August Winnig

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Winnig as Upper President of East Prussia, 1920

August Winnig (born March 31, 1878 in Blankenburg (Harz) ; † November 3, 1956 in Bad Nauheim ) was a German trade unionist , politician (SPD, old SPD , KVP , CDU ) and writer .

The Social Democrat Winnig declined during the First World War, more and more the nationalism and supported the 1920 Kapp Putsch . He was relieved of his office as Chief President. As a folk nationalist and anti-Semite , he welcomed Hitler's “ seizure of power ” in 1933. After that, by 1937 at the latest, he developed a conservative , Christian attitude. He had contacts with the resistance and was one of the founders of the Lower Saxony CDU after 1945 .

Life

Winnig grew up as one of twelve children in the household of a gravedigger. In 1892 he began an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, which he completed in 1895. From the summer of 1896 he became involved in socialist activities, he wrote for the social democratic party press, organized a local association of journeyman masons and took part in strikes . He was arrested because of an argument with strikebreakers. In 1904 he became an employee, later editor-in-chief , of the union magazine Grundstein . In 1913 he was elected to the Hamburg parliament for the SPD . As a functionary of the construction workers 'association, he helped organize a major construction workers' strike in 1910, which ended with the acceptance of minor wage increases and a three-year strike waiver by the union . In 1912 he became chairman of the construction workers' association.

During the First World War, Winnig belonged to the intellectual environment of the Lensch-Cunow-Haenisch group , which, based on the “August experience ” in 1914 and the collapse of the “ Internationale ”, represented the idea of ​​“national socialism” and the “national community”. However, the Lensch-Cunow-Haenisch group was not anti-Semitic, as men like Winnig and Gustav Noske became in later years; Jewish social democrats and socialists like Alexander Parvus and Ernst Heilmann belonged to their environment .

Recognition of Latvia, with Winnig's signature

Winnig had been Reich envoy since October 1918 and, after the outbreak of the revolution in Germany, General Plenipotentiary for the occupied Baltic countries. Winnig signed the recognitions of the republics of Estonia and Latvia . In order to exert political pressure on the Latvian government, he wanted to delay the evacuation of the Baltic region and aimed to create voluntary combat units . Winnig demanded a quarter of the seats in the Latvian People's Council for the German-Baltic minority in order to preserve “Germanness in the East”. Because of such measures his popularity in the SPD decreased.

Elected to the Weimar National Assembly, he supported Ebert's candidacy as Reich President against Philipp Scheidemann in the SPD . Under the new government he became President of East Prussia . Klaus von der Groeben has received Winnig's speech, which he gave on December 17, 1919 as Chief President before the East Prussian Provincial Parliament on the German reasons for the defeat in the First World War . As chief president, Winnig fought the revolutionaries and organized the formation of voluntary corps . In 1920 he supported Wolfgang Kapp in the putsch against the Reich government Gustav Bauer set up by the SPD . After the coup failed, Winnig was removed from office and expelled from the SPD and the union.

In 1922 he began studying at the University of Berlin , where he dealt with history , economics and geography . During this time he also began to become known as a writer (mainly with his autobiographical works). With Hans Grimm , Hans Carossa , Edwin Erich Dwinger and others he belonged to the Lippoldsberg poet circle .

As a representative of the Rifle and Hiking Association of Rhineland-Westphalia, he took part in a leadership conference of the federal Oberland in April 1924 at Hoheneck Castle (Ipsheim) .

In 1927 he joined the Old Social Democratic Party and in 1930 the People's Conservative Association . In the same year his work Vom Proletariat zum Arbeitertum was published , in which he sums up the path he has taken and presents it as a model.

