Free Workers Union of Germany

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FAUD delegate at the congress in Erfurt in 1922

The Free Workers Union Germany (FAUD) was created on September 15, 1919 by renaming from the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVDG). Until its dissolution in 1933, it was the most important organization of German anarcho-syndicalism . The Free Workers' Union has been its successor organization since 1977.

prehistory

Localists

In the time of the Socialist Laws (1878–1890) the freedom of association of the Social Democrats was abolished and they were only allowed to organize at the local level. This also applied to the trade unions. During these years a system of union groups organized at the local level developed, which were networked with one another through a mostly semi-legally operating middleman principle. These relatively small union groups had become a defining factor in the union struggle by 1890.

With the end of the socialist laws and the reconstitution of the SPD , attempts were made again to build social democratic mass unions. A considerable number of the small “free trade unions” opposed these centralistic efforts. They tried to install themselves on the grassroots level on which they had worked up to now.

When it became clear that the SPD, as the most important revolutionary force at the time, would campaign for the mass unions, and at the Erfurt Party Congress in 1891, the FVdG was founded in 1897 . In contrast to the centralists, this trend was initially perceived as localists , later they gradually got the proper name syndicalists.

The young (social democracy)

At the same time, the so-called “boys” were excluded from the SPD. Like the localists in the trade unions, these had tried to organize party work on the basis of the principles necessary between 1878 and 1890. In addition, they rejected a purely parliamentary practice of the party. However, a centralistic structure prevailed in the SPD and after some power struggles - one year after the socialist laws were repealed - they were expelled from the party at the Erfurt party congress in 1891.

In the same year the “boys” founded the Association of Independent Socialists (VUS). Two trends emerged there: an anti-parliamentary social-democratic and an anarchist one. In 1893 the VUS split up. The anarchist current turned among other things to syndicalism , the communist anarchism of Kropotkin .

Merging

From the intersection of these two currents, which gradually influenced each other, a specific German variant of anarchosyndicalism developed. This juxtaposed the trade union and the political, and ultimately also the cultural, level. Other forms of anarcho-syndicalism that developed out of the union milieu placed the union struggle in the foreground.

In 1919 a congress of the FVdG and some free trade unions adopted the " Declaration of Principles of Syndicalism", written by Rudolf Rocker , as a basic program and renamed itself FAUD / AS (for anarcho-syndicalism) in September.

“The syndicalists, clearly aware of the above stated facts, are principled opponents of any monopoly economy. They strive for the socialization of the soil, the tools of work, the raw materials and all social wealth; the reorganization of the entire economic life on the basis of free, i.e. stateless communism, which is based on the motto: 'everyone according to their abilities, everyone according to their needs!' finds its expression. Proceeding from the recognition that socialism is ultimately a cultural question and as such can only be solved from the bottom up through the creative activity of the people, the syndicalists reject any means of so-called nationalization that only leads to the worst form of exploitation, to state capitalism , but can never lead to socialism. "

- Rudolf Rocker : "The Declaration of Principles of Syndicalism", lecture at the founding congress of FAUD, December 27-30, 1919 Berlin. Publishing house Der Syndikalist , Berlin 1920. (FAU Zehdenik July 1990).

history

The heyday of the union was between 1919 and 1923. A large number of revolutionary-minded workers joined the FAUD, which was able to successfully present itself as an alternative to other unions. In Kassel, Willi Paul was one of the FAUD founders. At the time of the Kapp Putsch , the FAUD put together a Red Ruhr Army to fight both against the political “reaction” and for the continuation of the revolution that was practically over in 1919.

The strongholds of the union were the Ruhr area and in particular the Mengede office at that time - a district of today's Dortmund. One of the first battalions of the Red Ruhr Army was recruited from the “Freie Arbeiter Union-Mengede”, a local branch of FAUD with over 1,000 members, mainly miners.

