Erwin Eckert

Erwin Eckert (born June 16, 1893 in Zaisenhausen , † December 20, 1972 in Mannheim ) was a German politician of the KPD and chairman of the Association of Religious Socialists in Germany . He was a member of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg from 1952 to 1956.

Life

Eckert, son of a teacher, studied Protestant theology and philosophy in Heidelberg , Göttingen and Basel after graduating from high school in Mannheim . In 1911 he became a member of the SPD and volunteered when the war broke out in 1914. He received his first pastor's position in Meersburg in 1922, and in 1927 he moved to the Trinity Church in Mannheim .

Eckert sought contact with religious socialists within the Protestant Church from the beginning of the twenties and was executive chairman of the Association of Religious Socialists in Germany (BRSD) from 1926 to 1931 . Within the federal government, Eckert was seen as a representative of Marxist positions, often in contrast to the rather reform-socialist ideas of other members of the federal government.

His decidedly pacifist , anti-militarist , anti-fascist and partly pro-Soviet public statements, for example as the editor of the Sunday newspaper of the working people or the newspaper The Religious Socialist , brought him into conflict with both the Protestant church leadership and the SPD.

A particular concern of Erwin Eckert was the political struggle against the threat of fascism. From the end of November 1930 to July 1931 he warned of the danger of National Socialism in innumerable meetings all over Germany. The pastor and former SPD city councilor of Karlsruhe, Heinz Kappes , even described him as the “most successful speaker in southern Germany against fascism”.

In December 1930 Eckert spoke at an event organized by the SPD local group in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse on the subject of "The great lie of National Socialism" . The meeting ended in a battle provoked by the SA. While the local SPD group wanted to repeat the meeting with Eckert as the speaker, the Evangelical Upper Church Council issued a speech ban for Pastor Eckert, which he did not adhere to. Shortly afterwards Eckert spoke in an event attended by 3500 people in Pforzheim about "Fascism, a danger to the working class" . The announcement for this meeting said that Eckert was "the man in Baden most hated by the reaction and the Nazis at the time." After his appearance in Pforzheim, the Baden church president, Klaus Wurth, forbade him to appear as a speaker at political meetings in January 1931. Only a few days later Wurth provisionally removed him from his office as pastor. But almost 100,000 church members signed a declaration of protest demanding Eckert's reinstatement. In June 1931 the impeachment process took place. The main accusation was the refusal to obey the Oberkirchenrat. Eckert was found guilty and the ban on speaking was upheld.

In September of the same year Eckert declared his solidarity with the internal party opposition to the Reichstag MPs Max Seydewitz and Kurt Rosenfeld , who had been excluded from the SPD for breach of parliamentary group discipline. Thereupon Eckert was also expelled from the SPD in October 1931. One day after he was expelled from the party , Eckert joined the KPD and subsequently worked for the newspapers Die Rote Fahne and Freiheit . On the occasion of his transfer, the KPD published the brochure “ The Church and the KPD with a circulation of 100,000 copies. City pastor Eckert comes to the KPD ” , which increased Eckert's level of awareness throughout Germany.

In November 1931 Eckert was relieved of all his offices in the BRSD, followed by his immediate dismissal from church service. Eckert then left the church, but remained a believing Christian all his life. As the successor to Eckert's Mannheim pulpit, the Baden church leadership appointed Friedrich Kölli, a member of the NSDAP.

After the National Socialist " seizure of power " he was arrested on March 1, 1933 and remained imprisoned until October 1933. In October 1936 he was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for "preparation for high treason". After this second imprisonment he lived under police supervision in Frankfurt. In the further course of the war, Erwin Eckert got a job with Preveg - Präzisions-, Eisen- und Metallverfeinerungsgesellschaft mbH. In 1942 he was appointed as its commercial and organizational manager and later as sole authorized signatory . In February 1944, the Preveg estate in Frankfurt was so badly damaged in a bomb attack that the company was relocated to Oberwihl (now part of Görwihl) near the Swiss border. The workforce moved to the Hotzenwald, including 74 forced laborers. In March 1945 these should be brought to Tyrol and Hungary to be used for entrenchments. Eckert and his boss Mathern then made it possible for the forced laborers to flee to Switzerland.

