Carl Herz (politician, 1877)

Memorial stele in front of the Berlin-Kreuzberg town hall

Carl Herz (born July 29, 1877 in Köthen (Anhalt) , † September 14, 1951 in Haifa ) was a German local politician and lawyer.

Life

1877 to 1904 - childhood, youth, education

Carl Herz was born on July 29, 1877 in Köthen, Anhalt, Germany. His father, the Jewish merchant Julius Herz, ran a men's clothing store on Marktplatz 8. He had moved from Coesfeld , where he actually wanted to become a teacher. Julius Herz could not and did not want to adhere to the strict orthodox rules and was therefore thrown out of the teachers' college. In 1878 he acquired citizenship . Carl's mother, Hermine Gerson, who was also Jewish, came from Oldenburg . There were some distinguished Hamburg citizens in this branch of the family. His two younger brothers emigrated : Hermann (* 1879) to Brazil and Georg (* 1885) as a staunch Zionist to Palestine .

From an early age Carl Herz had to help out in his father's company, but was not talented for this work. Easter 1896 he put in Ludwigsgymnasium the matriculation examination , and enrolled in the same year at the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg , a main compartment Jura . With Ernst Immanuel Bekker he attended the lectures Institutions of Roman Law and Roman Legal History as well as with Georg Jellinek Legal Encyclopedia , General Political Science and Politics . In Heidelberg and the universities of Leipzig , Halle (Saale) and Berlin , Herz only stayed one semester each , which was a common course of study at the time.

In Leipzig he heard lectures on German legal history and Prussian history from the time of the Great Elector , in Halle in 1897 with Rudolf Stammler Fundamentals of Politics . This is where Carl Herz came into contact with Marxism for the first time . The Neo-Kantian Stammler wanted to make him a private lecturer , but Herz refused. Also in Halle he took part in economics with Karl Diehl . It is doubtful that Stammler and Diehl laid the foundations for his later political stance, because no preoccupation with Karl Marx can be identified during his studies . There is evidence that he dealt intensively with three liberal reformers of the 19th century: Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein , Rudolf von Gneist and Otto von Gierke . Herz later named the latter as an academic teacher in his dissertation . He probably got to know Gierke and the also mentioned Gustav Schmoller during his Berlin semester.

From the summer of 1898, Carl Herz was back at the University of Halle, where he prepared for the trainee exam and passed it on July 1, 1900 at the Naumburg Higher Regional Court with summa cum laude . The practical work took place at the royal district court Schloppe in West Prussia and from 1901 at the district court Lissa in the province of Posen . He had this eastern regions deliberately chosen because prospective lawyers have a clerkship in remote areas of Prussia the citizenship acquire Germany's largest country. The year 1901 brought the attainment of the doctorate - to the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen he submitted the contribution to the doctrine of the assumption of debts for his inaugural dissertation - as well as the turn to Marxism : The paper Bernstein and the social democratic program by Karl Kautsky solved one Kind of political awakening experience. He passed the second state examination in law on April 16, 1904 in Berlin.

1904 to 1921 - Altona years

After the time in the eastern part of the empire, Carl Herz wanted to find his home further west, in a larger city. His affectionate uncle Hermann Gerson worked for the Vereinsbank Hamburg from 1878 and was a full board member from 1902 to 1907 . He recommended Altona in the province of Schleswig-Holstein because of its proximity to Hamburg . With his partner Berg, Herz opened a law firm in 1904 at Allee 124 (today Max-Brauer-Allee), one of the largest streets in Altona. They represented workers, small salaried employees, SPD functionaries, union leaders and journalists with a social democratic orientation. In 1904, when he joined the SPD, his political career began.

Immediately after setting up shop , Herz caused a stir in the Ruhstrat trial . The Grand Ducal Oldenburg finance minister, Franz Friedrich Ruhstrat, accused Johann Hermann Meyer, a waiter in the Oldenburg casino from 1899 to 1900, of perjury . In proceedings against the minister, the latter had sworn that he had observed Ruhstrat playing prohibited gambling . The waiter's acquittal against a high representative of Wilhelmine Germany was a sensation. As a rule, despite his defensive skills, intellectual abilities and eloquence, the labor lawyer had a hard time facing the submissive justice of the empire.

From 1905 at the latest, Carl Herz worked as a speaker for the SPD and held advanced training courses, including a. in September 1905 at 8:30 p.m. in the Altona-Ottensen Workers' Education Association. Current form of the Prussian and German constitution for the subject of civic studies.

