is an important tool for researching the history of the German, Austrian and Swiss labor movement since 1830.

Fonts

• Alfred Eberlein: The press of the working class and the social movements: from the thirties of the 19th century to 1967. Bibliography and directory of the press of the German, Austrian and Swiss workers, trade union and professional organizations (5 volumes) . Akademie-Verl., Berlin 1968.
• Alfred Eberlein (co-worker Ursula Eberlein): International bibliography on the German-language press of the workers' and social movements: from 1830–1982 (8 volumes) . KG Saur, Munich, New Providence, London, Paris 1996.

literature

• Kurt Metschies: Alfred Eberlein (1916–1982) . In: Günter Benser, Michael Schneider (Ed.): Preserve - Spread - Enlighten: Archivists, librarians and collectors of the sources of the German-speaking labor movement . Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-105-8 , pp. 64-70 .
• Siegfried Bahne: Alfred Eberlein (1916–1982) obituary . with list of publications by Alfred Eberlein. In: Bulletin of the Institute for the History of the Labor Movement . No. 6 . Bochum 1982, p. 147-152 .
• Werner Müller, Hanno Lietz: Alfred Eberlein at the Rostock University Library 1954 - 1971 . Booklet accompanying the exhibition (=  publications of the Rostock University Library . Volume 125 ). Rostock 1996, p. 122 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Lübbe: A case of social democracy . In: Germany Archive . No. 4 , 1978, p. 405-408 .