Union of Railway Workers in Germany

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Union of Railway
Workers in Germany (EdED)
EDED10 cropped.jpg
purpose labor union
Chair: Franz Scheffel
Establishment date: 1925
Dissolution date: 1933
Number of members: 200,000-250,000
Seat : Berlin

The Union of Railway Workers in Germany ( EdED ) was a trade union during the Weimar Republic .

history

1925 to 1933

The unit Association of German Railway Workers was established on 27 June 1925 from the merger of the German Railwaymen's Federation (DEV) to the kingdom union German railway officials and -anwärter (RGDE) . The DEV had decided on the merger at its 3rd congress, which took place in Cologne from June 21 to 26, 1925. When the EdED was founded, 197,000 members were organized, later the association comprised up to 250,000 members (1928/29) and was thus the largest railway workers' union in the Weimar Republic. It was organized in the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) and was close to the SPD . For the civil servants organized in the EdED, the EdED was also a member of the General German Civil Service Association . The full-time chairman was Franz Scheffel . “Der Deutsche Eisenbahner” was the association's magazine with an issue A for salaried employees and an issue B for salaried employees. The union has been running an educational facility in Hammersbach since 1928 .

When the EdED was founded, it had 197,000 members, 45,000 of whom were civil servants, the increase from the RGDE was only 29,803 members. Of the 210,000 members at the end of 1926, 197,721 were active employees, which corresponds to a level of organization of 28 percent for 700,000 employees of the Reichsbahn. 39.98% of the wage earners were organized at this point, while the degree of organization was 13.95% among the wage earners . The union had 1,159 women members. The number of members rose to 250,000 by 1929 and then fell to 203,000 by 1931. Among the nearly one thousand local groups there was also a local group in the Free City of Danzig .

In the elections to the main works council at the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1929, the EdED achieved a total of 68.53% of the votes, the Christian GdE, as the second strongest group, a share of 17.97%. The communist split RGO had reached 6.46 percent. The total turnout was 88.91%.

The Reichsbahn had to earn 4.2 million RM in reparations between 1925 and 1931 . In the wake of the global economic crisis , the Brüning emergency ordinances massively cut the staff of the Reichsbahn and the salaries, wages and pension payments at the Reichsbahn were cut, so that the majority of Reichsbahn workers had a lower income on January 1, 1932 than in November 1924.

1933

After Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the EdED association newspaper was banned from March 11 through April 4, 1933. The ADGB chairman Theodor Leipart believed on March 21st that he could use a declaration of neutrality by the hitherto social democratic ADGB towards the Reich government. At the EdED advisory board meeting on March 29, 1933, the resignation of the board members Scheffel, Hermann Jochade (1876–1939), who was also secretary at the ITF , and Lorenz Breunig were carried out in advance obedience and the EdED advisory board also formulated an address of submission the "new state regime". The office of chairman was taken over by the previous deputy chairman, Matthäus Herrmann , who had also signed the new guidelines for union work in a soothing circular to officials and members. However, he was only chairman for a short time, because in April 1933 and again on May 2, 1933, the trade union houses of the free trade unions were occupied and looted by the SA , and the ADGB and its member organizations were finally banned. The DAF as a National Socialist professional organization replaced the unions on May 10, 1933. In July 1933, the now former union chairman Scheffel appealed not to adopt an economic boycott against the National Socialist German Reich at the upcoming congress of the International Trade Union Confederation . The general secretary of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) Edo Fimmen took over the duties of head of the illegal EdED .

Among those murdered for political reasons during the Nazi era were numerous railway workers and EdED officials, including Emerich Ambros , Gustav Anstöß , Hermann Basse , Lorenz Breunig , Claudius Gosau , Lambert Horn , Hermann Jochade , John Sieg , Erich Steinfurth , Franz Stenzer and Ludger Zollikofer .

resistance

On May 2, 1933, the union was smashed by the National Socialists . Leading functionaries were taken into protective custody and tortured by the Gestapo and the Sturmabteilung in the newly established concentration camps . In what is now Rhineland-Palatinate in particular , however, a conspiratorial network was set up that was headed by former board member Hans Jahn and actively resisted National Socialism. The EdED was one of the few trade union associations that was active in an illegal form of organization for the entire duration of the Nazi regime and was never completely broken up. The illegal EdED worked closely with the ITF around Edo Fimmen. At the beginning, the focus was on the establishment of escape routes and information on the Reichsbahn . Leaflets and propaganda pamphlets were smuggled into the German Reich via the Netherlands . From 1936 the publication Fahrt-frei was published for the Union of Railway Workers in Germany in an edition of 500 copies.