Lectures by Carl Herz

September 26, 1905	Workers' education association Altona-Ottensen	Educational aspirations of workers
November 12, 1905	Workers' education association Altona-Ottensen	Right of association
January 3, 1906	Workers' education association Altona-Ottensen	Prussian constitutional history
January 15, 1906	Workers' education association Altona-Ottensen	Association and assembly law
July 26, 1906	Workers' education association Altona-Ottensen	Organization of criminal justice
November 24, 1906	Assembly of the union cartel	The language practice of today's trade reports
February 16, 1907	General meeting of the Association of Young Workers	Science and the proletarian youth
April 19, 1906	Meeting of the social democratic association for the 8th and 9th Schleswig-Holstein constituency in the flower rooms at the Große Freiheit	Law and the dispossessed class
May 24, 1906	Assembly of the Central Association of German Brewery Workers and Related Professions	Law and the dispossessed class

His professional and teaching activities quickly made Carl Herz famous. On October 22, 1906, the Allgemeine Hamburger Zeitung called him “the well-known lawyer Dr. Heart". His reputation even reached as far as Berlin. Colleagues like Hugo Haase and Karl Liebknecht appreciated the Holsteiner . The latter wanted to guide Herz to the capital of the Reich. In a detailed letter he declined on the grounds that he was needed more urgently in Altona. Herz showed little fear of big names, e. In 1906 , for example, he asked August Bebel to report as a witness about his imprisonment , which the SPD chairman refused. Looking back, he also mentioned contacts to Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein , Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann . With these connections, Carl Herz could also have become a member of the Reichstag , but he decided on local politics.

Palmaille in Altona 1906

As early as 1906, Carl Herz was a candidate for the Altona city ​​council , he received 325 votes, the local SPD chairman Hermann Thomas 305. However, the SPD did not enter parliament. Local politics was generally neglected in the city. Of the 12,000 eligible voters, only 2,000 went to the polls. 1,209 voted for social democratic candidates, but the party had 4,087 members in Altona, most of them presumably eligible to vote. Neither the setting up of a commission in June 1907, Herz was a member, nor fiery speeches by the top candidate led to success in the 1907 by-election (910 votes for Herz) and the 1908 election (1,915 votes).

In 1909 the work should pay off. After a landslide victory, five SPD candidates entered the city parliament. Top candidate Herz received 4,065 votes and even more for the worst of the five with 3,925 voters than for the best middle-class candidate with 3,365. Carl Herz took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group . The police observers saw the reasons for the election success as the agitation of the Social Democrats as well as the lukewarmness and indifference of the bourgeoisie, the anger of the workers over the increased use of income tax and the anger over the census suffrage . The Hamburger Echo , the SPD newspaper for Hamburg and the surrounding area, saw the low turnout of the bourgeoisie as a “protest against the liberal mismanagement in the town hall”. The established parties interpreted the result in a similar way and named the scandal surrounding the city's gas and electricity works as a decisive factor. Carl Herz addressed this in a speech on October 14, 1909.

The article Diepolitik in der Gemeinde im Hamburger Echo of November 5, 1909 made Carl Herz's thrusts clear: first the proletarians, then capital and a democratization of the local government. These goals corresponded to the demands for the extensive abolition of the municipal supervision and an independent municipal police in order to evade the authoritarian Prussian administration. Herz also sat in the four municipal commissions for finance , police costs , local statutes and Bahrenfeld / Othmarschen as well as property conditions and traffic , where he u. a. advocated the preservation of cheap housing, milk for poor children, the eight-hour day, the improvement of youth care and continuous poor relief. One of his ideas was a state fish supply for the less well-off population. The climate of the city council meeting changed significantly as a result of such debates.

The scandal surrounding the gasworks continued to attract particular attention, with the public focus on their copper manager. Carl Herz played a major role in coming to terms with the affair, which included everything that goes with it: secrecy, corruption, mismanagement, defamation lawsuits, cover-up, embezzlement and nepotism. However, Herz was sentenced to a fine of 500 marks for insulting , while the salaries of the charged management were increased from 7,400 to 8,000 marks. Herz also took to heart the expenses of 18,000 marks for a visit from Wilhelm II in 1911, while at the same time the customs policy threatened to increase food prices. When an additional 500 marks were to be approved for the visit of the emperor , excluding the commission for police costs, even the bourgeois commissioners protested. Sometimes the temperament went through with heart in the parliamentary sessions, the Altonaer Tageblatt reported in its editions of December 12, 1913 and October 30, 1913.

