German Woodworkers Association

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Advertising card of the German Woodworkers' Association from around 1900

The German Woodworkers Association was a free trade union founded in 1893 from predecessor organizations , which existed until the unions were broken up in 1933.

precursor

The first beginnings of a union of woodworkers came in 1868. At the general workers' congress convened by Johann Baptist von Schweitzer and Friedrich Wilhelm Fritzsche , a woodworkers union was founded at that time . Theodor York became its chairman . It already included all branches of the woodworking industry. Development was hampered by the outbreak of the Franco-German War and the dispute between the ADAV and the SDAP within the labor movement.

York had belonged to the SDAP since 1869 and then the supporters of the ADAV founded the General German Carpenter Association in 1872 . However, this was only a professional organization for the carpenters and joiners. After the unification of the two branches of the social democratic labor movement, the two woodworkers' organizations merged in 1876 to form the Association of Carpenters and Related Professionals . After the Socialist Law was passed, this organization was banned.

At the local level there were then professional associations, which merged in 1884 to form the association of associations of carpenters and related professionals . The German Carpenter Association emerged from this in 1887 . The association was based in Stuttgart . Its chairman was Karl Kloß . The organization had 4152 members in 1884 and 18685 in 1893. After an initial approach in 1877, an association with its headquarters in Hamburg was founded among the wood turners in 1887 with the association of wood turners . Its chairman was initially Karl Legien and from 1891 Theodor Leipart . In 1885 the Association of German Wheelwrights was founded. The support association of brush and paintbrush makers was founded a year earlier . In 1892 this merged with a competing association to form the central association of workers in the brush and paintbrush industry in Germany .

structure

The larger organizations mentioned merged in 1893 to form the German Woodworkers Association. A total of about 10 organizations were represented at the founding congress in Kassel , but some of them stayed away initially or permanently from the central industrial union of woodworkers. Karl Kloß and Theodor Leipart became chairmen. The association had its seat in Stuttgart until 1908 and since then in Berlin . The union had had an association house there since 1913. The association was later joined by other professional associations such as those of basket makers (1896), those of machine workers and cork workers (1899), those of gilders (1906), those of tableware makers (1910) and finally those of sculptors (1919). In addition to those employed in the trades that belonged to the wood and wood-carving trade, there were also related professions such as those of musical instrument workers, car and boat builders or wooden toy workers.

Title of the woodworker newspaper from 1913

During the Weimar Republic , the union was subdivided regionally into 15 districts, each with two paid district heads. There were further subdivisions down to the local level.

Woodworker's newspaper as an association organ

With the woodworker newspaper, the association published a weekly membership organ and had its own publishing house. The newspaper first appeared in 1893 with 26 issues and most recently in 1933 with 51 issues. The library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung has put them digitally online.

Membership development

The association had an organizational focus in Württemberg , Bavaria and Hesse , where there were a large number of wood processing companies. In 1893 the association had 22,745 members. By far the greatest number were carpenters (19400) followed by turners (1957), brush makers (938) and wheelwright (450). Initially, the union had 356 administrative posts. Their number rose to 880 by 1913. The number of members rose to 193,075. The loss of membership due to the war had not yet been completely overcome in 1918. The number of administrative offices was 781 and that of the members 168,385. In 1919 the number of members rose sharply to 361,054. The peak was reached in 1922 with 434,843 members in 1,376 administrative offices. As a result of high inflation and the subsequent crises, the number fell to 284,742 by 1924. Until the eve of the Great Depression in 1929 the numbers rose again to 315,155. The carpenters also made up by far the largest professional group with 156,189 members in 1929.

Chairperson

literature

  • Fritz Tarnow: German Association of Woodworkers. In: Ludwig Heyde (Hrsg.): International dictionary of trade unions. Volume 1, Berlin 1931, pp. 365-371. (Digitized version)
  • Helga Grebing (Ed.): Das HolzArbeiterBuch: the history of woodworkers and their unions. Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-7663-2144-7 .

Web links

Commons : Deutscher Holzarbeiterverband  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Link to the digitized version of the woodworker newspaper library.fes.de
  2. ^ Friedhelm Boll: Labor dispute and region. Labor disputes, collective agreements and waves of strikes in a regional comparison 1871–1914. In: Gerhard A. Ritter (Ed.): The rise of the labor movement. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55641-X , p. 359.