Carlo Mierendorff

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Carlo Mierendorff
Bust in the Justus Liebig House in Darmstadt
Tomb at the Waldfriedhof Darmstadt

Carlo Mierendorff , actually Carl Mierendorff , (born March 24, 1897 in Großenhain , † December 4, 1943 in Leipzig ) was a German politician ( SPD ), social scientist and writer .

Adolescent years

In 1907 the family (father Georg Mierendorff; mother Charlotte, née Meißner) moved to Darmstadt ( Hesse ). His father worked there in the textile industry. Mierendorff, who was close to the Wandervogel movement, attended the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt and wrote short articles together with his friends Theodor Haubach and Joseph Würth in their magazine Die Dachstube .

In 1914, two days after graduating from high school, Mierendorff volunteered for the army. After the Battle of Lodsch Mierendorff was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class . However, he fell ill several times in 1915/16. For his work on the Western Front he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class in 1917. In 1917 he started in Heidelberg a degree in economics , he after the war in Freiburg and Frankfurt continue led.

His story Lothringer Herbst , written in 1918, is attributed to Expressionism and is still receiving attention today. In early 1919 he founded the political journal Das Tribunal. Hessian radical sheets (with reference to Georg Büchner's Hessischer Landbote ).

During his university days Mierendorff was known as a militant member of student groups such as the “Socialist Student Group” and the “Union of Republican Students”. Here he also met Carl Zuckmayer .

In 1920 Mierendorff became a member of the SPD. In the same year he published an essay on the importance of the young medium of cinema. Mierendorff was very impressed by Max Weber during his studies ; he completed it in 1922 with his dissertation on The Economic Policy of the Communist Party of Germany as Dr. phil. from. In June of the same year Mierendorff protested against the anti-Semitic head of the Heidelberg Physics Institute, Nobel Prize laureate Philipp Lenard , who had refused to show the mourning flag at his institute because of the murder of Walther Rathenau and to let work rest by storming the institute with others . He was therefore sentenced by the Heidelberg Regional Court to a prison sentence - admittedly not served - for violating the peace. However, he was acquitted in proceedings pending at the Heidelberg University's disciplinary court because of the same incident.

Political work and political theory

In the following years Mierendorff worked as an economics secretary at the German Transport Workers' Association in Berlin. He then worked as a feature editor at the Hessischer Volksfreund in Darmstadt.

From 1926 to 1928 he was secretary of the SPD parliamentary group and was press officer for the Hessian interior minister Wilhelm Leuschner . During this time he exposed the Nazi Werner Best by carrying out a house search on the Boxheimer Hof, in which the " Boxheimer documents " from the time before the takeover of power were found, in which Best wrote that he wanted to pursue the political opponent enforce a violent regime.

In the Reichstag elections of September 1930 Mierendorff won a seat and became the youngest member of his party in parliament. The main focus of his policy was the fight against the strengthening of the NSDAP . In 1930 he published the study Face and Character of the National Socialist Movement on its socio-political dynamics. He fought the rearmament of the Black Reichswehr that had been taking place since the mid-1920s . Mierendorff was a member of the Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold organization and the Iron Front . In 1932, together with Sergej Tschachotin , he designed the three arrows that became the symbol of the Iron Front. Mierendorff showed propaganda talent and vigor. In the Reichstag he attacked Joseph Goebbels several times . He published in the Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus , in the Sozialistische Monatshefte , in the German Republic , in the Reichsbanner and in the organ of the " Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith ". Topics included propaganda, National Socialism , reform of the electoral law, reforms within the SPD and generational conflicts.

The Mierendorff researcher Richard Albrecht emphasizes the central element of Mierendorff's political-theoretical approach: “Only in a democracy can the mass power of organized workers develop freely economically and politically and thereby overcome capitalism [...]. The working class therefore has a vital interest [...] in the planned expansion of the German state into a social, democratic republic. "

Imprisonment and Resistance

After Adolf Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor, Mierendorff evaded Switzerland for 14 days , then returned to Berlin and on March 24, 1933, voted in the Reichstag with his SPD parliamentary group against the Enabling Act . After Mierendorff was dragged through the streets by SA men, he initially hid with Carl Zuckmayer. On June 13, 1933, he was arrested in Frankfurt am Main at a meeting with Otto Sturmfels in the Café Excelsior. For the next five years Mierendorff was imprisoned in the concentration camps Osthofen , Börgermoor , Papenburg , Lichtenburg and Buchenwald . In January 1938 he was released from the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin. He then found a job at Braunkohle-Petrol AG ( BRABAG ), where he was still under control.

