August Bebel's pocket watch
August Bebel's pocket watch is a gold pocket watch that once belonged to August Bebel . The watch was presented to Willy Brandt as a representative of the SPD in 1963 by Swiss Social Democrats and years later as chairman of the SPD by Herbert Wehner . Brandt announced in 1982 that he would pass the pocket watch on to his successors in the party leadership. In fact, after resigning as SPD chairman in 1987, he retained it for the time being; In 1988 he left it to the Friedrich Ebert Foundation . Today the watch is kept with Brandt's estate in the archive of social democracy of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bonn .
story
August Bebel, who was wealthy in old age, gave away an unspecified number of gold pocket watches to friends and possibly also to business partners. He gave one of these pocket watches to his friend Otto Lang , a Zurich chief judge and co-founder of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (SP) and the social democratic Zurich daily Volksrecht . After Lang's death in 1936, it came into the possession of Albert Bader, a representative of the Social Democrats in Zurich. His widow handed it over to the Zurich Social Democratic Party.
In 1963, Willy Brandt, at the time Deputy Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Governing Mayor of Berlin , visited August Bebel's grave in Zurich on the 50th anniversary of his death. As a representative of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the board of directors of the Social Democratic Party of Zurich presented him with the pocket watch owned by Otto Lang on August 13, 1963 as a "symbol of friendship" between the two parties. Brandt handed them over to the SPD party executive after his return .
On December 17 and 18, 1966, a party conference of the SPD took place in Bad Godesberg under the motto “Stability and growth within - security and the ability to act externally”. The approximately 700 delegates discussed the agreements reached with the Union parties to form a grand coalition . Willy Brandt was now chairman of the SPD and for a few weeks Vice Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. On December 18, 1966, Brandt celebrated his 53rd birthday. In the morning Herbert Wehner presented him with the pocket watch, stating “that it is not in better hands with anyone than in your hands. This is August Bebel's watch, and you will keep it safe. ”Wehner's words when he presented the watch left it open whether the watch should be a gift from the party to Willy Brandt or, in the future, an insignia from the respective party chairman. In Brandt's speeches it says: “Bebel's watch - on 13/8 63 in trustworthy hands with me - again in trustworthy hands of the party. Nice sign of continuity with all changes ”. In his closing remarks at the end of the conference, Brandt said: "In due course I will return this watch to the party in trustworthy hands."
In the first chapter of his 1982 autobiography “Links und frei. Mein Weg 1930–1950 ", Brandt described the circumstances surrounding the handover of the pocket watch and his intention to pass the watch on to his successors:" On August 13, 1963, on the 50th anniversary of my death, I stood in the Zurich cemetery, where he - completely in the Near Gottfried Keller - has found his final resting place. Swiss friends brought me a gold watch that Bebel had left behind. She was still fine. My party has left them in safe hands to me. It will be passed on to the next chairman of the German Social Democrats. ”In August 1982, just before the book was published, Brandt had himself portrayed with a pocket watch by the photojournalist Jupp Darchinger . In the years that followed, Brandt wore the watch on prestigious occasions in the breast pocket of his jacket or in his vest pocket so that the gold watch chain was clearly visible. One of these occasions was the celebration of his 70th birthday in 1983, when he declared that the watch was "back, it was at the watchmaker's in between, that also applies in figurative contexts, it works again and it works properly". Later occasions were his trip to East Berlin in September 1985 and the opening of the celebrations for Berlin's 750th anniversary in 1987.
At the beginning of 1987, the question of Brandt's successor was increasingly discussed within the SPD. At the time, Brandt refrained from the idea of passing the pocket watch on from one party chairman to the next: “This is not a challenge cup”. Brandt's decision to nominate Margarita Mathiopoulos as a candidate for the office of party spokesman led to clear criticism within the SPD and, on March 23, 1987, to Brandt's resignation from the party leadership. On June 14, 1987, Brandt was elected honorary chairman for life and Hans-Jochen Vogel was elected party chairman at a party conference . Brandt carried the pocket watch demonstratively in his vest pocket during his farewell speech and did not pass it on to his successor.
In the following year Brandt gave the pocket watch to the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on a loan agreement, which it exhibited in the traveling exhibition “August Bebel 1840–1913. A great man of the German labor movement ”from the archive of social democracy. At the opening of the exhibition in January 1988, Brandt gave a speech in which he also spoke about August Bebel's pocket watch. During a recent stay in Zurich and through research by Brigitte Seebacher-Brandt for her Bebel biography, he learned that Bebel owned several pocket watches and passed them on at appropriate occasions: “So we are dealing with one, not the Bebel watch to do. ”In the loan agreement with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Brandt had agreed to be able to request the return of the pocket watch at any time. It probably didn't come to that and he didn't wear them until his death in 1992.
