Eugene Loderer

Loderer (left) at an SPD party conference in 1978. To the right of him Heinz Kluncker and Heinz Oskar Vetter .

Eugen Loderer (born May 28, 1920 in Heidenheim an der Brenz , † February 9, 1995 in Planegg ) was a German trade union official . From 1972 to 1983 he was chairman of IG Metall .

Life

Childhood and school days

Eugen Loderer was born as the second common child of the worker Magnus Loderer (* 1876) and the worker Magdalena Loderer (born Walz), born in 1882, in the Swabian industrial city of Heidenheim an der Brenz . In addition to his eight-year-old brother Georg, Eugen Loderer had a 14-year-old half-sister, Albertine, whom his mother had brought into the 1911 marriage. According to the will of her working parents, Albertine had to look after her youngest sibling for the first three years after the birth of her youngest sibling.

As a child, Eugen Loderer suffered from the poverty and emotional coldness of his family of origin. Even as a schoolboy, Eugen had to help out in his own household and also “go to the Laufhaus” with his mother's boss, that is, do all kinds of auxiliary services. It often happened that the boy was beaten up by his parents.

In the Catholic kindergarten and the Catholic school, the working-class child Eugen Loderer was disciplined in an authoritarian manner. His parents, who for their part were obedient to authority, were not politically active, but in contrast to the working class milieu in Heidenheim Oststadt, which had been socialist since the end of the 19th century, they were practicing Catholics. As a student, Eugen Loderer himself was a member of the Catholic scouts St. Georg .

Apprenticeship, wage labor, military service

After eight years of primary school, Eugen Loderer began an apprenticeship as a metal mesh maker in Heidenheim in April 1935. With reference to his Catholic socialization, Loderer initially hesitated to join the Hitler Youth , but was later a year and a half member of the Navy HJ before he turned his back on this organization in 1937 because of “inner distance to the Nazi regime ”.

After completing his apprenticeship, 17-year-old Eugen Loderer continued to work in the Oberdorfer metal cloth factory before he was called up for military service in the spring of 1940. Loderer decided to go to the Navy and in June 1940 was assigned to Stralsund and later to Kiel for training .

From September 1940 to February 1942 Loderer was stationed in Nieuwpoort , a fishing village in occupied Belgium . After training as a commissioned officer he ordered the Navy to occupied France . A flotilla with minesweepers was stationed in the coastal town of Lorient and later in the fishing village of Bénodet , the task of which was to provide escort to German U-boats. On October 1, 1942, Loderer was slightly wounded in the forearm in an air raid. He was unable to work until December 1942. As a result of his military service as an occupying soldier in the German Wehrmacht , his initial distance from the Nazi regime had decreased significantly.

Between May and December 1944, Loderer obtained the senior tax man's patent during a course lasting several months in Gdynia, West Prussia . Loderer spent the last months of his military service in Copenhagen , which was occupied by German troops , where he was taken prisoner by the British on May 8, 1945 .

Entry into union and party work

After his release from three months of captivity, Eugen Loderer worked again as a metal cloth weaver for his old employer, the Heidenheim metal works Oberdorfer, from November 1, 1945. At the same time he joined the newly founded Iron and Metal Industry Association , a predecessor organization of IG Metall .

In the spring of 1946, the Oberdorf workforce elected Loderer as chairman of the works council . In addition to his company, Loderer made a name for himself as a committed lobbyist. As a result, he also gained the attention of Sigmund Löwi , a former DMV functionary and exile, who, as managing director of the Heidenheim metalworking union, became Loderer's “first internal mentor”.

At Löwi's suggestion, Eugen Loderer became organizational secretary in the Heidenheim administration office on July 1, 1947. Loderer initially concentrated on youth policy committee work and from here also made contacts with other full-time trade unionists in the region, for example the communist Willi Bleicher .

From a dispute over the direction of the social democratic and communist metalworkers in Heidenheim, the group oriented towards social democracy, to which Eugen Loderer could already be counted, emerged stronger at the end of the 1940s.

After a year as a manager, Eugen Loderer was elected Heidenheim representative of IG Metall in August 1950. At the beginning of Loderer's term of office, communist functionaries in Heidenheim's IG Metall were pushed out of the organization or politically marginalized under the sign of the Cold War .

