Ernst Friedrich

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Ernst Friedrich at the age of 30, around 1924

Ernst Friedrich (born February 25, 1894 in Breslau ; † May 2, 1967 in Le Perreux-sur-Marne , France ) was an anarchist pacifist (see also anarcho-pacifism ).

Live and act

Childhood and youth

Ernst Friedrich was born the thirteenth child of a washerwoman and a saddler. After graduating from elementary school, he began an apprenticeship as a printer in 1908, which he soon broke off to train as an actor. He earned his living by working as a factory worker. He was one of the founders of the Wroclaw Local Association of Young Workers. In 1911 he joined the SPD. From 1912 to 1914 he wandered through Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. In 1914 he made his acting debut in his hometown and also appeared at the Royal Court Theater in Potsdam.

First World War

In World War I convened, he refused military service on grounds of conscience. Since he refused to put on a uniform, he was sent to an observation station for the insane. In 1917 he was sentenced to prison in Potsdam for sabotage in a war-important company . At the end of 1918 he was released due to the November Revolution .

Weimar Republic

Friedrich was involved in the Spartacus uprising . After the end of the war he was briefly a member of the Free Socialist Youth of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg . After its dissolution in 1920, he founded the anti-authoritarian and anarchist youth group " Free Youth " in Berlin . This also found offshoots in Prussia , Saxony , Thuringia , in the Rhineland , in Westphalia as well as in Austria and Switzerland. The magazine Freie Jugend was the link between the various groups and was published until 1926. From 1923 onwards, it became part of the Syndicalist-Anarchist Youth of Germany (SAJD), an anarcho-syndicalist youth movement that campaigned strongly for anti-militarism . In the interwar period he was politically, agitatively and artistically active against the war, among other things he was a speaker at the anti-war rally in front of the Berlin Cathedral on July 31, 1921 with over 100,000 demonstrators.

His apartment on Kochhannstrasse in Friedrichshain became a meeting place and residential community for anarchist young people.

Memorial plaque in Berlin-Mitte (Parochialstr. 1–3)

In 1925 he founded the Anti-War Museum in Berlin . One of his most important motives for building the museum was to create a place for peace education . His best-known book War in War from 1924 was the result of his research for the Anti-War Museum; it shows a photo documentation of the horrors of war.

He later published, among other things, the weekly newspaper "Die Schwarze Fahne", which temporarily had a circulation of 40,000 copies.

Friedrich was close friends with Henry Jacoby and Erich Mühsam . In retrospect, Jacoby calls him "an apostle of a radical youth movement, herald of an unruly socialism [and] an aggressive [r] anti-militarist". Ernst Friedrich, as editor of the magazine "Freie Jugend", dedicated a special issue to the political prisoners in the Weimar Republic , including Erich Mühsam, in 1924 (No. 7).

His publications were often banned or confiscated and Friedrich was repeatedly on trial. The lawyer Hans Litten defended him in numerous lawsuits. After several previous convictions, he was sentenced again to one year in prison on November 14, 1930 for his political activities, "preparation for high treason ". He is said to have been involved in distributing anti-militarist texts among the police and the Reichswehr .

Third Reich, World War II

Even before he came to power in 1933, the Nazis terrorized him . The shop windows of the Anti-War Museum were constantly being destroyed and Friedrich was regularly subjected to violent attacks. After the Reichstag fire , he was arrested on February 28, 1933. The museum was destroyed by the Nazis and turned into an SA "storm bar". After his release, he fled through Europe in December 1933 . For some time he found shelter in the Rest Home project , which was run by Quakers .

In 1936 he opened a new museum in Brussels , which the German troops, however, destroyed again after their invasion in 1940. Ernst Friedrich fled to France with his son Ernst . There the two were interned by the Vichy regime in the St. Cyprien camp, later in the Gurs camp . After 18 months he was able to escape. In 1943 he was tracked down by the Gestapo . After he fled again, he joined the Resistance . Ernst Friedrich and his second wife Marthe Saint-Pierre ran the “La Castelle” farm near the village of Barre-des-Cévennes in the Lozère department . Friedrich, the pacifist, fought in the liberation of Nîmes and Alès . He was wounded twice. He saved about seventy children from a Jewish children's home from deportation.

After the Second World War

After the war, Friedrich became a member of the French Socialist Party . Since 1947 he campaigned in Paris for the reconstruction of a new anti-war museum.

He received $ 1,000 from an international fund. He used it to buy a barge , which he converted into the Arche de Noé , a peace ship . It was on an island in the Seine near Villeneuve-la-Garenne . He edited three issues of the magazine Bordbrief (1950-1953).

In 1954 he received compensation for the loss of his property and physical damage suffered in the “Third Reich”. He then bought around 3,000 square meters of forest on a Seine island near Le Perreux-sur-Marne . There he built an international youth center in 1954. From 1961 it was an international meeting place for working youth.

Ernst Friedrich, who was tormented by severe depression in the last years of his life, died “as he had always lived: poor in possessions, but abundant in visions”. His grave is in the 5th Division in the cemetery of Le Perreux-sur-Marne , Département Val-de-Marne .