Since April 1992, Bebel's pocket watch has been on display at the Golden Lion Memorial in Eisenach , where the founding congress of the Social Democratic Workers' Party took place in 1869 . After Willy Brandt's estate was transferred to the Willy Brandt Archive in the Archive of Social Democracy at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bonn, Bebel's pocket watch also returned to Bonn. In 1998 it went on loan to the permanent exhibition of the Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt Foundation in the Schöneberg Town Hall in Berlin. After an attempted theft in 2003, a replica was made for the exhibition. The original is once again kept as part of the estate in the Willy Brandt Archive in Bonn.
description
The watch has a white, enamelled dial with Arabic numerals , a separate second hand below the middle and no manufacturer information. The dial is only covered with a glass and not with a metal cover. The winding shaft is vertical and the crown is at the top, at the number 12. The case and the attached watch chain are made of 585 gold. The back cover bears the intertwined initials of Otto Lang as an engraving on the outside. "August Bebel" is engraved on the movement cover under the hinged back cover. It is questionable whether this engraving was already initiated by Bebel.
The back and movement lids of the watch bear a serial number in addition to several unidentifiable marks of repair from watchmakers. Both components also bear the German gold stamps with sun and imperial crown, a 585 fineness stamp and a squirrel as a Swiss hallmark for 585 gold, which have been prescribed since January 1, 1888 according to the law on the fineness of gold and silver goods. The logo of the watch and music box manufacturer Mermod Frères from Sainte-Croix in the canton of Vaud is on the inside of the movement cover. The two-line engraving “PAT.5.DEC. / 99. “inside denotes a US patent registered on December 5, 1899, owned by the Swiss watchmaker Felipe Hecht. Hecht's design was legally protected in Switzerland from 1904 to 1919, which means that production of the watch can be set for the period from 1904 to Bebel's death in 1913.
Reception and aftermath
Helmut Schmidt had already described the pocket watch at the delegates' conference in 1966 as a "royal gift". In a proposal for the meeting of the SPD parliamentary group on May 6, 1968, Schmidt, as parliamentary group chairman , suggested "resuming a tradition of August Bebel and giving older parliamentary group members who have belonged to the Bundestag for a long time a gold watch". To this end, Schmidt designed a point system with which candidates should be selected taking into account their age and length of membership in the Bundestag. The proposal was not carried out.
The writer Günter Grass , a companion and prominent supporter of Brandt in the election campaign for the 1969 federal election , alluded to Bebel's pocket watch in several works. For example in From the diary of a snail from 1972: "For a few years Willy Brandt has been wearing Bebel's pocket watch that still works" and "The man with Bebel's pocket watch is pushing". Grass also gives space to August Bebel's pocket watch in his novel Der Butt , published in 1977 . In the chapter in the seventh month , August Bebel visits the Stubbe family in their workers' kate and is cooked by Lena. At first, Bebel impatiently repeatedly pulls his watch out of his pocket, but comes to rest while eating. Lena's request that Bebel write a foreword to her “Proletarian Cookbook” is rejected with poor justification. Then it says in the novel: "When August Bebel pulled out the gold pocket watch that the chairman of the SPD, Willy Brandt, wears on festive occasions today, Lena took off her reading glasses and looked watery at the eaten table".
Even after Willy Brandt had given the pocket watch to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, it remained part of the collective memory beyond German social democracy and was a recurring theme in political life. So asked Friedrich Küppersbusch , the moderator of the WDR-political magazine ZAK , in February 1990 on the occasion of the election Ibrahim Boehme chairman of the Social Democratic Party in the GDR jokingly whether Bebel pocket pass from Boehme to the east or bird in the West.
In May 1993, Johannes Rau, acting as party chairman, declared that he did not know where Bebel's pocket watch was. At that time she was in the Golden Lion Memorial in Eisenach and her whereabouts were no secret in the years that followed. Nonetheless, Oskar Lafontaine complained in his 1999 book The Heart Beats Left that he was “sad” in 1995 about “that after my election as SPD party leader I did not get Bebel's gold watch. […] I was therefore unable to hand over Bebel's gold watch to my successor in the party chairmanship. ”Lafontaine's successor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder , received the gold pocket watch from Brigitte Seebacher-Brandt that she had given her husband on his 75th birthday. This watch has Roman numerals on the dial, and Willy Brandt's initials are engraved on the back. Schröder returned the watch to Seebacher-Brandt at the end of his tenure as party chairman.
Since 1982, the SPD's Erlangen City Association has been awarding deserving members the highest honor, the "August Bebel watch", which is said to be another replica of Bebel's pocket watch. The watch is awarded every two years and passed on from award winner to award winner.
Web links
- Bebel's pocket watch. In: fes.de. Friedrich Ebert Foundation(with numerous pictures).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c August Bebel's watch. In: erinnerungsorte.fes.de. Friedrich Ebert Foundation, accessed on November 3, 2021 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Bebel's pocket watch. In: fes.de. Friedrich Ebert Foundation, accessed on November 3, 2021 .
- ↑ Lupus in fabula. Egg dance in the SPD around the Brandt successor. Lafontaine applies for the next candidate for chancellor . In: The mirror . No. 7 , February 8, 1987 ( spiegel.de [accessed November 3, 2021]).
- ↑ Dr. Brigitte Seebacher-Brandt, publicist, in conversation with Klaus Kastan . January 26, 2001 ( br.de [PDF; accessed on November 4, 2021] Interview, conducted in a broadcast of the alpha-Forum series of the TV channel BR-alpha ).
- ↑ SPD Erlangen gives August Bebel watch to Gerd Peters. In: spd-erlangen.de. SPD Erlangen, accessed on February 20, 2019 .