Loderer had been a member of the SPD since 1951, became a council member for the party and in 1955 also deputy chairman of the local association in Heidenheim. In 1956 he ran unsuccessfully for the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg . In addition, in the 1950s Loderer was chairman of the local Friends of Nature , member of the IG Metall advisory board and the Stuttgart tariff commission. In addition, he acted as an honorary labor judge during his time in Heidenheim, sat on the administrative committee of the Aalen employment office , in the self-administration of the Heidenheimer OK and on the supervisory board of the Heidenheimer Konzerthausgesellschaft.

In line with the German trend, Heidenheim's IG Metall was able to roughly double its membership from 5500 at the beginning of the 1950s to over 10,000 by the end of the decade during Eugen Loderer's term of office. In the local metal industry, the degree of organization was 60 percent and among the workers even 75 percent.

According to his biographer Klaus Kempter, Eugen Loderer acquired “the reputation of an able, agile and conscientious trade unionist who, due to his research and the fact that he is still among the full-time functionaries,” during his time as the first authorized representative of the Heidenheim administration office belonged to the boys, came up again and again when it came to higher tasks. "

Professional advancement at state and federal level

The Stuttgart IG Metall district head Willi Bleicher made Eugen Loderer 1959 in the areas of youth councils and shop stewards responsible district secretary. In addition, Bleicher commissioned Loderer, as his political emissary, to urge the administrative offices to increase the number of members and contributions and to generally ensure that the political line of the district management was implemented on site.

It was important for Loderer's career prospects that the strike in the Baden-Württemberg metal industry led by IG Metall in 1963 helped to consolidate the district's internal union prestige as an assertive organization and that it made it "the most important division within the organization".

At the insistence of and with the support of Willi Bleicher, Eugen Loderer was elected chairman of the DGB regional district of Baden-Württemberg on March 8, 1963, thus advancing into the union's “leadership reserve”. As DGB state chairman, Loderer tried to find a compromise between the internal union supporters and opponents of the emergency laws planned by the federal government to bring them into line with the opposition line of IG Metall .

In retrospect, however, Eugen Loderer considered the union's skepticism towards the political elites expressed in its rejection of the emergency constitution to be exaggerated. “But when I think backwards of the effort, energy and time that had been expended on it, and of the arguments that went up to hostility, I can only interpret this behavior in terms of how much German thoroughness increases in extreme situations leaves."

Eugen Loderer gained national notoriety through an appearance at a large anti-fascist rally against the national party congress of the NPD held in Karlsruhe on June 17, 1966 . In January 1968 Loderer was elected deputy state chairman of the Baden-Württemberg SPD .

He was skeptical about the entry of the state and federal SPD into grand coalitions led by CDU politicians and former NSDAP members Hans Filbinger and Kurt Georg Kiesinger . After the SPD parliamentary group in 1968 disregarded the decision of the conference of state delegates, which was supported by Loderer with high publicity, not to continue the grand coalition, the deputy SPD state chairman advocated the approval of the formation of a government with the CDU.

In the summer of 1968 Eugen Loderer was proposed by IG Metall chairman Otto Brenner for the office of his deputy. At the IG Metall trade union day on September 7, 1968, he received 347 out of 403 votes.

Under IG Metall chairman Otto Brenner, Loderer was responsible for the areas of “Human Resources” and “Press” as well as for “Organization and Administration”. Klaus Kempter judges that Loderer gained respect from the powerful chairman by means of the " secondary virtues " he embodied . “The vice chairman was extremely diligent and meticulous about his job. At the same time, he tried to stay out of internal disputes, to ignore intrigues, to stay away from the various clusters and, above all, to convince by reliably fulfilling his duties. "

Against internal resistance, Eugen Loderer supported Otto Brenner's willingness to constructively participate in the concerted action . During the union-independent September strike in 1969, the entire executive board of IG Metall, including Eugen Loderer, tried to “get the situation under control” and to win back the political initiative through negotiations with the steel industrialists.

As a member of the leadership group of the West German trade unions, Eugen Loderer largely complied with the domestic policy reform goals and the foreign policy relaxation course of the social-liberal government of Brandt / Scheel . In the dispute about the unreasonably high wage demands of the Baden-Württemberg IG Metall , from the point of view of the federal government , Eugen Loderer, as executive IG Metall board member, was unable to assert himself against his former sponsor Siegfried Bleicher, who, as district manager, led the three-week strike by metal workers in the southwest.

