August Frölich

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August Frölich
Election poster of the SPD 1928 with Wilhelm Bock , Kurt Rosenfeld , August Frölich, Mathilde Wurm , Georg Dietrich , Karl Hermann , August Siemsen , Elsa Niviera , Erich Mäder

August Frölich (born December 31, 1877 in Sippersfeld , † January 22, 1966 in Weimar ) was a German politician of the SPD or later SED and union leader.

Life

After attending elementary school from 1890 to 1893, the son of a small farmer learned the trade of a fitter and lathe operator in Enkenbach . From 1893 to 1898 he went on a journey through Germany. In 1895 he joined the German Metalworkers Association (DMV). In 1898 he was elected union shop steward at Ludwig Loewe & Co. AG in Berlin and worked from 1899 to 1901 as district manager of the DMV in Berlin-Moabit. On January 1, 1900 he became a member of the SPD. From 1902 to 1906 he was authorized representative of the DMV for Braunschweig and from 1906 to 1914 managing director of the DMV in Altenburg . Between 1913 and 1918 he was a city councilor for the city of Altenburg. From 1914 to 1916 he did military service. From 1916 to 1918 he was again managing director of DMV Altenburg.

In November 1918 he chaired the workers 'and soldiers' council in Altenburg and was a delegate at the 1st council congress in Berlin. In 1919 he was elected to the Landtag of the Free State of Saxony-Altenburg and was its State Councilor (head of government) until it was incorporated into Thuringia in 1920. From October 7, 1921 to February 23, 1924, Frölich was involved in a coalition government with the USPD as the leading minister of state of Thuringia . He also chaired the state government during a coalition between his SPD and the KPD from October 16 to November 12, 1923. This second red-red coalition after Saxony (then called workers' government ) at the state level in a German democracy collapsed prematurely due to massive pressure from the Reich government (including the invasion of the Reichswehr in Thuringia, combined with the threat of a "military solution"). From 1924 to 1933 he was a member of the Reichstag .

In 1933 and 1938 he was arrested by the Nazi regime and was in “ protective custody ” for several months . In August 1944 he was arrested for the third time by the Gestapo in Weimar and imprisoned for two months in Berlin because of his connection to the resistance organization of Theodor Neubauer and Magnus Poser . Frölich was designated by the conspirators for the attempted coup on July 20, 1944 as political sub-commissioner in military district IX (Kassel). But he was able to survive the end of the war.

In October 1945 he was elected chairman of the party control commission of the SPD Thuringia. In 1946 he was a member of the Thuringian state assembly and was its vice-president. From November 21, 1946 until the dissolution of the states of the GDR in July 1952, he was President of the Landtag in Thuringia. In this office he accepted without comment the arrest of MP Hermann Becker on July 23, 1948, after all the group chairman of the second strongest party in the state parliament. With the state parliament sessions on December 10, 1948 in the FDGB house in Weimar, on July 13, 1949 in the culture hall of the VEB Zellwolle in Schwarza and on February 28, 1951 in the Bruchstaedt culture house - all three political mobilization events - and the acceptance of the unit list elections in October 1950 In the end he paved the way for communist-Stalinist pseudo-parliamentarism in the GDR. On April 7, 1946, Frölich headed the Thuringian unification party convention of the KPD and SPD in Gotha and was a member of the secretariat of the Thuringia regional association of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany from 1946 to 1952.

On June 30, 1947, Frölich was slightly injured in a political knife attack in Weimar. He took part in the Second Party Congress of the SED in September 1947.

From 1948 to 1949 he was a member of the Second German People's Council , from October 7, 1949 to September 27, 1950, a member of the Provisional People's Chamber of the GDR, from October 1949 until its dissolution in December 1958, also a member, senior president and temporarily vice-president of the provincial chamber of the GDR GDR . After the state parliaments were dissolved in July 1952, Frölich was a member of the district assembly of the Erfurt district until his death and from 1952 to 1960 a member of the Erfurt district leadership of the SED. From 1953 to 1957 he was chairman of the Erfurt district committee of people's solidarity .

August Frölich, who belonged to all of the Thuringian state parliaments directly elected by the people from 1920 to 1952, is the symbol of Thuringian parliamentarism in the first half of the 20th century.

Awards and honors

literature

  • Josef Schwarz: The share of the socialist state politician August Frölich in the reforms in the state of Thuringia after the November Revolution . In: Red-Red Ghosts in Thuringia. Democratic-socialist reform policy then and now . quer - verlag & vertrieb 2004, ISBN 3-935787-04-9 .
  • Bernhard Post, Volker Wahl (Ed.): Thuringia Handbook 1920-1995. Hermann Bölau, Weimar 1999, ISBN 3-7400-0962-4 .
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • History of the German labor movement - Biographisches Lexikon , Dietz Verlag Berlin 1970

Web links

Commons : August Frölich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Portrait in Neues Deutschland from February 26, 1966
  2. ^ Lengemann, Jochen 1938-: Thuringian state parliaments 1919–1952: biographical manual . Böhlau, Cologne 2014, ISBN 3-412-22179-1 , p. 264 f .
  3. ^ New Germany from July 1, 1947
personal data
SURNAME Happy August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politicians (SPD, SED), MdR, MdV
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Sippersfeld
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1966
Place of death Weimar