In March 1910, Carl Herz met Else Goldschmidt, a Jewish woman from Hamburg, from friends, one of two students at Kiel University for German studies and philosophy , it was love at first sight. The engagement in May 1910 was followed by the wedding on December 14, 1910. Shortly afterwards August Bebel visited the newlyweds. Else Herz was a very emancipated woman who went her own way in the 1920s through intensive work with the psychologist Alfred Adler . Nevertheless, she participated in her husband's professional life, e.g. B. she put the innumerable letters and manuscripts on the typewriter on paper. Initially the couple lived in Altona's boulevard Palmaille , later in the suburb of Othmarschen at Jungmannstraße 4. The children Hilde (* 1912), Gerhard (* 1914) and Günter (* 1917) soon followed.

Carl Herz positioned himself in the SPD in the centrist and left wing , which early on brought him into disputes with the revisionist Hamburg leadership and the, in his eyes, opportunistically edited Hamburg echo. The conflict intensified with the outbreak of the First World War . While large parts of the German population staggered enthusiastically into the war after the assassination attempt in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Carl Herz asked himself: “Am I crazy or is it the others?” When the SPD parliamentary group on August 4, 1914 the Approval of the war credits, his political worldview was completely shaken. After all, he saw in social democracy the power that ensured world peace.

Herz heard the change in the party leadership through the articles in the Hamburg echo, while on July 29, 1914 warnings against an imperialist policy of violence, after Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, there was talk of encircling the fatherland. Together with Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim , he wrote a critical letter to the Echo editorial team on August 13, copies were sent to the press commission, the party executive boards in Hamburg and in the Reich, and to the editorial staff of Vorwärts . After that, the three prominent "nest polluters" were supposed to be silenced and indirectly blackened by the military authorities. In August 1915 Carl Herz was elected to the press commission, which speaks for a certain support from the party base, and in November 1915 confirmed as city councilor for a further six years. The party leadership and the state intensified their attacks on the Altonaer: the rights of the press commission were restricted and on July 27, 1916, his re-election to the committee could be prevented, after an event on April 28, 1915 in the Hamm district , the Hamburg police president was forbidden from speaking.

Finally the cloth between the regional SPD and the only well-known opponent of the war in Altona was finally cut. Carl Herz resigned from his seat on October 20, 1916. He did not announce this step personally, but had a corresponding letter read out at a general meeting of the social democratic associations Altona and Ottensen. His group colleagues reacted with great cheerfulness and "ironic bravo cries". In November 1916, the 39-year-old was drafted into military service. Because of his poor eyesight he did not have to fight, but was assigned to a regiment in Königsberg as a clerk.

On April 29, 1917, the Hamburg and Altona district association of the USPD was formed , a foundation of opponents of the SPD's war policy. It was only logical for Herz to join the new party in 1917. The fact that his socialist role model Karl Kautsky joined, Hugo Haase was elected as one of the two chairmen and the grassroots were granted more rights here than in the SPD may have played a role . The Altona belonged to the prevailing moderate wing, which advocated a parliamentary model.

Laying out of the revolutionary victims at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in November 1918

The military clerk was released just in time to take part in the 1918 November Revolution. While still in Tilsit , he wrote an eight-page letter for Hugo Haase about the new situation in Germany, then met the sailors Lothar Popp and Karl Artelt in Kiel and traveled to Haase in Berlin on November 11, 1918. The USPD chairman offered him a ministry. But already on November 12, 1918, Herz was in Hamburg and took part in a meeting of the executive branch of the workers 'and soldiers' council of Greater Hamburg as a legal advisor, later dubbed permanent legal advisor . Though not voting, he made a significant impact from day one. The members of the negotiating commission with the Hamburg Senate were selected by im, he was also a member and, along with the executive chairman Heinrich Laufenberg, played a major role in the transfer of power on November 13, 1918. On that day, Carl Herz was appointed chairman of the justice commission at his own suggestion elected by the workers' council.

Towards the end of 1918, the representatives of the old power regained self-confidence, but an attempted coup on December 9, 1918 failed. In the meantime, tensions between the workers' parties grew and sparked off in the Christmas battles . The SPD, also known as the MSPD for better differentiation , rejected a soviet republic from the start. The Spartakusbund , until then the left wing of the USPD, left the party on December 29, 1918 and was constituted the following day as the KPD . On New Year's Day 1919, the conflict also became visible in Hamburg when two separate demonstrations by the SPD and the trade unions or the USPD and left-wing radicals marched through the city. Even Heinrich Laufenberg, who had previously been concerned about compensation, now criticized the SPD with sharp words as a KPD member. On New Year's Eve 1918, Carl Herz became an official member of the executive branch of the workers' council as the successor to the Hamburg USPD founder Paul Dittmann, who had retired due to illness.