Chairman of the metal industry union

In June 1972, the first extraordinary trade union day of IG Metall elected Eugen Loderer to succeed the chairman Otto Brenner, who died on April 15, 1972. In his first election he received 442 of 468 votes (94.4 percent). At the following trade union days in Hanover, Düsseldorf and West Berlin, Loderer was able to unite 89.5 percent (1974), 88.9 percent (1977) and 89.7 percent (1980) of the delegate votes. Eugen Loderer's tenure at the head of the largest single trade union in the world coincided with the greatest crisis in the world economy in the second half of the 20th century. After the de facto end of the social-liberal reform period in 1973, the IG Metall executive board faced the double challenge of having to deal with both the growing austerity pressure of the employers' camp and the growing left opposition within the trade unions.

Under Loderer's leadership, IG Metall continued to take initiatives to implement socio-political reforms (overcoming the dual system of vocational training , which was all too business-friendly from the union's point of view ), demands for state investment control , for an expansion of corporate co-determination and for a ban on lockouts. In view of the increasingly clear limits of union enforcement power, IG Metall increasingly concentrated in the second half of the 1970s on using collective bargaining means to secure the assets of its members.

Fight against the consequences of the economic crisis

During Eugen Loderer's eleven-year term in office, IG Metall carried out five major strikes: from October 16 to 24, 1973 in the Baden-Württemberg metal industry, from March 6 to 27, 1974 in the Unterweser collective bargaining district, from May 16 to May 1, 1973. June 1977 in the Baden-Württemberg heating and plumbing trade, from March 15 to April 7, 1978 in the Baden-Württemberg metal industry and from November 28, 1978 to January 10, 1979 in the North Rhine-Westphalian steel industry.

Since the outbreak of the economic crisis in 1973/74, poor economic data and rising unemployment figures have contributed to weakening the bargaining position of the trade unions. In view of the structural crisis, particularly in the steel industry , the IG Metall chairman saw reductions in working hours as a suitable means of combating mass unemployment. However , Loderer only made the demand for the introduction of the 35-hour week his own when the IG Metall trade union day in September 1977, against the will of the board of directors, resolved a corresponding tariff demand.

In the opinion of the IG Metall board of directors, entrepreneurs in the field of collective bargaining policy followed the conservative trend reversal from 1977 at the latest, which began to emerge in the political arena towards the end of Willy Brandt's reign. It is "an increasing poisoning of the socio-political climate by the united reform opponents in business and politics to be observed". The debate about an allegedly threatened “union state”, which was increasingly conducted by the conservative side from the mid-1970s onwards, was interpreted by Eugen Loderer as an expression of “anti-reform sentiment”.

As IG Metall chairman, in times of economic crisis, Loderer advocated safeguarding the trade union holdings through a pragmatic focus on the core business of collective bargaining. "If you defend something in the crisis and thus achieve that the status quo is not affected, then that is a great success in the crisis." Left critics of his trade union policy therefore accused him early on of a "policy of adjustment" to capital interests .

Party political engagement for the SPD

After starting his work on the IG Metall board in 1968, Loderer resigned from the board of the Baden-Württemberg SPD. Nonetheless, he remained closely associated with social democracy. In 1969 and 1974 he was sent by the party to the Federal Assembly to elect the respective presidential candidates of the social-liberal coalition with Gustav Heinemann and Walter Scheel .

Before federal elections, he regularly advocated the election of the SPD, and in 1975, together with Swedish comrades , he organized a fundraising campaign for Finnish social democrats who had competed against promising candidates from the ranks of the Communist Party of Finland in shop stewards elections. According to Loderer's information, a sum of money of around 100,000 marks came from the private assets of SPD-related labor directors from the steel industry.

In 1979 Eugen Loderer was elected to the European Parliament on the Hessian state list of the SPD, but already resigned the mandate in December 1979, referring to the heavy workload, and left parliament on January 14, 1980.

Loderer, despite occasional differences, maintained a political friendship with Helmut Schmidt , for whom he was "a man fully loyal to the state, no longer an ideologue, but a tariff practitioner".

