German Industry Association

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The German Industry Association (DIV) was a left communist union in the Weimar Republic .

Emergence

The roots of the association go back to 1918, when various left-communist and anarcho-syndicalist unions such as the FAUD , the AAUD and the Union of Hand and Mind Workers emerged after the November Revolution . This wave of founding was triggered primarily out of protest against the consent of the traditional free trade unions to the First World War , but also because of dissatisfaction with the course of the large trade unions, which was regarded as economically peaceful, after the revolution. The wave of exit in 1918/19 continued into the 1920s, when the major trade unions increasingly excluded communist members and entire local associations.

The DIV was brought into being by Paul Weyer , an actor in the November Revolution and member of the group of Revolutionary Obleute . Weyer was a metal worker and a member of the KPD . He was expelled from the German Metalworkers' Union in 1923 because of his communist activities and founded the "Union Metall" together with other expellees, from which the German Industry Association emerged in March 1924.

When the KPD stopped supporting all left- wing unions in the same year and obliged all members to join the reformist unions organized in the ADGB , Weyer refused to give up the DIV. He was therefore expelled from the party in September 1924.

Development and alignment

The DIV initially had around 8,000 members, in 1929 up to 20,000. After that, the number fell due to divisions and internal differences. Construction workers in particular were organized in the DIV. The DIV represented the principle of industrial associations, i. In other words, it organized its members according to the slogan "One company - One branch of industry - One union". The DIV was thus divided into several industrial groups, which brought together the workers in one branch of industry. The DIV rejected the occupational principle that had prevailed in the trade unions until then. Geographically, the DIV was divided into several economic districts with their own lines, the headquarters were in Berlin , and since 1929 in Mannheim .

The political orientation was revolutionary-Marxist, on the one hand the DIV criticized the reformist and little conflict-prone orientation of the ADGB trade unions, but at the same time distanced itself sharply from the KPD, which it viewed as an extended arm of Soviet foreign policy. The DIV was thus one of the few anti-Stalinist, independent communist organizations in the Weimar Republic. In his magazine, the “Revolutionäre Kampf-Front”, there was extensive coverage of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union , forced collectivization , repression against the trade unions and the imprisonment and persecution of former revolutionaries such as Leon Trotsky .

The DIV cited Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht as models for its policy , but also Lenin and the original impulses of the October Revolution . Even Karl Korsch , known law professor and founder of the tradition of neo-Marxism in Germany, was involved in the DIV and wrote for the society journal. Well-known members of the DIV were the Marxist theoretician Karl Korsch and Richard Müller , the head of the Revolutionary Obleute and first head of the Reich union headquarters of the KPD.

Split and end

At the beginning of 1929 the association split over a corruption affair and the economic district of Saxony became independent. Many members turned away in disappointment and switched to other left-wing unions. Also the changed course of the KPD, which now organized its own parallel movement with the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO), endangered the existence of the DIV and comparable organizations. Quite a few supporters, especially from the end of 1930, oriented towards close cooperation with the RGO or organized themselves in its “red associations”, because they hoped for better union clout from them despite the RGO split strategy. The final end of the DIV came with the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralf Hoffrogge, Richard Müller - The Man Behind the November Revolution, Berlin 2008, pp. 198–207.
  2. ↑ Cf. Stefan Heinz : Moscow's mercenaries? The "Unified Association of Metal Workers Berlin": Development and Failure of a Communist Union, Hamburg 2010, p. 181 f.

swell

  • Proletarian Kampf-Front , organ of the German Industrial Association, born 1924ff

literature

  • Otto Langels, The Revolutionary Industrial Associations , Archive for the History of Resistance and Work, Issue 10, 1989, pp. 41–60.
  • Ralf Hoffrogge : Richard Müller - The man behind the November Revolution , Karl-Dietz-Verlag Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02148-1