When, on January 6, 1919, Herz described the security teams as the weakest member of the workers' council and the executive announced the establishment of a people's armed forces, it was already too late. The soldiers' council only felt obliged to the MSPD. On January 9, 1919, mostly young, unorganized shipyard workers struck, occupied and devastated the Hamburg Echo. The security teams stepped in the next day and made arbitrary arrests. Laufenberg was also under arrest for a few hours and Herz had been threatened with a rifle in the town hall. The authority of the workers' council was badly damaged and was further undermined in the following days with the arrests of alleged Spartacists. He was not even informed about this action by the soldiers' council, which Herz, as chairman of the judicial commission, should have approved and therefore resigned from the chairmanship of the commission on January 20, 1919. Heinrich Laufenberg resigned from his office for the same reason, especially since the MSPD provided the majority after new elections for the workers' council.

The alliance between the SPD and the old forces gained more and more power and acted behind the back of the workers' council. At the turn of the month of January / February 1919, the Ebert - Scheidemann government deployed troops in Northern Germany as well, Hamburg was spared, but in Bremen there was bloody fighting between the Gerstenberg Freikorps and the Soviet Republic. During the discussion on the election of a new Hamburg citizenry , Carl Herz made a major appearance in front of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council one of the last times. His draft constitution provided for a unicameral system with a strict separation of citizenship as the legislature and the council of people's commissars elected by them as the executive . He also called for a new Senate and a clarification of the distribution of power and who should draft the constitution, in his opinion the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council. The ordinance submitted by MSPD member Georg Blume , on the other hand , dealt with formalities and further undermined the power of the council body.

In January 1919, Herz visited Hugo Preuss and discussed his first draft of the Weimar Constitution with him . The co-founder of the left-liberal German Democratic Party became his spiritual father in the field of democracy. The two men probably knew each other from Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität , where Preuss taught as a private lecturer from 1889 to 1906. At the end of January 1919 Carl Herz still campaigned for the preservation of the workers' council, but at the 65th meeting of the executive in February 1919 he summed up: “We don't control the administrative apparatus, it controls us” and predicted: “We are still six Weeks alive. ”In the end it should be five weeks. With the election of March 16, 1919, power passed to the constituent citizenship. 50.5% voted for the SPD and only 8.1% for the USPD. One day later the executive of the Great Workers' Council met for the last time.

Herz's positive response to the draft constitution by Preuss and the rapprochement with the communists because of the violent events around the turn of the year 1918/19 were in contradiction. But from March 1919 he criticized the radical supporters of the Hamburg USPD in several articles in the Hamburger Volkszeitung , the USPD party sheet. At the beginning of March he took part in the Independent Party Conference in Berlin. His suggestion of how the administration could be democratized with the help of workers' councils and the assessment that capitalism was still necessary, met with applause from the moderate wing. Since the majority of the delegates did not understand him, Herz felt that he was in the wrong party. In April 1919 the mood was so heated that, besides Herz, only Siegfried Nestriepke , who had become editor-in-chief of the Hamburger Volkszeitung on Herz's recommendation, openly criticized the radicals.

Altona town hall 1909

With the election of Ernst Thälmann as chairman of the USPD Hamburg / Altona, the radical direction had prevailed and Carl Herz broke with the party. In his last article for the Volkszeitung on May 23, 1919, there were formulations such as: The policy of the KPD was "a misfortune for Germany" and an "unreserved commitment to democracy" was important. A bonmont in history is that from March 3, 1919, Herz was again a member of the Altona city council as a USPD member. He no longer took part in the activities of the local group. After Herz no longer took part in the meetings from July 4, 1919 due to illness, he resigned his mandate on October 23, 1919 at his own request.

At this point, the Altonaer seemed to have moved closer to the SPD position, because the Hamburg echo spoke with regret about his departure from the city parliament. Cooperation with his old party was no longer possible, and the busy months since the revolution took their toll. In the summer of 1919, Carl Herz suffered a severe nervous breakdown and went to the Amelung Forest Sanatorium in Königstein im Taunus to relax for five months . As a letter to Karl Kautsky dated October 10, 1919 shows, he continued to move closer to the SPD positions during this time, but assumed that he would never be politically active again. After the cure, Herz worked as a lawyer in Altona, and he was also appointed a notary . Despite the political abstinence, he vehemently advocated a merger of the MSPD and the moderate USPD and was an appropriate contact person.