Confrontation with the political left

After Eugen Loderer had spoken out in January 1973 in favor of tackling “the problem of the ultra-left groups”, the IG Metall advisory board passed resolutions on incompatibility in April 1973, which were directed against the operational activities of communist or union-opposition initiatives. Writers like Heinrich Böll , Günter Wallraff , Max von der Grün , Yaak Karsunke and Alexander Kluge then indirectly accused Loderer of undemocratic behavior in the Frankfurter Rundschau .

As the chairman of IG Metall, Loderer expressed his displeasure at the fact that, particularly in the younger generation, organizational discipline had decreased and as a result, union days had become increasingly unpredictable.

In the 1970s, the IG Metall departments responsible for youth and education suspected Loderer of being too indulgent towards political influence from the DKP's environment . With the support of anti-communist Social Democrats, Loderer took a stand against the "History of the German Trade Union Movement" published in 1977 by Frank Deppe , Georg Fülberth and Jürgen Harrer , which had also been intensively discussed in the educational work of IG Metall as a Marxist alternative to social democratic organizational history.

In the German autumn , IG Metall board members such as Georg Benz, Hans Preiss and Karl-Heinz Janzen Loderer accused Loderer of not being loyal enough to the socialist Heinz Dürrbeck , who also belonged to the board and who on September 12, 1977 for alleged espionage for the GDR had been arrested.

In the international trade union bodies, in which Loderer was one of the "most influential functionaries", he uncompromisingly opposed any form of cooperation with trade unions that belonged to the communist-oriented World Trade Union Confederation .

Loderer accused the citizens' initiatives of the anti-nuclear power movement, which had been active since the mid-1970s, of questioning parliamentarianism , which he considered inadmissible , and therefore ruled out political alliances with them. At a rally in Dortmund organized on November 10, 1977 by the “Action Group Energy of Works Councils”, Eugen Loderer and other chairmen of DGB unions spoke out in favor of the further expansion of nuclear energy.

In the rearmament debate , Loderer rejected official cooperation between IG Metall and the peace movement because he accused it of unilateral condemnation of the US and insufficient criticism of Soviet armaments policy. However, other voices in IG Metall sympathized with the peace movement and its demands for arms conversion. The left board member Georg Benz, for example, who appeared as a speaker at a large peace demonstration in Bonn's Hofgarten on October 10, 1981 , had to be severely reprimanded by Loderer.

retirement

A good one and a half years before reaching the age limit, Eugen Loderer resigned from the IG Metall executive board in October 1983 after his previous deputy, Hans Mayr, was elected as the new chairman of IG Metall at the Munich trade union conference. Immediately thereafter, Loderer resigned from the office of President of the International Metalworkers Association and resigned from his supervisory board mandates at Volkswagen and Mannesmann as well as at the union-owned companies Neue Heimat , BGAG , Volksfürsorge and Bank für Gemeinwirtschaft , which he had held since taking office in 1972.

With his wife Charlotte, Loderer initially stayed in the Frankfurt district of Hausen before the couple moved back to Heidenheim in 1989. In 1984 Eugen Loderer was made an honorary citizen of Heidenheim an der Brenz. After Loderer had already received the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal of the State of Hesse in 1977, the City of Frankfurt am Main awarded him the city's plaque of honor in 1986. In memory of the Mannheim Agreement of 1906, the Mannheim administration office of IG Metall awarded him the “Mannheim Medal” in 1986. In 1990 Eugen Loderer was honored with the Order of Merit of the State of Hesse.

On the basis of his collection of press reports that had appeared about him since 1947, Loderer wrote an autobiography between 1987 and 1990 comprising around 1,000 manuscript pages. It was entitled “From worker boy to chairman of IG Metall, president of the metal world international and honorary citizen of the city of Heidenheim. My life and family story ”, was not intended for publication.

In September 1994 Eugen Loderer suffered a stroke, from the consequences of which he did not recover. He died on February 9, 1995 at the age of 74. His grave is in the Heidenheim forest cemetery.

Memberships

Eugen Loderer was a member of the Trilateral Commission in Europe in 1973 .

