Benno Karpeles

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Benno Karpeles (born October 6, 1868 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † January 1938 there ) was an Austrian social democrat , consumer cooperative , publicist and publisher . He also founded the Hammerbrotwerke in 1909 . From 1918 to 1919 he published the pacifist weekly Der Friede , and from 1919 to 1920 the left-wing intellectual daily newspaper Der Neue Tag . In the last phase of his life he advocated a reconciliation of the social democracy - from whose party he had resigned - with the Catholic Church - to which he converted from Judaism.

Live and act

Benno Karpeles was born in Vienna in 1868 into a Jewish upper-class family. His father Moritz Karpeles (1834–1903) was a co-founder of the shipping company Schenker . Nevertheless, Karpeles turned to social democracy and the labor movement early on. At the beginning of the 1890s he toured the Moravian-Silesian mining districts and carried out social statistical studies. He studied law and political science in Vienna. Then, from 1894 to 1897, he studied economics in London. There he also made the acquaintance of Friedrich Engels and leaders of the British labor movement and for some time worked as the London correspondent of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. From 1897 he represented the Austrian Social Democrats as a delegate at international congresses.

From 1897 to 1899 Karpeles organized the Austrian social democrats living in Zurich. This also included Friedrich Adler , who was studying in Zurich at the time and whose father Victor Adler entrusted Karpeles with care. After his return to Vienna, he became the social policy editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung and representative of the Austrian trade unions at the Second International.

From 1904 Karpeles devoted himself to the Austrian cooperative system and played a leading role in the development of the party-affiliated consumer association Vorwärts and the establishment of the large purchasing company GöC in 1905 . In 1909 Karpeles also founded the Hammerbrotwerke , which were supposed to improve the party's financial situation through profits. Due to the over-ambitious expansion policy of Karpeles and other factors, the party and the cooperative movement instead got deeper and deeper into financial difficulties. Corruption allegations were made against Karpeles and the then top functionary of the consumer cooperatives Karl Renner and Karpeles gave up the management of the plants shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Renner prevented a financial collapse in 1912 with union help. Ultimately, the Hammerbrotwerke were only renovated through the production of war biscuits.

In January 1918 Karpeles founded the pacifist weekly Der Friede in view of the First World War , which had been going on for four years, and the war propaganda of the Christian social daily Reichspost . For this he was able to quickly win well-known journalists, publicists and writers from the left and social democratic as well as from the bourgeois camp; around 200 of them published in total in peace .

After Viktor Adler's death , Karpeles finally resigned from the Social Democratic Party, with which there had been a tense relationship since the corruption allegations. In March 1919, before the peace was set in August that year, Karpeles founded the daily newspaper Der Neue Tag . Most of its co-workers were drawn from those who already wrote for peace . Another newcomer was the young Joseph Roth , who published his first socially critical feature articles and reports in the Vienna Symptoms section . Similar to Friede , the daily newspaper had a left-wing intellectual orientation and only existed for a short time. It was discontinued in 1920.

After his attempts at newspaper failed, Karpeles retired to his father's company and held managerial positions in Berlin and Vienna.

With the ordinance of February 16, 1934 by the Dollfuss government, the GöC was placed under temporary administration, and Karpeles sought contact with the GöC again, but this did not succeed.

After Karpeles made the acquaintance of Ignaz Seipel and converted to Catholicism after a religious awakening experience, he tried in vain to reconcile social democracy with the church. After a detailed analysis of the encyclical Pope Pius XI. , Quadragesimo anno , he came to the conclusion that fascism and Catholicism were incompatible, but his attempts at reconciliation were unsuccessful. Impoverished Karpeles died a sudden death in Vienna in January 1938.

literature

  • Klaus Amann: The poets and politics. Essays on Austrian literature after 1918. Edition Falter / Deuticke, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85463-119-7 , pp. 16-18
  • Andreas Korp : Stone on stone, 50 years of the wholesale buying company of Austrian consumer associations, a memorial book , Vienna 1955
  • Karpeles, Benno. In: Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 885.
  • Florian Jagschitz / Siegfried Rom: Selected leaders of the Austrian consumer cooperatives - Dr. Benno Karpeles in: Johann Brazda / Holger Blisse (eds.): Contributions to critical cooperative research, Research Association for Cooperatives, Vienna 2018, pp. 297–298, ISBN 978-3-9502989-5-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amann, p. 239, note 14
  2. ↑ Armin A. Wallas (Ed.): Eugen Hoeflich. Diaries 1915 to 1927 . Vienna: Böhlau, 1999 ISBN 3-205-99137-0 , p. 351
personal data
SURNAME Karpeles, Benno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian publicist and editor
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 1938
Place of death Vienna