Alfred Mozer

Alfred Mozer on his appointment as honorary member of the European Movement (1965)

Alfred Mozer (born March 15, 1905 in Munich , † August 12, 1979 in Arnhem ) (code name A. Baier , Walter Lemkering ) was a German - Dutch journalist and politician .

Life and activity

Early years

Mozer was the son of Franz Mozer (1875–1948), a Hungarian white tanner, and the German seamstress Johanna Wagner (* 1879). As a result of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , he took on German citizenship as a child. After attending elementary school, Mozer completed an apprenticeship as a tailor from 1919 to 1922. As a youth he became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ). During his wandering he came to Kassel in 1924, where he initially worked in a textile factory in his learned profession. After being noticed by an editor of the social democratic party newspaper Kasseler Volksblatt , he entered the service of the same. As a result, he also worked for a few months as secretary to the Lord Mayor of Kassel, Philipp Scheidemann .

In 1928 Mozer went to East Frisia . On the mediation of Wilhelm Sollmann he got a job as editor of the social democratic newspaper Volksbote . In addition to his journalistic activities, he was also practically committed to the SPD and was elected to the local council of citizens in Emden in the municipal elections in 1933 . During his time in Emden he made first contacts with the Dutch Social Democratic Party , which a few years later proved to be life-defining.

Emigration to the Netherlands and World War II

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Mozer was arrested on May 2, 1933 by members of the National Socialist street combat group SA . When members of the Stahlhelm intervened against the SA quarters in which he was being held, he was released again. With the help of a Dutch party friend, Herman Molendijk, he managed to flee across the border at Ter Apel . There he worked for the Dutch Social Democratic Party (SDAP). In the years that followed, he focused his work on the party's refugee committee in Amsterdam. He also wrote under the code names Alfred Baier and Walter Lemkering for a weekly newspaper for German emigrants, Socialisme & Democratie, published by the SDAP, and the German exile newspaper Freie Presse . In addition, in the years up to 1939 Mozer organized from the Netherlands the maintenance of secret communications between German exiles in the Netherlands and Dutch social democrats and East Frisian social democrats, about whom information about events in the National Socialist German Reich was brought abroad or the German social democrats with information which were suppressed in the German press, since it was in the interests of the National Socialist rulers to keep them secret from the population. At times he also worked as secretary to the chairman of the Dutch social democracy Koos Vorrink .

Soon after his emigration, Mozer was classified by the National Socialist police as an enemy of the state. He was officially expatriated on May 7, 1938. In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin - which mistakenly suspected him to be in Great Britain - put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Islands by the Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the occupation troops following special commandos of the SS with special priority.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, Mozer was kept hidden from the occupation forces and the Gestapo by a family friend in the village of Poortugaal on the grounds of a psychiatric clinic . During the Second World War he took part in the Dutch resistance against the German occupation. Due to his services in the fight against the occupation, Mozer was granted honorary naturalization in 1945.

post war period

In the first post-war years Mozer was editor of the party organ of the Dutch social democracy Paraat , for which he had already worked illegally. As a supporter of the circle around Emil Groß , he was appointed international secretary (foreign secretary) of the Partij van de Arbeid (PvDA) in 1948. In August 1945 Mozer undertook a trip through West Germany on behalf of the party. a. Contacts to Konrad Adenauer and the Cologne Cardinal Frings made. On later trips he built connections with personalities such as Kurt Schumacher and Karl Barth .

As a member of the "Europeesche Actie", an organization founded before the liberation in the Netherlands to promote European unification, Mozer went to the first major meeting of European federalists in Hertenstein in 1946, where he played a key role in the formulation of the "Hertensteiner Program", the basic manifesto of the European federalist associations. In the "Union Européenne des Fédéralistes" founded a few weeks later, he became a member of the board.

In 1948 Mozer took part in the organization of the first congress of the European Movement in The Hague , to which he gave access to the German delegation led by Adenauer and Walter Hallstein , which on this occasion appeared as a full member for the first time on such an occasion.