Awards

• 1977: Wilhelm Leuschner Medal
• 1984: Honorary citizenship of the city of Heidenheim an der Brenz
• 1986: Plaque of honor of the city of Frankfurt am Main
• 1986: Mannheim Medal from the IG Metall administration office in Mannheim
• 1990: Hessian Order of Merit

Writings and editorships

• Eugen Loderer: From worker boy to chairman of IG Metall, president of the Metall-Weltinternationale and honorary citizen of the city of Heidenheim. My life and family history (unpublished manuscript that was evaluated by Loderer's biographer Klaus Kempter)
• Eugen Loderer (Ed.): Metal trade unions in South Africa , Cologne 1983
• Eugen Loderer: unified union. Solidarity, social counterpower , Frankfurt / M. 1981
• Eugen Loderer: Reform as a political imperative. Speeches and essays on social policy, Cologne 1979
• Eugen Loderer: International solidarity. Together for full employment, co-determination, social democracy , Frankfurt / M. 1977
• Eugen Loderer: Democracy and human dignity - a permanent assignment , Frankfurt / M. 1974

literature

• Willy Brandt / Leonard Woodcock (eds.): Festschrift for Eugen Loderer on his 60th birthday , Cologne 1980
• Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003
• Klaus Kempter: On the biography of Eugen Loderer (1920–1995). A report , in: trade union monthly books 3/2004, pp. 144–151
• Industriegewerkschaft Metall (Ed.): Commitment to a big cause. Eugen Loderer in the newspapers 1952 to 1983 , undated Frankfurt / M.
• Jan Hansen: Do missiles create jobs? The dispute over retrofitting and armament conversion in the trade unions (around 1979 to 1983) , in: Arbeit - Bewegungs - Geschichte , Issue II / 2016.

Web links

• Literature by and about Eugen Loderer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Eugen Loderer in the Members' database of the European Parliament
• 90 years ago ... May 28, 1920: Eugen Loderer born at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
• Died: Eugen Loderer in Spiegel 7/1995
• Eugen Loderer in the online archive of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit
• Eugen Loderer in the online archive of Der Spiegel magazine

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 35.
2. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 62–63.
3. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 79.
4. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 89.
5. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 100–102.
6. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 117–119.
7. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 132–133.
8. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 138.
9. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 166.
10. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 173.
11. ↑ Eugen Loderer: From worker boy to chairman of IG Metall, president of the metal world international and honorary citizen of the city of Heidenheim. My life and family history , oOuJ, p. 149.
12. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 187.
13. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 191.
14. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 203.
15. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 210.
16. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 226–230.
17. ↑ Eugen Loderer: From worker boy to chairman of IG Metall, president of the metal world international and honorary citizen of the city of Heidenheim. My life and family history , oOuJ, p. 179.
18. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 250–252.
19. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 340.
20. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 341.
21. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 343–349.
22. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 354–358.
23. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 368.
24. ↑ IG Metall (Ed.): 90 Years of the Metal Industry Union 1891–1981 , Cologne 1981, pp. 530–533.
25. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 319.
26. ↑ cit. according to Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 335.
27. ↑ Loderer cit. according to Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 339.
28. ↑ Loderer cit. to the Black Forest messenger from 25./26. September 1982
29. ↑ Otto Jacobi: Tariff Policy in the Economic Crisis 1974/75 , in: Otto Jacobi u. a. (Ed.): Unions and class struggle. Critical Yearbook 1975, Frankfurt / M. 1975, p. 105.
30. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 367 and 543.
31. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 371–372.
32. ^ Helmut Schmidt: companions. Memories and Reflections , Berlin 1996, p. 205.
33. ↑ Loderer cit. according to Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 290.
34. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau of October 2, 1973
35. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 380–384.
36. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 392–394.
37. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 400–401.
38. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, p. 402.
39. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 402–406.
40. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 407–411.
41. ↑ See Jan Hansen: Do missiles create jobs? The dispute over retrofitting and armament conversion in the trade unions (around 1979 to 1983) , in: Arbeit - Bewegungs - Geschichte , Issue II / 2016, here p. 110
42. ↑ Klaus Kempter: Eugen Loderer and IG Metall. Biography of a trade unionist , Filderstadt 2003, pp. 419–423.
43. ↑ Trilateral Commission Membership List (PDF)