Bernhard Kuhnt
Bernhard Kuhnt (born February 24, 1876 in Leipzig , † January 28, 1946 in Westensee ) was a German politician of the SPD and USPD . In 1918 he was one of the main actors in the November Revolution in the greater Wilhelmshaven - Rüstringen - Oldenburg region , as a result of which he was the first President of the newly founded Free State of Oldenburg for a short period from November 11, 1918 to March 3, 1919 .
Life
The trained machine fitter Bernhard Kuhnt served in the Imperial Navy from 1897 to 1899 and then worked at the Blohm & Voss shipyard and in Berlin. From 1906 he was managing director of the German Metalworkers' Association in Berlin. From 1911 until he was drafted into the Imperial Navy in 1914, he was the party secretary of the SPD in Chemnitz . With the rank of chief stoker , he did his military service in a construction division in the First World War . In 1917 Kuhnt joined the USPD .
Towards the end of the First World War, a mutiny developed on individual ships of the Imperial Fleet, which anchored off Wilhelmshaven , due to the naval order of October 24, 1918 . It finally expanded into the November Revolution and led to the overthrow of the monarchy in Germany.
In Rüstringen on November 6, 1918, after a mass demonstration by over 20,000 members of the Navy, shipyard workers and other civilians, a workers 'and soldiers' council was formed, the executive body of which was the so-called 21er council. Kuhnt was appointed chairman of the council. The Council of 21 then took over power over the fortress cities without resistance from the military station command. On November 10, 1918, in front of around 100,000 enthusiastic demonstrators in Wilhelmshaven, the 21er Council declared the North Sea station and all surrounding islands and marine parts as well as the entire Oldenburg region to be the socialist republic of Oldenburg / East Friesland and the deposition of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg . Under the impression of the demonstrations and the pressure of the large majority of the members of the state parliament in Oldenburg, Grand Duke Friedrich August abdicated on November 11, 1918 and declared his resignation from the throne. The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg was then declared a Free State . A provisional board of directors was established as a provisional government . a. the Rüstringen member of the state parliament Paul Hug and Kuhnt belonged. Kuhnt took over the symbolic office of President of the new Free State of Oldenburg. His attempt to incorporate East Frisia into the rulership of the Council of 21 failed, however.
The list of candidates for the elections to the constituent national assembly on January 19, 1919 led to insurmountable contradictions within the SPD in Wilhelmshaven-Rüstringen . After the Rüstringen MP Hug achieved a better place on the list than Kuhnt, also because he took up the position of chairman of the Council of 21 to such an extent that he could not contribute much to the government work of the Oldenburg board of directors, the Council of 21 decided to create its own list for the USPD to run in the National Assembly election. At the top of the list was Kuhnt. Despite the many USPD supporters among the 100,000 or so marines who were still in Wilhelmshaven-Rüstringen at the end of 1918, large parts of the population voted for the more moderate SPD and not for the more radical USPD. While Hug was elected to the National Assembly, Kuhnt did not get the required number of votes.
After the USPD's election defeat, the communist KPD tried to seize power by means of a coup . On January 27, 1919, their supporters occupied the train station, the post office, the telephone office, the Reichsbank office and the town halls of the twin towns of Wilhelmshaven-Rüstringen. The putschists stole over 7 million marks from the Reichsbank office, including the entire gold stock of the branch. On the same day deck officers and professional soldiers of the naval garrison were able to restore the old balance of power. The putschists then withdrew to the thousand-man barracks in Wilhelmshaven and holed up there. Since they did not want to give up, they were forced to surrender by artillery fire. Eight dead and 46 wounded were mourned. In the course of this action, the Council of 21 had to give up military control. It subsequently became known that the members of the Council of 21 had been informed of its planning in the run-up to the coup, but had still not intervened. Kuhnt was then given leave of absence from the Ministry of Defense in Berlin and removed from his position as President of the Free State of Oldenburg on January 29, 1919. Serious accusations were soon raised against his activities, which led to his first imprisonment on February 28, 1919, from which he was released again in the March fighting in Berlin .
After these events, Kuhnt left the Jade region and returned to his home country Saxony . In 1922 he belonged to the part of the USPD that reunited with the SPD. There he held the post of governor of the Flöha governor from 1923 to 1924 . From 1924 to 1933 he was a member of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as an SPD member of the Chemnitz electoral district . Within the SPD, Kuhnt belonged to the Marxist left wing and in 1930/31 to the group of members of the Reichstag around Max Seydewitz and Kurt Rosenfeld , who repeatedly broke parliamentary group discipline, for example in the armored cruiser question in March 1931. Unlike the majority of this group, however, Kuhnt remained in the In autumn 1931 in the SPD and did not join the SAPD . From March 9, 1933 to July 20, 1934, like many other SPD members, he was imprisoned by the National Socialists and was therefore unable to take part in the vote on the Enabling Act .
He died on January 28, 1946 in Westensee near Kiel.
Honors
In Chemnitz , the Bernhard-Kuhnt-Weg is a street named after Kuhnt.
Remarks
- ↑ The photo of this degrading treatment went around the world as evidence of the Nazi brutality and became a symbol for the victims of the early Nazi terror.
literature
- Hanno Drechsler : The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). A contribution to the history of the German labor movement at the end of the Weimar Republic. Publisher Anton Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1965
- Gerhard Koop and Erich Mulitze: The Navy in Wilhelmshaven - a pictorial chronicle of German naval history from 1853 to today . 2nd edition, Bernard & Graefe Verlagm, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-7637-5977-8 .
- Sparkasse Wilhelmshaven (Ed.): 125 years of Sparkasse Wilhelmshaven as reflected in the city's history. Brune-Mettcker, Wilhelmshaven 2001
- Martin Wein: City against its will. Municipal development in Wilhelmshaven / Rüstringen 1853–1937 . Tectum, Marburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-8288-9201-9
- 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 .
Web links
- Oldenburg contemporary history from 1914 to 1932
- Bernhard Kuhnt in the database of members of the Reichstag
- Bernhard Kuhnt's biography . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
- Bernhard Kuhnt's biography . In: Heinrich Best and Wilhelm H. Schröder : Database of Members of the National Assembly and the German Reichstag 1919–1933 (Biorab – Weimar)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Kuhnt, Bernhard. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 399-400 ( online ).
- ^ Hanno Drechsler: The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). P. 62f and p. 123
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kuhnt, Bernhard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German politician (SPD, USPD), MdR |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 24, 1876 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Leipzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 28, 1946 |
| Place of death | Westensee (municipality) near Kiel |