General Workers' Union - unified organization

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The General Workers' Union - Unit Organization (AAUE, also AAU-E) was an anti-parliamentary and anti-authoritarian council communist organization during the Weimar period .

Emergence

The AAUE was constituted in October 1921 after increased criticism of the subordination of the AAUD to the KAPD had come about in the KAPD and its affiliated company organization Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands (AAUD) . The criticism's approach was to build a single political and operational organization.

Substantial parts of the AAUD structures in East Saxony and North West Germany as well as minorities in other regions joined the new organization; known founding members were u. a. the former Reichstag member Otto Rühle , the editor of the action , Franz Pfemfert , the poet Oskar Kanehl and the well-known criminal defense attorney in political trials, James Broh .

The AAUE announced the weekly newspapers united front and operational organization out and ordered the action on any related journal. By connecting with the action at times even writers like moving Max Herrmann-Neisse and Carl Sternheim in the environment of the organization. There is no more precise information about the number of members, but the initial 60,000 members mentioned by Pfemfert may have been exaggerated.

Faction battles and disintegration

Fractional struggles and centrifugal tendencies quickly developed in the new organization, which led to the division into several groups, all bearing the name AAUE, by the mid-1920s. The three last-named organizations are likely to have each had a few hundred members in the final phase of the Weimar Republic:

  • "Heidenau direction" about the magazine Revolution . It cultivated an individualistic and anti-organizational orientation and consequently dissolved itself in 1923.
  • "Zwickau direction" for the magazine Weltkampf . She advocated participation in works council elections and rapprochement with anarcho-syndicalist positions, and in 1923 she joined the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD).
  • "2. Zwickau Direction ”to the weekly newspapers Proletarischer Zeitgeist ( Zwickau , circulation in 1932 of 2,400 copies) and From Below Up ( Hamburg ). It showed proximity to anarchist positions and strong anti-intellectual hatred. In 1924 a group of former KPD members around Ketty Guttmann joined this organization and was able to hold out until it was partially broken up during the Nazi era. The Hamburg group around Otto Reimers issued a warning call until mid-1934 , while other local groups partially managed to survive the Nazi era.
  • “Frankfurt-Breslauer direction” for the magazine Die Proletarian Revolution . It was connected to the council communist ideas of Alfred Adler's individual psychology . She worked closely with Otto Rühle and was active in the proletarian free thinker movement . 1931 Merger with parts of the AAUD and the KAPD to form the Communist Workers' Union of Germany (KAUD). In the head of the KAUD magazine Der Kampfruf , which appeared in Berlin until 1933 , the group also describes itself as KAU-RBO (Revolutionary Business Organization).
  • Former majority faction of the old AAUE around Franz Pfemfert and Oskar Kanehl . 1926/1927 temporary merger with an ultra-left KPD split around Iwan Katz and the industrial association for the transport industry to form the Spartacus League of Left Communist Organizations (Spartakusbund No. 2). It published the United Front and later Spartacus and The World Revolution , but fell apart in 1932/33.

Attempted reorganization

Attempts by the current around the proletarian zeitgeist to restore the organization in the Zwickau region after 1945 were suppressed in 1948, the leading activist of the group, Wilhelm Jelinek , died in 1952 under unexplained circumstances in Bautzen prison .

See also

literature

  • Karl Roche: The General Workers Union . AAU Groß-Hamburg press commission, Hamburg 1920.
  • Hans Manfred Bock : History of the "left radicalism" in Germany. An attempt . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-00645-2 ( Edition Suhrkamp 645), pp. 108-113, pp. 132-139, p. 152.

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