As one of the leading foreign policy thinkers of the Dutch social democracy, Mozer developed and propagated the strategy in the 1940s and 1950s that the German question could only be solved within a European federation to be created. His political line envisaged a European unification with simultaneous achievement of independence of the European continent from the USA and the Soviet Union . Accordingly, he had in mind the development of an independent European armed force within NATO . In the spirit of the European integration he is striving for, Mozer campaigned for cross-border cooperation between the Netherlands and Germany, especially the Netherlands and the neighboring province of North Rhine-Westphalia. He rejected the political development in East Germany. As the foreign secretary of the Partij van de Arbeid, Mozer maintained intensive contacts in the decades after the Second World War. a. to German social democracy, which he tried to persuade in the late 1940s and early 1950s to take a constructive stance on the question of European integration.

On the occasion of the establishment of the European Economic Community in 1958, Mozer was appointed Head of Cabinet of the Vice-President of the European Economic Community (EEC Commission), Sicco Mansholt (who was also responsible for agricultural issues) in Brussels . He stayed in this position until he retired in 1970.

As a staunch advocate of the idea of ​​European reconciliation and European unification, Mozer gave numerous lectures and speeches and wrote a large number of newspaper articles promoting the European idea, noting the slow pace at which he believed Europe was growing together , criticized.

In his retirement, which he spent in Arnhem in Gelderland, Mozer continued to campaign for practical cross-border cooperation. In 1971 he became chairman of the Euregio Mozer commission named after him, which tried to promote these goals. In 1978 the EUREGIO Council emerged from this, which supports cross-border economic, political and cultural cooperation in the German-Dutch border area. In addition, he was committed to a close association of the social democratic parties in Europe and direct elections to the European Parliaments.

Mozer's estate, which mainly consists of essay manuscripts and correspondence, is now kept in the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam.

Honors

Mozer was an honorary member of the Europese Moving in Nederland as well as the recipient of the Great Federal Cross of Merit and the Order of the Dutch Lion .

The European Economic Community appointed him "Honorary General Director of the European Economic Community" on the occasion of his retirement.

The Dutch Queen Beatrix posthumously made a portrait bust of Mozer in bronze in 1985. A copy of the same is now in Nordhorn in front of the Euregio building there.

In 1980, the provincial states of Gelderland founded the Alfred Mozer Prize , first awarded in 1981 , which honors personalities or organizations who have distinguished themselves in the field of cross-border cooperation in the border area of ​​the Netherlands and the Federal Republic. The first winner was HJ Leloux from Oosterbeek, who worked as a German teacher in Arnhem.

The Alfred Mozer Foundation (Alfred Mozer Stichting, AMS), which is related to the Dutch Social Democratic Party, is named after Mozer.

family

In December 1928 Mozer married Aenne André (* 1904) in Hersfeld. In 1935 the son Ubbo Mozer was born. His second marriage was Aaltje Ebbinge (* 1915) from Groningen in 1948. Both marriages produced a son.

literature

• Europese Moving in Nederland: Alfred Mozer: Hongaar, Duitser, Nederlander, Europeaan , 1970.
• Gert-Jan Hospers: Twente, Westphalia en de grens. van Alfred Mozer dead Euregopnale Zone, in: Jaarboek Twente , 44 (2006), pp. 128-133.
• Gerhard Menk: "Dr. Alfred Mozer - Änne André's husband. From Hersfeld newspaper editor to Dutch politician", in: Heimatkalender 2003 and Wegweiser - Ferienland Waldhessen, Hersfeld-Rotenburg district; published by Ott-Verlag in cooperation with the district committee of the Hersfeld-Rotenburg district , 47th year, Bad Hersfeld 2003, pp. 82–86.
• A Mozer-Ebbinge / R. Cohen (Ed.): Alfred Mozer. Portrait of a European , 1981.
• Dietmar von Reeken : "Mozer, Alfred" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 18 (1997), p. 246 f.
• Werner Röder / Herbert A. Strauss : Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933 , Vol. I (Politics, Economy, Public Life), 1980, p. 510.
• Löaas to Uildriks: "Alfred Motzler (1905–1979) 'Gastarbeiter in Europa'", in: Jaarboek Twente , 36 (1998), pp. 131–137.
• Friso Wielenga: "Alfred Mozer: A German-Dutch European", in: Ders. (Ed.): Dutch and Germans and European Unification. Press and Culture Department of the Royal Netherlands Embassy, ​​Bonn 1997, pp. 26–30.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Mozer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Mozer, Alfred. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Mozer on the special wanted list GB .