August Lammers (politician, 1831)

August Lammers (born August 23, 1831 in Lüneburg , † December 28, 1892 in Bremen ) was a German politician, economic writer and journalist.

Life

Lammers was the son of a businessman and studied philology and history in Göttingen from 1850 . The events of the March Revolution aroused Lammers sympathy for the liberal and national movement and already during his studies he began to write political articles for the Weser newspaper . In these he supported the liberal politicians Johann Carl Bertram Stüve and Rudolf von Bennigsen against the Borries cabinet during the reaction era. Without completing his studies, he became editor of the Weser newspaper in Bremen in 1852 . He worked there until 1853 and then went to Paris as a correspondent for the paper for a few weeks . At the end of the year he returned to Germany and in 1854 took over the editing of the Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung . In the following years he worked in the same capacity at various newspapers in northern Germany (from 1857 newspaper for northern Germany in Hanover , from 1859 Weser newspaper ). In 1861 he founded in Frankfurt the political newspaper the time that in 1862 with the Süddeutsche Zeitung merged, but in 1864 was received. The main reason for the failure was the pronounced Prussian-small German orientation of the time , which therefore only achieved a limited distribution in the strongly Greater German -minded Frankfurt and southern Germany.

Lammers became editor of the Elberfelder Zeitung in 1864 , of the Bremer Handelsblatt in 1866 , and founded the weekly Nordwest in 1878 . Monthly for community service and entertainment. Lammers then managed this paper together with his sister, the women's rights activist Mathilde Lammers , until his death. He also was president of the 1883 in Kassel , founded the German Association against the abuse of intellectual beverages ( temperance ) whose magazine Mäßigkeitsblätter responsible.

In addition to journalism, Lammers also participated politically. He was involved in the preparation of the first economic congress, which took place for the first time in Gotha in 1858. Numerous leading politicians from the liberal camp took part in this, such as Wilhelm Adolf Lette , Karl Mathy or Carl Biedermann . In addition to economic issues in the narrower sense, this congress, which was followed by other meetings until the 1870s, was a political forum for the liberal and national movement. In addition, Lammers was co-founder of the German National Association in 1859 alongside Bennigsen and Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch . From 1873 to 1879 he was a representative of the electoral district (today Wuppertal ) Elberfeld-Barmen, a member of the Prussian state parliament , where he belonged to the national-liberal party . There he was active in social policy as a member of parliament for the early industrial Wuppertal. For example, he was the rapporteur for a commission on a bill for the accommodation of neglected children in 1878. In his faction, Lammers belonged to the free trade wing, which lost influence after the resignation of Rudolph von Delbrück and Otto von Bismarck's domestic policy change towards protective tariff policy .

This domestic political turn, which strengthened the conservative element in German domestic politics, was one reason why Lammers turned more to social issues and bourgeois social reform in the years that followed. So he turned against the burning of the moors for agricultural use. Above all, his experience in Wuppertal meant that Lammers, together with other liberal politicians, founded the German Society for the Spread of Popular Education as early as 1872 . Even more important was the role of Lammers in the founding of the German Association for Poor Care and Charity in the years 1878 to 1880. Lammers created a large compilation (The poor system and the poor legislation in the European states (Berlin, 1879)) about the Elberfeld system written of poor relief.

In terms of social policy, Lammers took the line of liberalism at the time . He saw the solution to the social question not in state social policy like Bismarck or in the collective self-help of the labor movement , but in the individual support of the disadvantaged . The following were important for him: 1. Education for work and the creation of work records, 2. Education for saving and insuring (of life risks), 3. Education for moderation. Lammers was therefore one of the co-founders of the German Savings Bank Conference in 1882 . The founding of the German Association against the Abuse of Spiritual Drinks in 1883, which Lammers became managing director , also belongs to this context . He was also a co-founder or sponsor of numerous other associations. In addition, for example, the German Association for Rescue of Shipwrecked People , the German Association for Health Care , the Association for the Mass Distribution of Good Writings , as well as associations for holiday colonies, boy nurseries, workers' and women's education associations , especially the General German Women's Association . He also promoted the introduction of handicrafts in schools. Lammers was also active in the Protestant Church and at times edited the magazine of the German Protestant Association.

To promote his goals, Lammers has published a number of brochures (housework, poor relief, Sunday celebrations, drinking, etc.) and written numerous articles.

Fonts (selection)

• Socialism . Koebner, Breslau 1878.
• Education for work . FA Perthes, Gotha 1891.
• Aims and paths of German poor relief . Simion, Berlin 1882.
• Combating alcoholism . Habel, Berlin 1881.
• The protective tariffs . (Printed as a manuscript.) Breslau 1876.
• Germany after the war: ideas for a program of national politics . Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1871.
• The historical development of free trade . Lüderitz, Berlin 1869.
• German emigration under federal protection . Herbig, Berlin 1869.

literature

• Victor Böhmert :  Lammers, August . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 51, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 536-542.
• Arwed Emminghaus : August Lammers. Life picture of a German publicist and pioneer of the public benefit from the second half of the last century . Verlag OV Böhmert, Dresden 1908.
• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , p. 91 f. ( Online , PDF; 2.2 MB).

Web links

Wikisource: August Lammers  - Sources and full texts