Franz Wieber

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Franz Wieber

Franz Wieber (born March 24, 1858 in Hünhan , † April 30, 1933 in Duisburg ) was a Christian trade union leader and German politician ( center ) as well as a member of the Reichstag .

Live and act

Franz Wieber was born as the youngest of seven siblings in the small village of Hünhan in Hesse . His parents were small farmers who ran a weaving mill as a sideline. He left his homeland, which could not offer him any job opportunities, in order to find a job in the growing industrial area on the Ruhr .

The working conditions there were inhumane. In his memoirs he accuses: “Excessive working hours, unpaid overtime, Sunday work, low wages, lack of occupational safety, black lists, no social security, political incapacitation. Workers were led to the ballot box and monitored in columns during the elections. Hundreds were thrown into the street because they had not voted as some masters of big industry and mining demanded. The Socialist Law set the labor movement (including the Christian one) back by a decade. Capitalism benefited from this. "

In 1887, Franz Wieber founded the “Christian Association of Former and Related Professional Members of Duisburg”. He went to work energetically. In 1889 he organized a four-week strike . Wieber and his friends risked their jobs and ended up on the "black list", they found no work for four months. Three of his colleagues were even sentenced to several months in prison.

In 1890 the “Central Association of Former” was founded in Weimar . This should be religiously and politically strictly neutral, but the dispute between Christian and socialist worldview was not long in coming. The specialist body of the Central Association printed articles in which the biblical account of creation was described as a “gross hoax” and Christianity as an “offshoot of Buddhism”. The idea of ​​a uniform, ideologically neutral and tolerant organization had also proven to be impracticable here.

After these and other differences of opinion, the Duisburg Formerverein left the central association and founded the Christian Metalworkers Association on October 15, 1899 . Franz Wieber was elected chairman. He held this office until his death in 1933 and thus no longer had to experience the forced dissolution of his union by the National Socialists . At the same time he was a member of the board of the general association of Christian trade unions in Germany, from 1911 to 1918 a member of the provincial committee of the Rhenish Center Party, since 1919 member of the board of the Rhenish Center Party, from 1931 to 1933 a member of the board of the Prussian Center Party and from 1909 a city councilor in Duisburg.

In 1928 Franz Wieber received honorary citizenship of the city of Duisburg. He was a member of the Weimar National Assembly for the Catholic Center Party and of the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 . , P. 558.
  2. ^ Wieber, Georg: The Duisburg honorary citizen Franz Wieber . In: Duisburger Forschungen, Vol. 14. Duisburg: Walter Braun Verlag, 1970, pp. 137–152
  3. ↑ Short biography in: Haunfelder, Bernd  : Reichstag delegate of the German Center Party 1871-1933. Biographical manual and historical photographs . Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1999, p. 370f (photo documents on the history of parliamentarism and political parties, volume 4)

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personal data
SURNAME Wieber, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade union leader and politician (center), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Hünhan
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1933
Place of death Duisburg