At that time, FAUD and its sub-organizations organized numerous strikes. At the same time she built up a rich and large publication activity. Among other things, she ran her own weekly newspaper, Der Syndikalist, from 1918 to 1932, a daily newspaper for the Rhineland with “The Creation” from August to December 1921 and, from the mid / late twenties, an internationally respected monthly “Die Internationale” Theoretical organ. In addition, there were local and subject-related FAUD bodies.

At Christmas 1922 the International Workers' Association (IAA) was founded on the initiative of the union at a congress in Berlin . This is intended as a new conception of the so-called First International and includes various anarcho-syndicalist groups, especially in Europe and America. The IAA was deliberately founded as a counterpart to the Communist Red Trade Union International (RGI) in order to curb the influence of the Communist Party on the international workforce.

During the time of its existence, the union had to cope with a number of divisions (e.g. towards the FAUD-Gelsenkirchen direction, which was merged into the Union of Manual and Brain Workers in 1921 ) and important activists transferred to other groups. From its peak of 150,000 members it sank to some 10,000 by the mid-1920s, and in 1932 it still had around 4,300 members. Nevertheless, it remained a decisive political and, above all, culturally active force in some areas and cities, for example in the unemployed and free thinkers movement and the Guild of Freedom Book Friends (GfB).

When almost all political groups formed their own combat units in the late 1920s, the so-called “Black Crowds” also developed alongside the FAUD / AS, the majority of which were young people, who saw themselves as primarily anti-fascist. Nevertheless, especially in Silesia, local and factory groups of the FAUD formed from a few black groups.

Another sub-organization of FAUD was the Syndicalist Women's Association (SFB), with a membership of 800 to 1000 at maximum times. Their protagonists were called Milly Witkop-Rocker and Hertha Barwich. The SFB published the “Frauenbund” as an organ, which appeared as a supplement in the “Syndikalist”. A youth organization closely related to FAUD was the Syndicalist-Anarchist Youth of Germany (SAJD), founded in 1920, with its magazine Young Anarchists .

Influenced by Gustav Landauer 's idea of a settlement, some settlement projects arose in the vicinity of FAUD, such as Freie Erde near Düsseldorf or the Bakuninhütte near Meiningen in southern Thuringia.

In 1933 the union after a long preparation broke shortly before the arrival in power of the Nazis officially up and tried to organize illegal new. There are different interpretations of the success of this approach. The office of the FAUD business commission in Berlin was stormed and closed at the beginning of the National Socialist takeover. The now illegal business commission was moved to Erfurt via Kassel. Some living and working projects of the FAUD existed for some time, until at least 1937 anarcho-syndicalist groups can be identified in the resistance against Hitler, for example the youth groups of the black crowd .

In 1937, some anarcho-syndicalists from the FAUD fought on the side of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in the Spanish Civil War . In Catalonia, the group "German Anarcho-Syndicalists" (DAS) was founded alongside the CNT, in which Augustin Souchy and Helmut Rüdiger , among others, participated. This group was given executive powers over German National Socialists in Spain. Likewise, some well-known persons of the anarcho-syndicalist movement from Germany escaped via Dutch escape routes to the USA and other American states.

Post-history

After the Second World War there were attempts to revive the FAUD. At Pentecost 1947, the Federation of Liberal Socialists (FFS) was founded by former FAUD members. The FFS did not see itself as a new establishment of the FAUD, but was a section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers' Association. Ultimately, the longest-lived attempt is the Free Workers' Union (FAU) , which was founded in 1977 after some preparation and is still in existence.

