Erich Rossmann

Erich Hermann Roßmann (born January 10, 1884 in Pößneck , † September 26, 1953 in Meran ) was a German politician of the SPD .

Career

Born the son of a worker, Erich Roßmann became a member of the SPD in 1902. From 1904 to 1915 he worked as an editor for the Swabian Tagwacht , the organ of the Württemberg SPD in Stuttgart and for the Donau-Wacht in Ulm . After the First World War he took over the position of a government councilor in the Reich Ministry of Labor . He was chairman of the Reich Association of War Disabled and combatants and director of the Stuttgart pension office. As the successor to Otto Steinmayer , Roßmann was state chairman of the SPD in Württemberg from 1924 to 1933 and thus one of the most important politicians in the Württemberg SPD alongside Wilhelm Keil and later Kurt Schumacher . Erich Roßmann was a member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1933, but was not a member of the Württemberg state parliament or a ministerial office at the state or Reich level.

politics

In the 1928 election campaign for the Württemberg Landtag and Reichstag election , which was so successful for the SPD , Roßmann accused the communists of suggesting to the working class after the lost war that the “heap of rubble could be turned into paradise in a few years”, and this “interaction of dizziness and gullibility ”the KPD owes its existence. At the SPD party congress in Magdeburg from May 26th to 31st, 1929, Roßmann, together with Wilhelm Keil and most of the Württemberg delegates, endorsed the SPD's defense program, which Kurt Schumacher rejected because the Reichswehr was not democratic . After the failure of the last democratic government of the Weimar Republic, Roßmann, in a speech at the Württemberg SPD state assembly on August 10, 1930, claimed the SPD's right to political participation against the "arrogance of the bourgeois parties". At the party congress of the SPD in Leipzig from May 31 to June 5, 1931, Roßmann defended the policy of tolerance of the SPD members of the Reichstag towards the Brüning government . On June 22, 1932, the Württemberg state executive committee of the SPD issued a warning that sub-organizations of the SPD should not under any circumstances enter into negotiations with communist organizations. Rossmann was perplexed by the massive violence and growing political success of the NSDAP and always emphasized the SPD's innocence for the coming calamity and the great merits of the Social Democrats, including at a rally of the SPD in Stuttgart on July 28, 1932 in front of 10,000 listeners. After the National Socialists seized power on January 30, 1933 and the Reichstag election on March 5, 1933 , Roßmann resigned, as did Keil. They both bet on a possible arrangement with National Socialism. With this they were in harmony with the Berlin SPD party leadership, but turned the SPD in Stuttgart and especially Kurt Schumacher against them.

Disenfranchised from 1933 and rehabilitation after 1945

Despite his attitude, Roßmann was arrested in Stuttgart on June 23, 1933 and transported to the Heuberg concentration camp . In mid-October 1933, he and about 100 other inmates were brought to the garrison detention center in Ulm, which was linked to the announcement that his detention would be tightened. In fact, there was relief in prison in the branch of the Heuberg concentration camp, and on October 24, 1933, Roßmann was released from so-called protective custody so that he could return to his family in Stuttgart. On August 25, 1944, he was arrested again in the course of the grating action and finally interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp until the end of October 1944 . After the end of the Second World War he was Secretary General of the South German State Council and from 1948 to 1949 Director of Radio Stuttgart .

From 1948 to 1949 he was the second general secretary of the Europa-Union Deutschland . According to his own admission, Rossmann had been campaigning for Franco-German understanding since the end of the war .

Fonts

Autobiography: A Life for Socialism and Democracy . Rainer Wunderlich, Stuttgart 1946

literature

Erich Rossmann . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, p. 256.
Walther Killy: German Biographical Encyclopedia . KG Saur, Munich 1995, volume 8, page 406
Thomas Kurz: Hostile Brothers in the German Southwest. Social Democrats and Communists in Baden and Württemberg from 1928 to 1933 . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1996
Frank Raberg : Rossmann, Hermann Erich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 96 f. ( Digitized version ).
Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .

Web links

Literature by and about Erich Roßmann in the catalog of the German National Library
Erich Roßmann in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , p. 67
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 66
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 238
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 295
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 395
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 402
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 404
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 475
↑ Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 466
↑ Erich Roßmann: A life for socialism and democracy ... , p. 84 ff.
^ Letter from ER to Paul Distelbarth dated February 2, 1946, quoted in according to Wolfgang Hardtwig Hg., Political Cultural History of the Interwar Period 1918 - 1939, in it Christian Weiß: "Soldiers of Peace." The pacifist veterans and war victims of the "Reichsbund" and their contacts to the French ancien combattants 1919-1933. V&R , Göttingen 2005 ISBN 3525364210 pp. 183–204, here p. 204 (available in google books and online bookshops). Rossmann had already been marginally involved with France at the Lausanne Conference (1932) , cf. his autobiography, p. 42ff.

personal data
SURNAME	Rossmann, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Roßmann, Erich Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German politician (SPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH	January 10, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH	Poessneck
DATE OF DEATH	September 26, 1953
Place of death	Meran

[1] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , p. 67

[2] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 66

[3] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 238

[4] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 295

[5] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 395

[6] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 402

[7] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 404

[8] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 475

[9] Thomas Kurz: Enemy Brothers ... , page 466

[10] Erich Roßmann: A life for socialism and democracy ... , p. 84 ff.

[11] Letter from ER to Paul Distelbarth dated February 2, 1946, quoted in according to Wolfgang Hardtwig Hg., Political Cultural History of the Interwar Period 1918 - 1939, in it Christian Weiß: "Soldiers of Peace." The pacifist veterans and war victims of the "Reichsbund" and their contacts to the French ancien combattants 1919-1933. V&R , Göttingen 2005 ISBN 3525364210 pp. 183–204, here p. 204 (available in google books and online bookshops). Rossmann had already been marginally involved with France at the Lausanne Conference (1932) , cf. his autobiography, p. 42ff.