1921 to 1939 - Berlin years

Greater Berlin came into being on October 1, 1920 , the major challenges being the difficult social situation caused by the defeat in World War I and the establishment of new administrative structures. In particular, the relationship between the magistrate of Berlin and the new district offices turned out to be difficult, especially since many of the cities that had risen up in Berlin mourned their independence. Spandau can look back on a particularly long, independent history, presumably the first East Elbe settlement to be granted city rights before 1232, an independent urban district from 1887 and a major city since December 1, 1913 .

The elections in Spandau in 1919 and 1920 brought clear left majorities. In 1919 Independents and Majority Socialists had roughly the same number of votes, in 1920 the USPD with 34.4% was clearly ahead of the MSPD with 23.6%. Nevertheless, Kurt Woelck, a representative of the third force, the DDP with 17%, was elected mayor. He refused to continue to officiate after the incorporation. In the election of a successor for the next twelve years, the lack of some MPs resulted in a stalemate. In this case, the lottery procedure was planned. The Social Democrat Paul Hartung lost out to the conservative Martin Stritte . The election of the second district mayor was also unusual. The bourgeois parties voted for the social democrat and previous second mayor Emil Stahl , who found no support in his own party because he belonged to the reform wing and the minority of the supporters of the union. The USPD suggested the locally unknown Carl Herz. Why the independents proposed the Altonaer for the second highest office and why he accepted the leading administrative post is unknown.

In 1926 he was elected district mayor of Berlin-Kreuzberg . He played a key role in developing the SPD's Heidelberg program . On March 10, 1933, he was forcibly chased from office as Jewish mayor by the SA and publicly mistreated.

1939 to 1946 - British exile

In 1939 he emigrated with his family to London , was interned as an enemy alien from 1940–1941 and then worked for the international group “ Fight for Freedom ”. His youngest son was murdered in Auschwitz . After the end of the war he participated in the formulation of the proposals for the Potsdam Conference .

1946 to 1951 - Palestine / Israel

In 1946 he moved to Palestine .

Honors

Street sign Carl-Herz-Ufer in Berlin-Kreuzberg

• In 1965 the Kreuzberg district, which he directed until 1933, was named Carl-Herz-Ufer .
• Since November 1967, the former community school in Kreuzberg's Wilmsstrasse 10 has been called the Mayor-Heart Primary School.
• In December 1985, a stele was erected in front of the Kreuzberg district office in memory of him .

literature

• Christine Roik-Bogner: Social Democrat and Jew - Carl Herz, Mayor of Kreuzberg 1926-1933. In: Jews in Kreuzberg. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-89468-002-4 (= Series German Past , Volume 55: Sites of the History of Berlin . Catalog for the exhibition of the same name from October 18 to December 29, 1991 in the Kreuzberg Museum , Berlin, published by of the Berlin history workshop , editor Andreas Ludwig ), pp. 371–380.
• Christian Hanke : Self-administration and socialism. Carl Herz, a social democrat. (= Publications of the Hamburg Working Group for Regional History . Volume 23). Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9547-5 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Herz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Carl Herz Papers at the International Institute for Social History
• Mayor's Heart Primary School in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carl Herz. Man of courage. Kreuzberg honors Carl Herz. (No longer available online.) In: spd-berlin.de. SPD Berlin , archived from the original on February 1, 2014 ; accessed on January 23, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Christian Hanke: I. Youth and training. In: Self-Administration and Socialism. Carl Herz, a social democrat. Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2006, pp. 20-46.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Christian Hanke: II. Labor lawyer and local politician in Altona. In: Self-Administration and Socialism. Carl Herz, a social democrat. Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2006, pp. 46–94.
4. ^ Hugo Friedländer : The Oldenburg player trials. Minister Ruhstrat. In: Interesting criminal trials of cultural and historical importance. Representation of strange criminal cases from the present and the recent past. Volume 4. Berliner Buchversand, Berlin 1911, pp. 29–157. Digital edition in: zeno.org , online .
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Christian Hanke: III. In the USPD of Hamburg / Altona. In: Self-Administration and Socialism. Carl Herz, a social democrat. Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2006, pp. 94-141.
6. ^ Christian Hanke: IV. As a local politician and social democratic theorist in Berlin. In: Self-Administration and Socialism. Carl Herz, a social democrat. Lit Verlag, Hamburg 2006, pp. 141-264.
7. ↑ Carl-Herz-Ufer. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
8. ↑ Mayor Heart Elementary School. In: berlin.de The official capital city portal. BerlinOnline Stadtportal GmbH & Co. KG, accessed on February 27, 2014 .