During the time of National Socialism , Winnig changed (as he reports in his notes From Twenty Years ) from a nationally thinking socialist to a representative of a Christian-conservative attitude based on the idea of ​​European cooperation, which brings him close to those involved in the attack on 20. July 1944 who went in and out of his Potsdam house. He remained free from persecution after July 20th. In 1945 he lived again in Blankenburg, which he left shortly before the Red Army moved in to settle in Vienenburg . He died at the age of 78 during a spa stay in Bad Nauheim and was buried in Goslar. In 1996 he was reburied with his last wife in the forest cemetery in his hometown of Blankenburg am Harz.

Quotes

"With curses on God, King and Fatherland and with the call to the proletarian revolution, the Jew began his way with us."

- August Winnig: Europe. Thoughts of a German. Eckart, Berlin 1938, p. 46.

“Our fate has left us only one choice: either teamwork or breakdown. Above all, those for whom the political reorganization is the fulfillment of decades of striving must not want the collapse. The fate of our economic order is also the fate of democracy. If our economic order collapses, democracy is also destroyed. The more clearly democracy now recognizes the need of the hour and the more courageously it is ready to fulfill it, the more firmly it will stand and the more lively it will have an impact on legislation and administration. The propaganda against fellow citizens of Jewish descent, which in the provinces and especially in the provincial capital has often taken such nasty forms, must also cease . One cannot fail to recognize that among the corrosive elements that have increased our need so much, there are relatively many people of Jewish descent. But the no less demonstrable fact that a far larger number of Jewish fellow citizens have rendered valuable services to the state and the province through their scientific and commercial work and continue to do so, forbids any just-thinking person to participate in this propaganda. "

- The end of Winnig's speech to the provincial parliament of the province of East Prussia on December 17, 1919.

"Blood and soil are the fate of the peoples."

- Opening sentence of his work Liberation (1926) and the book Das Reich als Republik (1928)

“The victory of the National Socialist movement was achieved with the strength of this youth of our nationality. With this victory the worker has taken great leadership. "

- A. Winnig in: After three years , epilogue to the new edition of Vom Proletariat zum Arbeitertum, 1933.

Works

From the proletariat to the working class (1930)

Autobiographical writings

  • Early red. A book about Heimat und Jugend, 1924 (first edition 1919), dedicated to Oswald Spengler .
  • At the end of German Ostpolitik. Personal experiences and memories . State Political Publishing House, Berlin 1921.
  • The book Wandering, 1941 (expansion of the last part of Frührot , contains Winnig's experiences as a journeyman bricklayer).
  • The Long Way, 1932 (reports on his career as a trade unionist up to the First World War).
  • Heimkehr, 1935 (reports on his activities in the Baltic States in 1918 up to the Kapp Putsch; there are also earlier partial publications on this ( At the exit of German Ostpolitik, 1921)).
  • The Hand of God, 1938 (autobiographical experiences with a religious background).
  • The Unknown, 1940 (Experiences from the realm of the supersensible).
  • From twenty years. 1925 to 1945, 1948 (first published in 1945 under the title Rund um Hitler for the aid to prisoners of war of the World Association of the YMCA Geneva / London).

Literary writings

  • (Ed.) Jungblut . Craft songs, hiking songs and folk songs.
  • Prussian Commission . Soldiers' Stories Berlin, Vorwärts-Verlag, 1910 (anti-militarist stories that have not been published since then and were banned at the time and are based on personal experiences).
  • The ever greening fir, 1927 (stories, illustrated by A. Paul Weber ; contains the well-known story Gerdauen is more beautiful ).
  • Wonderful World, 1938 (novel).
  • In the cave, 1941 (story).
  • Connected in a circle, Reclam's Universal Library No. 7390, Leipzig 1941 (stories with the author's autobiographical afterword).
  • Dawn, 1958 (collected stories, collected from various publications).