Nevertheless, he was able to reestablish old ties to the resistance and soon became one of the most important leaders of an anti-Nazi network that extended across the empire, alongside his friend and former boss Leuschner. He also wrote again, using the pseudonym "Willemer". Through the mediation of friends (such as Adolf Reichwein ) Mierendorff was won over since 1941 to work in the inner circle of Kreisau around Helmuth James von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg . He made contacts with Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster and served as a link between socialists like Julius Leber and the military resistance. In Ludwig Beck's and Carl Goerdeler's shadow cabinet , Mierendorff was scheduled as a senior member of the propaganda department. In the Kreisau district he had the cover name “Dr. Friedrich ".

On December 4, 1943, Carlo Mierendorff was killed in an air raid on Leipzig by the Royal Air Force . He was buried in the Darmstadt forest cemetery (grave site: L 3c 7d).

Honors

literature

  • Richard Albrecht : The militant social democrat. Carlo Mierendorff 1897 to 1943. Dietz, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-8012-1128-2 .
  • Richard Albrecht:  Mierendorff, Carlo. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 31, Bautz, Nordhausen 2010, ISBN 978-3-88309-544-8 , Sp. 894-898.
  • Ulrich Cartarius :  Mierendorff, Carlo. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 477-479 ( digitized version ).
  • Jakob Reitz: Carlo Mierendorff 1897-1943. Stations of his life and work. Darmstadt 1983, ISBN 3-87390-073-4 .
  • Axel Ulrich with the assistance of Angelika Arenz-Morch: Carlo Mierendorff versus Hitler. A close colleague of Wilhelm Leuschner in the resistance against the Nazi regime. Foreword by Peter Steinbach. Edited by the state centers for political education in Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate (only available through their publications). Thrun-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2018, ISBN 978-3-9815040-0-2 .
  • Axel Ulrich: Carlo Mierendorff (1897–1943) , In: Angelika Arenz-Morch, Stefan Heinz (ed.): Trade unionists in the Osthofen concentration camp 1933/34. Biographical manual (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration , Vol. 8). Metropol, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86331-439-2 , pp. 392-414.

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Albrecht: Carlos Kino. Mierendorff's essay If I had the cinema !! (1920) . In: Film und Buch, 6/2013, pp. 48–52. Online version .
  2. ↑ See Wilhelm Güde: The proceedings before the Disciplinary Court of the University of Heidelberg against Carlo Mierendorff because of his involvement in the storming of the University's Physics Institute. In: Legal history and other tours. Festschrift for Detlev Fischer. Edited by Ulrich Falk, Markus Gehrlein, Gerhard Kreft and Markus Obert. Karlsruhe 2018, pp. 207-218. Carl Zuckmayer . who was close friends with Mierendorff claims, however, that Mierendorf achieved “an unconditional acquittal” in both proceedings. (Carl Zuckmayer: As if it were a piece of mine, licensed edition for the Bertelsmann Group, Gütersloh, 1966, pp. 302–303)
  3. ↑ Richard Albrecht. In: Carlo Mierendorff, Aryan Empire or Jewish Republic . In: International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement (iwk), 40 (2004) 3, pp. 321–337.
  4. ↑ Jakob Reitz: Carlo Mierendorff 1897-1943. Stations in his life and work , Darmstadt 1983, p. 31 ff.
  5. ↑ Jakob Reitz: Carlo Mierendorff 1897-1943 , p. 37.
  6. ↑ Information board at the main entrance of the Waldfriedhof Darmstadt
personal data
SURNAME Mierendorff, Carlo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mierendorff, Carl (real name); Willmer, Karl (pseudonym); Friedrich, Dr. (Pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdR and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Grossenhain
DATE OF DEATH December 4, 1943
Place of death Leipzig