Felix Freudenberger

Felix Freudenberger (born August 8, 1874 in Heidingsfeld ; died December 15, 1927 in Schönberg / Württemberg) was a German bookseller, politician ( SPD ) and local politician (member of the state parliament and honorary mayor) in Würzburg . He was also a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Würzburg.

Life

Origin and occupation

Felix Freudenberger grew up in small circumstances as one of eleven children of a teacher in the then still independent town of Heidingsfeld near Würzburg (a district of Würzburg since 1930 ). After secondary school in Fürth , he completed an apprenticeship as a book trade assistant. His subsequent years of traveling took him to Frankfurt am Main and Witten, among others . In 1899 he opened  a small book and stationery shop in Würzburg at Augustinerstraße 4, which his wife later ran.

SPD politician and pacifist

In 1895 Freudenberger joined the SPD, for which he appeared as a party speaker and wrote in the Frankish Volksfreund . He was also a member of the SPD state executive in the Kingdom of Bavaria since 1914.

The SPD put him up as a candidate in the undemocratic elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 1907 . After the democratization of the right to vote, his candidacy for the Bavarian state parliament was successful in January 1919. From 1908 Freudenberger was the SPD representative and the first Jewish member of the Social Democrats in the Würzburg community college, from 1912 also as community representative elected to the second chamber of the city council, after 1919 he became chairman of the SPD community council faction. He also became a member of the Lower Franconian district council .

After the outbreak of World War I , Freudenberger remained a pacifist within the Social Democrats, also in view of the enthusiasm for war . From anti-war book Man is good by Leonhard Frank 300 copies were seized in his bookstore. He gave a pacifist welcome speech at the SPD party rally that took place in Würzburg in 1917. Nevertheless, a motion by the war opponents in the party was rejected with 26 to 257 votes. In contrast to Curt Geyer , who was his editor in Würzburg between 1915 and 1917 , Freudenberger refused to join the newly founded USPD .

From the SPD, Felix Freudenberger became one of the leaders of a workers 'and soldiers' council , which was also formed in Würzburg in November 1918 and took over power in Würzburg for a short time on November 9. Freudenberger was also a delegate at the Reichsrätekongress in December 1918 in Berlin. Freudenberger's influence ensured that the council revolution in Würzburg in April 1919 was largely peaceful. He himself was briefly arrested by the revolutionaries. After the suppression of the revolution in Würzburg, Freudenberger mobilized counter-revolutionary Freikorps fighters .

Against the anti-Semitic resistance of the bourgeois parties, Freudenberger was elected fourth (honorary) mayor for schools and culture in Würzburg for the legislative period from 1919 to 1924. Freudenberger became a member of the supervisory board of the Würzburg trams and the district electricity supply of Lower Franconia . As in the German Empire, he continued to be rigorously spied on and monitored as a Social Democrat by the Bavarian state police . In the Würzburg " Barmat scandal " in 1925, he was the target of right-wing agitation without being prosecuted.

Freudenberger remained a member of the state parliament until his death. He died during a stay in a sanatorium in the Black Forest in Schönberg or Schömberg. The SPD politicians Hermann Müller and Hans Vogel spoke at his funeral at the Jewish cemetery in Würzburg .

Family, Afterlife, and Remembrance

Stumbling block for Rosa Freudenberger, in front of Augustinerstraße 4 in Würzburg

Felix Freudenberger had been married to Rosa Frankenfelder, the daughter of a butcher, who was born in 1872, since 1900. After his death in 1927, his widow continued the book business until the late 1930s. Like her husband, she was of Jewish descent and was persecuted by the National Socialists during the Nazi era and ultimately murdered. Rosa Freudenberger was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on September 23, 1942 and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp in May 1944 , where she was gassed in October 1944 . The daughter Sophie, born in 1901, managed to escape to England.

In 2008, in memory of Felix Freudenberger, Felix-Freudenberger-Platz on the Upper Main Quay in Würzburg was named after him.

On January 26, 2010, in memory of Rosa Freudenberger, a stumbling stone by the artist Gunter Demnig was laid in front of the couple's former home and bookstore at Augustiner Straße 4 in Würzburg.

literature

• Roland Flade: Felix Freudenberger (1874–1927), social democratic mayor and pacifist. In: Manfred Treml , Wolf Weigand (ed.): History and culture of the Jews in Bavaria. CVs (=  publications on Bavarian history and culture , No. 18). Published for the House of Bavarian History . Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-9801342-8-8 , pp. 269-272.
• Roland Flade: The Würzburg Jews from 1919 to the present. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001–2007, Volume III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 529-545 and 1308, here: pp. 530 f.
• Reiner Strätz: Biographisches Handbuch Würzburg Jews 1900–1945 (=  publications of the Würzburg City Archives , Volume 4). With a scientific introduction by Herbert A. Strauss . Schöningh, Würzburg 1989, ISBN 3-87717-762-X , p. 169.
• Šerāgā Har-Gil (Shraga Har-Gil): Old love never rusts. With a foreword by Hans Steidle. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2959-3 .
• Bettina Köttnitz-Porsch: November Revolution and Council rule 1918/19 in Würzburg. Friends of Mainfränkischer Kunst und Geschichte, Würzburg 1985, DNB 860089363 (also dissertation, Bamberg University 1983).
• Freudenberger, Felix , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 100

Web links

• New place is reminiscent of social democrat Felix Freudenberger , at Main-Post
• Felix Freudenberger , at alemannia-judaica.de
• Felix Freudenberger , at: Historical Lower Franconia

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Roland Flade: Felix Freudenberger , 1988
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Freudenberger, Felix in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History
3. ↑ The re-election to the state parliament in 1920 and 1924, which is claimed in the literature, can not be verified with the authoritative source, the list of representatives at the HdBG .
4. ↑ Ursula Gehring-Münzel: The Würzburg Jews from 1803 to the end of the First World War. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. Volume III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, pp. 499-528 and 1306-1308, here: p. 523.
5. ^ Roland Flade: Felix Freudenberger (1874–1927), social democratic mayor and pacifist. In: Manfred Treml, Wolf Weigand (Hrsgg.): History and culture of the Jews in Bavaria: CVs. KG Saur, Munich 1988, Volume 18, p. 269.
6. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml (ed.): The revolutionary illusion: zur Geschichte d. left wing d. USPD / Memories by Curt Geyer . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1976.
7. ^ Roland Flade: The Würzburg Jews from 1919 to the present. 2007, p. 531.
8. ↑ Ulrich Wagner: Würzburg rulers, Bavarian minister-presidents, chairmen of the district council / district council presidents, regional presidents, bishops, lord mayors 1814–2006. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. Volume 2, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 1221-1224; here: p. 1223 f.
9. ^ Felix Freudenberger , at: Historisches Unterfranken.
10. ↑ Šerāgā Har-Gil (Shraga Har-Gil): Old love never rusts. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2959-3 , p. 21 ( online at Google Books ).
11. ↑ Biographical information on Rosa Frankenfelder with her sister Selma (Sara) Frank . The daughter Sophie married the communist lawyer Werner Fischl , her second marriage in 1941 to the refugee Richard Meyer, later Richard Morton.
12. ↑ Šerāgā Har-Gil, also Shraga Har-Gil, Schraga Har-Gil or Sheraga Har-Gil (born in 1926 as Paul Philipp Freudenberger, died in 2009), was the nephew of Felix Freudenberger. He emigrated to Palestine in 1935 and worked as a journalist and author in later Israel.