Despite the immense pressure of persecution, the organization consisted of more than 1,300 functionaries and maintained 300 bases in the Reich. Jahn had to leave the country after being arrested in 1935 and led the network from the Netherlands, Belgium and, most recently, Luxembourg . In 1937 the organization was almost broken up, but the network recovered except for the southern German area. According to a Jahn report from 1941, the DZ 92 at Genthin, the GZ 1008 near Aachen and the GZ 1032 near Jünkerath derailed due to acts of sabotage , and transports were also misdirected and rerouted due to the exchange of guide labels. With the beginning of World War II , however, the resistance gradually waned. Some groups remained active until 1945. In 1944 a group of railway trade unions tried to prepare a general strike in Mainz , which, however, could not be implemented in the end. As part of the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , a spontaneous strike is said to have occurred.

At the same time, the Deutsche Reichsbahn was not only able to increase the transport services for the Wehrmacht , but also transported millions of forced laborers , prisoners of war and Jews to forced labor camps and extermination camps .

successor

After the Second World War, the Union of German Railway Workers (GdED) was founded on March 25, 1948 , which in turn is one of the founding members of the DGB . Hans Jahn took over the chairmanship from 1949 to 1959.

In the Soviet occupation zone which was IG transport and communications as an industry union of the FDGB , founded in Saar protectorate that was German Railway Workers Union - Saar of the French occupation forces admitted.

literature

  • Hans-Joachim Buss: Three times zero hour. Union on the Rail Track; Ascent u. Changes, 1897–1972 . Main board d. GdED, Frankfurt am Main 1973.
  • Union of Railway Workers in Germany: 1929 yearbook of the Union of Railway Workers in Germany . Publishing company of German railway workers, Berlin 1930.
  • Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 7). Metropol, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 .
  • Dieter Nelles: Resistance and International Solidarity. The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) in the resistance against National Socialism. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-956-0 (Dissertation Gesamtthochschule Kassel, 2000).
  • Wolfgang Zell: Transnet union GdED: The future has a past. 110 years of union at Deutsche Bahn; 1896-2006 . Zukunft-Verl., Frankfurt am Main 2010.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Unified Association of Railway Workers in Germany. (PDF; 28 kB) Friedrich Ebert Foundation , accessed on March 16, 2013 .
  2. ^ Lothar Gall, Manfred Pohl: The railroad in Germany: from the beginnings to the present . CH Beck, 1999, ISBN 978-3-406-45334-2 , pp. 151 .
  3. ^ Unified Association of German Railway Workers: Yearbook 1929 , 1930, pp. 122–126; P. 166f
  4. ↑ a b Hans-Joachim Buss: Dreimal Stunden Null , 1973, p. 133. The numbers there are mostly rounded off.
  5. ↑ a b Hans-Joachim Buss: Three times zero hour , 1973, p. 134
  6. ↑ Union of German Railway Workers: Yearbook 1929 , 1930, pp. 79–84
  7. ↑ Hans-Joachim Buss: Three times zero hour , 1973, p. 130
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Zell: Transnet union GdED: Future has past , 2010, p. 56
  9. ↑ a b Wolfgang Zell: Transnet union GdED: Future has past , 2010, p. 57
  10. ↑ Hermann Jochade , at FES. Jochade was murdered in a concentration camp in 1939.
  11. ↑ a b Dieter Nelles: Resistance and international solidarity , 2010, p. 147
  12. ↑ Hans-Joachim Buss: Three times zero hour , 1973, p. 145ff
  13. ↑ a b Wolfgang Zell: Transnet union GdED: Future has past , 2010, p. 136
  14. ↑ Hans-Joachim Buss: Three times zero hour , 1973, p. 147
  15. ↑ Hans-Joachim Buss: Three times zero hour , 1973, pp. 145–153
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Zell: Transnet union GdED: Future has past , 2010, p. 64f
  17. ↑ Selection from the names listed in Hans-Joachim Buss: Dreimal Stunden Null , 1973, p. 158
  18. ↑ Selection from the names listed on the plaque in the Transnet headquarters, Frankfurt am Main. Photo of the board at: Wolfgang Zell: Transnet union GdED: Future has a past , 2010, p. 64
  19. ↑ Trade union resistance - the unified association of railway workers in Germany. (PDF; 869 kB) NS Documentation Center Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on March 16, 2013 .
  20. ^ A b Axel Ulrich: Fight against Hitler. On the political resistance against the Nazi regime in the Rhine-Main area . In: Nazi rule, persecution and resistance (=  Mainz history sheets ). Association for Social History Mainz, Mainz 2004, p. 133 f .
  21. ↑ different figures in Dieter Nelles: Resistance and international Solidarity , 2010, p. 273
  22. ↑ Dieter Nelles: Resistance and international Solidarity , 2010, p. 327. A desideratum is the role of the IFT in acts of sabotage on the traffic routes in the occupied territories.
  23. ↑ About us. Transnet , archived from the original ; Retrieved October 9, 2014 .
  24. ^ 130th Cabinet meeting on February 21, 1951. Federal Archives , February 21, 1951, accessed on March 26, 2013 .