Afterlife

The Peace Island was sold after Friedrich's death. The written estate was destroyed.

The Anti-War Museum was re-established in Berlin in 1982.

Fonts

  • Proletarian kindergarten. A fairy tale and reading book for children . Illustrations by Käthe Kollwitz , Karl Holtz , Otto Nagel a . a. Book publisher for the Workers' Art Exhibition, Berlin 1921.
  • War against war! Guerre à la guerre. War against war. 2 volumes. Verlag Freie Jugend , Berlin 1924 and 1926.
  • Gollnow Fortress (row of people in a cage ). With photos by Svend Nielsen. Kulturverlag, Berlin 1932.
  • The anti-war museum . Berlin 1926.
  • From the Peace Museum to the Hitler Barracks. A factual report on the work of Ernst Friedrich and Adolf Hitler (autobiography), Schwarz, St. Gallen / Genossenschafts-Buchhandlung, Zurich 1935.

Editor of the journals:

  • Free Youth (1919–1926) (circulation up to 40,000 copies).
  • Down with the weapons! (1921)
  • The Free Man (1924)
  • Black flag (1925-1929), ZDB ID 85630-7 .
  • Board letter . Ship printer of the "Arche de Noé", Paris (1950–1953), ZDB -ID 26737814 .

literature

  • Thomas Kegel: “War on War!” Ernst Friedrich - anarchist and revolutionary anti-militarist . In: Graswurzelrevolution , No. 115, June 1986.
  • Thomas Kegel: Ernst Friedrich. Anarchist education in action . In: Ulrich Klemm (ed.): Anarchism and pedagogy. Studies to Reconstruct a Forgotten Tradition . Pp. 126-137. Dipa Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991.
  • Ulrich Klemm: Ernst Friedrich . In: Hans Jürgen Degen (ed.): Lexicon of Anarchy . Verlag Schwarzer Nachtschatten, Bösdorf / Plön 1993, ISBN 3-89041-008-1 .
  • Ulrich Linse : The anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist youth movement, 1918–1933 . Dipa Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1976.
  • Ulrich Linse: Ernst Friedrich on the 10th anniversary of his death (= European Ideas , Issue 29). European Ideas Publishing House, Berlin 1977.
  • Nicolas Offenstadt: L'image contre la guerre. Autour d'Ernst Friedrich . In: Thérèse Blondet-Bisch, Robert Frank, Claire Lebeau (eds.): Voir. Ne pas voir la guerre. Histoire des représentations photographiques de la guerre . Somogy, Editions d'Art / BDIC, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7028-4562-2 , pp. 270-275.
  • Tommy Spree: I don't know any “enemies”. The pacifist Ernst Friedrich. A picture of life . Anti-War Museum, self-published, Berlin 2000.
  • Bérénice Zunino: Pacifisme et violence. Femmes et enfants dans la pédagogie de la paix d'Ernst Friedrich . In: Les cahiers Irice , ISSN  1967-2713 , vol. 4 (2011), issue 2, pp. 111-136.

See also

List of expatriates during National Socialism

Web links

Commons : Ernst Friedrich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Müller-Schmitt: Ernst Friedrich and the Berlin Anti-War Museum . In: Christiane Rajewsky (ed.): Armament and War. To convey peace research (= yearbook for peace and conflict research , vol. 8). Haag + Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-88129-652-2 , pp. 72-77, here p. 73.
  2. ^ Ulrich Klemm: Ernst Friedrich . In: Hans Jürgen Degen (ed.): Lexicon of Anarchy . Verlag Schwarzer Nachtschatten, Bösdorf / Plön 1993.
  3. ^ Bérénice Zunino: Pacifisme et violence. Femmes et enfants dans la pédagogie de la paix d'Ernst Friedrich . In: Les cahiers Irice , Vol. 4 (2011), Heft 2, pp. 111-136, here p. 111.
  4. ↑ Michael Bienert, Elke Linda Buchholz: The Twenties in Berlin. A guide through the city . Berlin-Story-Verlag, Berlin, revised and updated new edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-95723-065-2 , chapter "War against War!" - History in the Museum , p. 34.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Gerd Krumeich: Introduction . In: Anti-War Museum Berlin (Ed.): War to War: Newly published . 2017, p. XLIII-XLIX .
  6. ↑ Claus Bernet: News on “Rest Home”: Help for victims of the Nazi dictatorship 1933–1939 in Germany , accessed on December 17, 2016.
  7. ↑ a b Julian Nordhues: The anarchist and anti-militarist Ernst Friedrich , accessed on December 17, 2016.
  8. ↑ L'île de la paix d'Ernst Friedrich , May 7, 2009, accessed on December 17, 2016.
  9. ^ A b Reinhard Müller: A portrait of the anarchist and resistance fighter Ernst Friedrich . In: Friedolin's Liberation. Journal for antimilitarism and nonviolence for free people and those who want to become one , ZDB -ID 2239876-4 , vol. 1999, No. 4.
  10. ^ Knerger.de: The grave of Ernst Friedrich
personal data
SURNAME Friedrich, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION anarchist pacifist
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1967
Place of death Le Perreux-sur-Marne