August Geib

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August Geib
Geib, honored as a victim of the Socialist Law; "Our dead" (to the right of Karl Marx).

Wilhelm Leopold August Geib (born April 10, 1842 in Duchroth , † August 1, 1879 in Hamburg ) was a German socialist poet , bookseller and member of the German Reichstag . As a writer, he also used the pseudonym Wilhelm Leopold .

Life

Geib attended the village school in Durchroth until he was ten, after which he received private lessons. He did a commercial apprenticeship in Meisenheim (1855-1858), then he worked as a clerk in Hamburg. From 1864 he worked as a bookseller and lending librarian in Hamburg. In the first years in the labor movement , Geib belonged politically to the General German Workers' Association founded by Ferdinand Lassalle , but like many others moved to the SDAP camp of Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel . In addition to these and Wilhelm Bracke , the Hamburg bookseller Geib was part of the leadership of the founding congress of the SDAP in Eisenach in April 1869 . In the environment of the party he was initially mainly involved in trade unions. Together with Ignaz Auer , he took over the management of the woodworkers' union and the editing of the "Union" after Theodor Yorck passed away. Geib was arrested on September 16, 1870 in connection with the social democratic demands for an end to the war in France . As a leading member of the SDAP he was responsible for the newspaper “ Der Volksstaat ” and reported on it in 1873 at the party congress in Eisenach. Geib was elected to the Reichstag for the first time in the Reichstag election of 1874 . He was a member of this body until 1877. On his return trip from the spa in Karlsbad , Karl Marx and daughter Eleanor arrived in Hamburg on September 28, 1874 and met Geib, who at that time lived in Rödingsmarkt no. 12 and had a bookstore, and Ignaz Auer for political talks. When SDAP and ADAV merged in 1875, Geib was elected as the cashier of the newly founded SAPD . In 1877 the party was banned within the scope of the Prussian association law. In this context, Geib was arrested again. In the same year he was elected to the central electoral commission of the party by the party congress in Gotha . Geib also remained active in the union. Also in 1877 he published the first in-depth trade union statistics based on information from the various associations. Despite some gaps in some industries, this information is fundamental to the history of the labor movement even in research today. There was a deep conflict with the rest of the party executive in connection with the impending socialist law . Geib proposed the dissolution of the party before the law came into force. Although this was decided after violent disputes, Geib resigned from his position as cashier, which August Bebel then took over. However, Geib remained influential in the party. It was not least thanks to him that a central party library was set up in exile in Switzerland, from which the party archive later emerged. In addition to direct party work, Geib was also active as a poet of workers 'songs, which later found dissemination in the workers' movement. In 1879 the W. Fenck company in Hamburg sold a Geib lithograph.

Around 30,000 people attended his funeral in Hamburg, most of whom had replaced the usual black mourning ribbon with red ribbons. In addition to showing respect for one of the founders of the social democratic labor movement, it was one of the most impressive demonstrations for the banned party during the Socialist Law.

Honors

The Geibweg in the Hamburg district of Horn was named after him.

Works

  • Poems. Self-published by the author, on commission from W. Schardius, Hamburg; Leipzig 1864
  • The Lassalle party. Reply to the article by Heinrich Martens in No. 147 of the reform . Carl Fischer, Hamburg 1867-
  • “Hamburg, July 2nd. Today's “Social Democrat” (No-76) ”[…] . In: Democratic weekly paper . No. 28 supplement dated July 10, 1869.
  • Georg Herwegh ; Ferdinand Freiligrath ; August Geib: Workers Song Book. Poems and songs of liberal and especially social-democratic tendencies . GA Lönnecker, Chicago 1873
  • Poems. Publishing house of the cooperative book printing company, Leipzig 1876
  • The normal working day . Publishing house of the cooperative book printing company, Leipzig 1875
  • The normal working day . Swiss Cooperative Book Printing Company, Hottingen-Zurich 1885
  • From the hunting season for red deer. From my diary sheets from the socialist era . In: New World . 1896
  • Preface . In: 10 years later. Document collection . Edited by I. Auer, Berlin 1913
  • Josef Offner: Hand in hand. Poem by August Geib. Composed for male choir . J. Günther, Dresden 1919 digitized
  • Letters from August Geib to Wilhelm Liebknecht from 1879 . Edited by Ruth Rüdiger. In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement. Volume 20, 1978, No. 5, pp. 684-691

literature

  • Gustav Mayer : Johann Baptist von Schweitzer and the social democracy. A contribution to the history of the German labor movement . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1909 (Reprint: Detlev Auvermann, Glashütten im Taunus 1970)
  • Geib, Wilhelm Leopold August . In: Lexicon of socialist German literature. Leipzig 1964, pp. 191–193.
  • August Geib . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, p. 96.
  • Eberhard Hackethal: Geib, Wilhelm Leopold August . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 149–151
  • Heinrich Gemkow ; Gudrun Hofmann: From the beginnings of the Eisenach party. Unpublished letters to Bebel and Liebknecht . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement . 18th year Berlin 1976, issue 5, p. 127 ff.
  • Angelika Voss-Louis: Hamburg's labor movement in the change of society. A chronicle. Vol. 1 1842 to 1890 . Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1987 ( Hamburg contributions to social and contemporary history . Supplement 3) ISBN 3-7672-1008-8
  • Klaus Tenfelde : The emergence of the German trade union movement. From the pre-march to the end of the socialist law . In: Klaus Tenfelde u. a .: History of the German trade unions. From the beginnings to 1945. Bund Verlag, 1987 ISBN 3-7663-0861-0 , pp. 15–166.
  • Art. Geib, August. In: Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1867-1933. Biographies, chronicles, election documentation. A handbook (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 7). Droste, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-7700-5192-0 (abridged version online as a biography of August Geib . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876-1933 (BIOSOP) ).

Web links

Commons : August Geib  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Zweibrücker Tagblatt September 23, 1870.
  2. ↑ In the Moscow Archives (RGASPI), three letters from Geib to Marx (June 12, 1870; August 2, 1872 and November 8, 1874) are preserved in Fond 21.
  3. ↑ Guide to the sites of persecution and social-democratic resistance in Hamburg - Die Innere Stadt, publisher, Working Group of formerly persecuted social democrats (AvS), Hamburg 2005 p. 20
  4. ↑ MEW Vol. 34, p. 534; Manfred Schöncke: Karl and Heinrich Marx and their siblings , Cologne 1993, p. 864.
  5. ↑ bust 150 × 120 mm.
  6. ^ Die Grenzboten, Leipzig 1864, p. 517.
personal data
SURNAME Geib, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Geib, Wilhelm Leopold August (full name); Leopold, Wilhelm (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German early socialist poet, bookseller and politician (ADAV, SPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Duchroth
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1879
Place of death Hamburg