Other fonts

  • The great struggle in the German construction industry, 1910.
  • The Burgfriede and the Workers (=  War Problems of the Working Class, Issue 19), 1915.
  • The war and the workers' international. In: F. Thimme, C. Legien (ed.): The workers in the new Germany, 1915.
  • Marx as an experience. In: Bell 4, 1 v. May 4, 1917, pp. 138-143.
  • Belief in the proletariat, 1924, revised 1926.
  • The historical mission of the German worker. German foreign policy, lecture in Halle / Saale, 1926.
  • The Reich as Republic, 1928 (collected essays and speeches).
  • From the proletariat to the working class. 1930, (special edition) 1933 (with an afterword: "After three years"; several new editions until 1945).
  • National Socialism - the bearer of our hope. In: Neustädter Gazette. October 29, 1932.
  • The worker in the Third Reich. Buchholz & Weißwange, Berlin 1934.
  • Worker and Reich (= inheritance and obligation. 1. On the wrong track, 2. The great test ). Teubner, Leipzig a. a. 1937.
  • Europe. Thoughts of a German. Eckart Verlag, Berlin 1937 (essay that can already be assigned to the conservative resistance, criticism of the totalitarianism of the Soviet system was understood as a criticism of the Nazi state).
  • The German order of knights and its castles. Illustrated book with text. Langewiesche, Königstein 1939.
  • From the proletariat to the working class. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1942.
  • We guard the fire. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1933 (essays and speeches from 10 years: 1923–1933).

Honors

literature

  • Rüdiger Döhler : East Prussia after the First World War. Once and Now, Yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research, Vol. 54 (2009), pp. 219–235.
  • Klaus Grimm: Years of German decision in the Baltic States. Essen 1939.
  • Max Kemmerich: August Winnig. Born March 31, 1878. A German socialist. In: Military Political Forum. Neumünster, Holstein, 4 (1955), 3, pp. 6-15.
  • Wilhelm Landgrebe: August Winnig. Labor leader, chief president, Christian. Verl. D. St. Johannis printing works, Lahr-Dinglingen 1961.
  • Jürgen Manthey : Revolution and counter-revolution (August Winnig and Wolfgang Kapp). In: Königsberg. History of a world citizenship republic. Munich 2005, pp. 554-562.
  • Wilhelm Ribhegge: August Winnig. A historical personality analysis (= publication series of the research institute of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung; 99). Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1973, ISBN 3-87831-147-8 .
  • Hannah Vogt : The worker. Nature and problems in Friedrich Naumann, August Winnig, Ernst Jünger. Diss. Univ. Göttingen 1945.
  • Frank Schröder: August Winnig as an exponent of German politics in the Baltic States 1918/19 (= Baltic series; 1). Baltic Society in Germany eV, Hamburg 1996.
  • Cecilia A. Trunz: The autobiographies of German industrial workers. Univ. Diss., Freiburg im Breisgau 1935.
  • Jürgen Manthey : Revolution and counter-revolution (August Winnig and Wolfgang Kapp). In: ders .: Königsberg. History of a world citizenship republic . Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-423-34318-3 , pp. 554-562.
  • Juan Baráibar López: Libros para el guide. Inédita, Barcelona 2010, pp. 413-421.
  • Reinhard Bein : Hitler's Brunswick staff. 2nd Edition. Döring, Braunschweig 2017, ISBN 978-3-925268-56-4 , pp. 292-301.
  • Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. 5. T – Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Vol. 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 298f.
  • Wolfdietrich von Kloeden :  Winnig, August. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 15, Bautz, Herzberg 1999, ISBN 3-88309-077-8 , Sp. 1510-1523.

Memberships

Incomplete list

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Döhler, pp. 222-227
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia: The völkisch awakening in Neustadt an der Aisch 1922–1933 (=  Streiflichter from the local history, special volume 4). Verlag Philipp Schmidt, 2016, ISBN 978-3-87707-990-4 , p. 56.
personal data
SURNAME Winnig, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), Member of the Bundestag, trade unionist and nationalist writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Blankenburg / Harz
DATE OF DEATH 3rd November 1956
Place of death Bad Nauheim