Ferdinand Vieth

Ferdinand Nikolaus Justus Vieth (born November 18, 1869 in Altona , † November 26, 1946 in Hamburg ) was a German cooperative functionary and parliamentarian .

Live and act

Ferdinand Vieth was the son of a master basket maker who was impoverished due to the start-up crisis . Vieth received schooling at a free school and a half-day school in Altona and then completed vocational training in his father's company. In the company, which had been based in Wandsbek since 1887 , he worked as a journeyman until he was 30. While working, he attended the workers' education association in Barmbek and the state vocational school in Hamburg, where he mostly acquired commercial knowledge. When the woodworkers' association was founded, he became a member and after a short time took over the chairmanship of the trade union cartel in Wandsbek.

Working in the cooperatives

With the support of Heinrich Kaufmann , in 1899 Vieth was one of the founding members of the consumer, construction and savings association “Production” , for which he initially worked as a cashier, salesman and branch manager. In 1902 he moved to Bremerhaven , where he managed the business of the consumer and savings association “Unterweser”. Vieth organized the association based on the model of the Hamburg cooperative. Under his leadership the association developed into a district organization with high turnover and many members. The cooperative was the first of its kind in Germany. In 1909 Vieth was elected secretary of the Association of Northwest German Consumer Associations. He then went back to Hamburg, where he also sat on the supervisory board of "Production" from 1911 to 1930, from 1922 as its deputy chairman. From 1907 to 1933 he also held a position on the board of directors of the large-scale purchasing company Deutscher Consumvereine .

Since Vieth led the auditing association with the largest number of members within the ZdK and worked in numerous important organs of the so-called "Hamburg direction", he had a decisive influence on the content and organization of North German consumer associations. This included the founding and mergers of associations and many personnel decisions. He campaigned for an expansion of the branch network and increased in-house production. He also tried to create economically efficient district cooperatives. Vieth recognized early on that new opportunities for participation were necessary due to the size of the organizations and the rapidly growing number of members. Together with Heinrich Kaufmann, he established so-called representative committees, which were based on the model of the Bremerhaven consumer association. In this way, elected representative bodies were created that linked the association members and the management. Vieth thus gave the impetus for a development that entered general legislation in 1922.

Vieth was regarded as an unyielding representative of cooperative principles. He called for neutrality with regard to party politics and religious affiliation and in particular pursued the need-to-meet principle , which restricted the sale of products to members. This attitude took on a special meaning during a fundamental debate in the 1920s: Due to a special tax that was valid from 1911 to 1920, the consumer association "Produktion" outsourced the sale of goods to a trading company under private law that did not restrict sales to association members. In 1929, Vieth reintegrated most of the retail trade into the consumer association, accompanied by strong resistance.

Vieth always attached great importance to the fact that the consumer association grew cautiously, financed with equity and at the same time with sufficiently large assets. After the association's board had passed a major project with the construction of a representative headquarters in 1928, there was a sometimes personally led power struggle with the chairman of the board, Max Mendel , which he lost. Vieth was re-elected in the 1930 supervisory board elections, but refused to accept the office.

During the time of National Socialism , the health impaired Vieth saw several problems facing the club. After National Socialist attacks on the consumer cooperatives such as the occupation of the trade union building at Besenbinderhof and the self-alignment , for which Vieth was also responsible, he decided to retire on July 1, 1933. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that in the last five months of his professional life decisive decisions had been made through the admission of National Socialists to the executive boards, in which Vieth himself actively participated. After British troops occupied Hamburg in early May 1945, Vieth and former union leaders saved the property of the consumer association, which had been part of the German Labor Front since 1941 . He played a decisive role in the rebuilding of the club after the end of the Second World War .

Ferdinand Vieth died in November 1946 due to an accident.

Working in politics

Vieth belonged to the SPD and served as mayor in Geestemünde from 1905 to 1908 . From 1924 to 1931 he belonged to the Hamburg citizenship , in which he did not, however, appear significantly. During and shortly after the end of the First World War , the consumer cooperatives partially took control of food supply and prices. Vieth took over the chairmanship of two war committees for consumer interests . He was also a member of several consumer and economic advisory boards in Hamburg and the surrounding area and briefly took on extensive semi-governmental tasks. For these activities he received the Cross of Merit for War Aid in 1920 .

Honor

• A fishing steamer owned by the Gemeinwirtschaftliche Hochseefischerei GmbH, Bremerhaven, (GHG) was named Ferdinand Vieth . It was built in 1948 at the Flender shipyard in Lübeck .

Publications

Vieth wrote numerous publications, some of which were of fundamental importance. He dealt with current issues of the cooperatives and documented the history of the consumer cooperatives, especially the local history of Hamburg. In 1934 he wrote two articles in which he made positive comments about National Socialism. These unpublished manuscripts cast a certain twilight on his actions during this period.

Ferdinand Vieth's estate can now be found in the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg .

literature

• Hartmut Bickelmann: Vieth, Ferdinand . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 357-359 .
• Hartmut Bickelmann, Heinrich Kaufmann Foundation (ed.): Ferdinand Vieth 1869 - 1946. Life and work of a member of the cooperative in personal reports and contributions . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2018, ISBN 978-3-7460-5925-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hartmut Bickelmann : Ferdinand Vieth - Multifunctional of the consumer cooperative movement p. 203 in: Ferdinand Vieth 1869-1946, published by the Heinrich Kaufmann Foundation, Norderstedt 2018, ISBN 978-3-7460-5925-9