Franz Neumann (politician)

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Franz Neumann (at the lectern), 1948

Franz Neumann (born August 14, 1904 in Berlin ; † October 9, 1974 there ) was chairman of the Berlin SPD and a member of the Bundestag .

biography

education and profession

Berlin memorial plaque on Moorweg 10, in Berlin-Tegel

Neumann grew up as one of four children of a working-class family in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain in poor conditions. After attending primary school, Neumann completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith in 1918. In 1919 he joined the metalworkers' association and after just one year became chairman of Berlin's youth metalworkers. In accordance with the principles of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ), he too relied on the emancipatory power of education and knowledge, which is why he attended the Tinz community college in Gera and took courses at the German University of Politics in Berlin, e.g. B. "Labor Law". In 1926 he passed the welfare exam and then worked in this profession until 1933. At the beginning of the 1930s , at a time when the crisis was worsening, he founded and directed the “workshops for unemployed young people” in Prenzlauer Berg . From this position he was after the takeover of the National Socialists dismissed.

Badly mistreated by the Gestapo in January 1934 , he was brought to trial before the Supreme Court in mid-July of that year for the “treasonable undertaking of having undertaken to maintain the organizational cohesion of the SPD”. The written justification for the verdict (one and a half years in prison) stated that Neumann had, among other things, informed his comrades in the " Freie Scholle " settlement about conditions and people in the Oranienburg concentration camp . The usual police supervision followed the prison term. After his release, he went back to work as a metal worker.

From 1970 until his death in 1974 he was chairman of the Berliner Arbeiterwohlfahrt .

Political party

As early as 1918 Neumann became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth . In 1920 he joined the SPD, for whose principles he was soon to be strongly committed. Despite the surveillance, he managed to maintain contact with like-minded people during the Nazi era.

Lettering in the Berlin subway station Franz-Neumann-Platz

In the first year after the war, a struggle for civil liberties and the independence of the SPD began in Berlin. Many social democrats and communists, including the then Berlin SPD chairman Otto Grotewohl , advocated the founding of a joint party of social democrats, socialists and communists after the experience of the defeat of the divided German workers' movement against the National Socialists. At the end of 1945 the KPD, led by Walter Ulbricht , began its campaign for the unification of the KPD and SPD to form the SED . Franz Neumann opposed this plan because he feared that the communists wanted to impose their Leninist and Stalinist ideology on the social democrats . In consultation with Kurt Schumacher, Neumann organized a ballot of the Berlin Social Democrats in March 1946 on the question of unification with the Communists. As spokesman and tribune of the Berlin opponents of a socialist unity party, he became known beyond the ranks of his own party friends. In the eastern sector of the city, the Soviet military administration forbade the vote, even the American military governor Lucius D. Clay initially opposed the vote and hoped for an agreement in the Allied Control Council . A large majority of the 33,000 organized social democrats in the western sectors of Berlin rejected unification, but advocated cooperation between social democrats and communists in the reconstruction of Germany. The vote was of great importance for German post-war history, because the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD in the Eastern Zone was the first step in building the later SED dictatorship in the GDR . In the 1950s, his relationship with the governing mayors Ernst Reuter and Otto Suhr was not always free of tension. When Franz Neumann objected to Willy Brandt 's election to the office of governing mayor after Suhr's death , he lost approval in the ranks of the Berlin SPD and in public. Neumann knew nothing of the high payments that US departments had transferred to Willy Brandt's group in 1950, so that they would win the intra-party struggle. The payments were made as a fee for advertising inserts in a Berlin daily newspaper from funds from the Marshall Plan .

From 1946 to 1958 Neumann was chairman of the Berlin SPD.

MP

Local elections were due in March 1933, with Neumann initially occupying seventh place on the social democratic list for the election of the Reinickendorf district parliament, but when the National Socialists came to power and the associated terror against the labor movement, his comrades-in-arms became resigned and Neumann was the top candidate of his party in Reinickendorf . The new rulers prevented him from exercising his mandate.

In 1946 Neumann was elected a member of the city ​​council (later the House of Representatives ). He held this mandate until March 3, 1960.

Neumann was also a member of the German Bundestag from 1949 to 1969 as a member elected by the Berlin House of Representatives . On December 5, 1952, he was expelled from the hall for the remainder of the session for improper conduct by Bundestag President Hermann Ehlers . In 1966 Neumann voted against the election of Kurt Georg Kiesinger as Chancellor of the grand coalition; as with all MPs from West Berlin , his vote was not counted. As a member of the Federal Assembly with voting rights , he voted against the re-election of Federal President Heinrich Lübke in 1964 .

Grave of Franz Neumann, on the 40th anniversary of his death, flower arrangements of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and the SPD Berlin were deposited (Photo: 2014)

Honors

Franz Neumann was buried in the Tegel cemetery "Am Nordgraben" and was given an honorary grave .

literature

  • The President of the Berlin House of Representatives (Ed.): Franz Neumann - worker child, social democrat, member of parliament - commemorative event of the Berlin House of Representatives and Senate on the 100th birthday. Berlin 2005.
  • Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 2: N-Z. Attachment. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 599.
  • Werner Breunig, Siegfried Heimann , Andreas Herbst : Biographical Handbook of Berlin City Councilors and Members of Parliament 1946–1963 (=  series of publications by the Berlin State Archives . Volume 14 ). Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9803303-4-3 , p. 200-201 (331 pages).
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , pp. 191-203. (Short biography).
  • Ditmar Staffelt : The reconstruction of the Berlin social democracy in 1945/46 and the question of unity - a contribution to the post-war history of the lower and middle organizational structures of the SPD. Verlag Peter Lang 1986, ISBN 978-3-8204-9176-0 , p. 432.
  • Franz Neumann , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 49/1974 of November 25, 1974, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)
  • Norbert Podewin , Lutz Heuer : Franz Neumann (1904–1974): Front man in Berlin during the Cold War. Trafo, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89626-926-3 (= Small Series Biographien BzG , Volume 23).
  • Walther G. Oschilewski , Arno Scholz : Franz Neumann. A fighter for the freedom of Berlin . Arani, Berlin 1954

Web links

Commons : Franz Neumann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Outpost of Freedom: A German-American Network's Campaign to bring Cold War Democracy to West Berlin, 1933-66 , Scott Krause , University of Chapel Hill, 2016, p. 47
  2. ^ FAZ of June 10, 2016
  3. ↑ Information from the AdsD
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdA, MdB
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 1974
Place of death Berlin