In 1945 Eckert resumed his political work and was chairman of the KPD in Baden from 1946 to 1950 . For his party, he was in 1946 a member of the Consultative National Conference of Baden , a member of the First Badische Allparteienkabinetts , Member of the Baden state parliament from 1947 to 1952 and of the Parliament of Baden-Wuerttemberg he joined from 1952 to 1956. 1949 as mayor candidate of the Communist Party in Mannheim on , in which he received almost 35 percent.

In 1950 Erwin Eckert was elected to the World Peace Council together with the theologian Johannes Herz as the German representative . As a member of the World Peace Council, Eckert took part in many international congresses. In 1959 the Belgian President Isabelle Blume presented him with the gold medal of the World Peace Council.

In 1960 a Düsseldorf court sentenced Eckert as a leading member of the Peace Committee of the Federal Republic of Germany after five months of negotiations for “ringleadership in an anti-constitutional association” to nine months in prison on probation. The court had refused to “take note of the evidence presented by defense attorney Heinrich Hannover about the peace work of the defendants” and rejected their requests for evidence. A constitutional complaint was unsuccessful. According to Diether Posser , this was "the most significant political criminal trial since the Federal Republic of Germany came into being". In 1961, Der Spiegel spoke of the “most unusual political criminal trial to date”, which shed light on “the misery of political justice in the liberal constitutional state”.

In 1964, the Peace Council of the GDR awarded Erwin Eckert the Carl von Ossietzky Medal for his “services in the fight against German militarism, against fascism and war”. In 1968 Eckert joined the DKP .

Eckert's last residence was in Großsachsen near Weinheim on Bergstrasse, where he lived in very modest circumstances. He died in 1972 at the age of 79. His motto was written above Erwin Eckert's obituary: "Serve the whole, remain true to yourself" .

Appreciation

In Erwin Eckert's life, areas of tension from recent German history are bundled in a special way. During the First World War, Erwin Eckert changed from a young and naive volunteer to a lifelong active opponent, preacher and fighter for peace in the world. As a religious and at the same time Marxist-revolutionary politician in the SPD, KPD and DKP, he fought for a humane and socialist social order throughout his life. In his attempt to create a symbiosis from Christian convictions and the knowledge of Karl Marx , he can be regarded as a forerunner of the “ theology of liberation ”.

Erwin Eckert was a church and people's tribune who cast a spell over the masses with his speeches and sermons. As the most important speaker in southern Germany against fascism, he warned urgently against this inhuman ideology. At the same time, contrary to the official party line, he tried to overcome the fateful split in the German labor movement and thus prevent the National Socialists from seizing power.

After the Second World War, he had to experience how the Cold War again destroyed his hopes for an anti-fascist, democratic and socialist Germany. His critical sympathy with the GDR and his work as a communist in the peace movement made him an outsider who was prosecuted in the Federal Republic.

Its low level of awareness is due to the fact that Erwin Eckert does not fit into any of the common drawers. His biography as a KPD member prevents him from being seen as an important figure for the church or social democratic resistance in National Socialist Germany. From a communist point of view, his Christian beliefs are the decisive obstacle to honoring him as a great personality. Eckert submitted to neither the official church nor any state or party reasoning. No organization, no party or religion can therefore claim him as a "hero".

Only in April 1999 did the Evangelical Church of Baden rehabilitate Erwin Eckert. In the run-up, there had been a petition from 350 people from the regional church, in which this was requested. In the declaration of the Baden church leadership, which was given by Regional Bishop Dr. Ulrich Fischer and the President of the State Synod Margit Fleckenstein , it says:

"Today it cannot be overlooked that the action of the church leadership at that time towards this one of its pastors appears to be disproportionate, if one takes into account how they tolerated 'political pastors' of the National Socialist camp in the pastoral service at the same time ... and (the) could advertise for National Socialism without hindrance. ... So there is no way around admitting that the church government at that time, which operated to 'dishonorably' dismiss Pastor Eckert from pastoral service at the end of 1931, was blind in one eye. It has not fulfilled its obligation to be non-partisan, but - as Eckert rightly criticized - acted partisan and suppressed a prophetic voice ... "

literature

• Friedrich-Martin Balzer : Decision years 1948/49. How Erwin Eckert fought for Germany's future. Pad Publisher: Bergkamen 2018
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer: Class contrasts in the church. Erwin Eckert and the Association of Religious Socialists in Germany. Foreword by Wolfgang Abendroth . Bonn 1993. Zugl. Diss. Phil. University of Bonn 1972 ISBN 3-89144-166-5
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer, Ulrich Schnell: The Erwin Eckert case. On the relationship between Protestantism and fascism at the end of the Weimar Republic. Foreword by Hans Prolingheuer . Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 1993 ISBN 3-89144-167-3
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer: Between prison and penitentiary. Erwin Eckert's everyday life. In Kurt Pätzold , Erika Schwarz (ed.): Europe before the abyss. The year 1935 - a missed opportunity. Cologne 2005
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer: Mishaps on the history of German Protestantism - against the current. , Afterword Gert Wendelborn . Marburg 1990 ISBN 3-89419-018-3
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer (Ed.): Justice injustice in the Cold War. The criminalization of the West German peace movement in the Düsseldorf Trial in 1959/1960 . Cologne 2006 ISBN 3-89438-327-5
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer: Current Comments 1999 . On-line
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer (Ed.): "You of little faith, why are you so scared?" Comments by Erwin Eckert and Heinz Kappes . Bonn 1993 ISBN 3-89144-187-8
• Mannheim Round Table History and Politics (Ed.): Erwin Eckert - Pastor and Communist. Contemporary witnesses remember , Mannheim 1993
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer (ed.): Annoyance and signs. Erwin Eckert - socialist revolutionary from Christian faith . Contributions by Friedrich-Martin Balzer, Hans-Werner Bartsch , Frank Deppe , Walter Ebert, Erwin Eckert, Emil Fuchs , Georg Fülberth , Günter Giesenfeld , Hans Heinz Holz , Wolfgang Langhoff , Hanfried Müller , Helmut Ridder , Jürgen Scheele, Marie Veit , Manfred Weißbecker , Gert Wendelborn . Bonn 1993 ISBN 3-89144-168-1
• Heinrich Hannover: The republic in court 1954 - 1974. Detailed information on the Düsseldorf Peace Committee trial . Berlin 1998, pp. 57-80
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer, Gert Wendelborn: We are not mute dogs. Heinz Kappes (1893–1988). Christian and socialist in the Weimar Republic. , Bonn 1994 ISBN 3-89144-197-5
• Ulrich Schäfer: 50 years of the Harbor Church for God's Mercy . Festschrift. Mannheim 2003
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer a. a .: Red heaven on earth? Religious socialism . Contributions to a joint conference of the Evangelical Academies April 16-18, 1993 in Ludwigshafen. On the 100th birthday of Erwin Eckert, Evangelical Academy Baden , Karlsruhe 1994 ISBN 3-87210-108-0
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer, Christian Stappenbeck (ed.): "You have affirmed the right to revolution." Christians in the GDR. 50 years of Darmstädter Wort . Texts by Karl Kleinschmidt , Hanfried Müller and Gert Wendelborn. Bonn 1997 ISBN 3-89144-225-4
• Friedrich-Martin Balzer (ed.): Protestantism and anti-fascism before 1933. The case of the pastor Erwin Eckert in sources and documents . (extensive source collection), Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 2011, ISBN 978-3-89144-443-6
• Eckert, Erwin . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Hartmut Hensgen, Erwin Eckert - Serving the whole and staying true to yourself, in: Kraichgau - Contributions to landscape and local research, volume 24, 2015, ISBN 978-3-921214-50-3

Web links

• Literature by and about Erwin Eckert in the catalog of the German National Library
• Critical appreciation of Eckert during a conference on religious socialism in the first half of the 20th century

Individual evidence

1. ^ The forgotten resistance fighters , lecture by attorney Heinrich Hannover on August 23, 2007
2. ^ Krimm, Eckert , p. 263.