In addition, the International Workers' Association co-founded by FAUD in 1922 still exists , which has member organizations primarily in South America and Europe.

literature

  • Gerhard Aigte: The development of the revolutionary syndicalist labor movement in Germany in the war and post-war period (1918–1929) , Bremen 2005.
  • F. Barwich, E. Gerlach, Arthur Lehning , R. Rocker, Helmut Rüdiger : Workers self-administration council syndicalism . Karin Kramer Verlag , Berlin 1971. ISBN 3-87956-090-0 .
  • Franz Barwich / Study Commission of the Berlin Workers' Exchange: "This is syndicalism". The labor exchanges of syndicalism. With texts by Franz Gampe, Fritz Kater , Augustin Souchy a . a. and an introduction by Helge Döhring, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 978-3-936049-38-1
  • Rudolf Berner: The Invisible Front. Report on illegal work in Germany (1937) , Libertad Verlag , Berlin 1997.
  • Hans Manfred Bock : Syndicalism and Left Communism from 1918 to 1923 - a contribution to the social and intellectual history of the early Weimar Republic ; First edition 1969, updated new edition 1993, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, ISBN 3-534-12005-1
  • Vera Bianchi: Feminism in proletarian practice: The "Syndikalistische Frauenbund" (1920 to 1933) and the "Mujeres Libres" (1936 to 1939) , in progress - Movement - History , Issue I / 2018, pp. 27–44.
  • Helge Döhring: Anarcho-Syndicalism in Germany 1933-1945, Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 3-89657-062-5
  • Helge Döhring: Anarcho-Syndicalism in East Prussia ! 750 years of Königsberg not without anarcho-syndicalists! , Bremen 2006. (as PDF; 4.2 MB)
  • Helge Döhring: So that spring will come in Bavaria! The syndicalist labor movement in southern Bavaria from 1914 to 1933 , Verlag Edition AV , Lich / Hessen. ISBN 978-3-936049-84-8
  • Helge Döhring: The press of the syndicalist labor movement in Germany 1918 to 1933 , Edition Syfo 1, Moers 2010, ISBN 978-3-9810846-8-9 .
  • Helge Döhring: Syndicalism in the 'Ländle'. The FAUD in Württemberg 1918 to 1933 . Verlag Edition AV, Lich / Hessen 2006. ISBN 3-936049-59-9 .
  • Helge Döhring: On the history of the syndicalist labor movement in Baden. A collection of texts (Südbaden, Freiburg and Heidelberg), Bremen 2007 [1]
  • FAU-Bremen (ed.): Syndicalism - History and Perspectives , Bremen 2005.
  • FAU-Bremen (ed.): Syndicalism - History and Perspectives. Supplementary volume , Bremen 2006.
  • Free Workers Union - IAA / (collective of authors): Anarcho-Syndicalism in Germany: On the history of the “ Free Association of German Trade Unions ” (1897-1919) and the “Free Workers Union of Germany” (1919–1939) . Munich: self-published, 1986
  • IWK Heft 4, Dec. 1986, 22nd year: (International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement): therein: Cornelia Regin: “From anarchism of feeling to anarchism of conviction. A contribution to the history and ideology of the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist youth movement in the Weimar Republic. ”(Page 471 ff.) Historical Commission of Berlin, Berlin 1986. ISSN  0046-8428 .
  • IWK Heft 3, Sept. 1989, 25th year: (International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement) therein: Hans Manfred Bock: 'Anarchosyndikalismus in Deutschland. An interim balance (p. 293ff.); Wolfgang Haug : 'A flame goes out. The FAUD (Anarcho-Syndicalists) from 1932 to 1937 '. (P. 359ff.); Cornelia Regin: 'Housewife and Revolution. The women's policy of the anarcho-syndicalists in the Weimar Republic '. (P. 379ff.) Berlin 1989.
  • Ulrich Klan , Dieter Nelles: “There's still a flame alive”: Rhenish anarcho-syndicalists in the Weimar Republic and under fascism . Grafenau-Döffingen anyway publishing house , 1990. 380 pages. ISBN 3-922209-72-6
  • Rudolf Rocker : Declaration of Principles of Syndicalism , undated Berlin (1920). (Reprint at Syndikat-A-Medienvertrieb)
  • Hartmut Rübner : Freedom and Bread: The Free Workers Union of Germany: A Study on the History of Anarcho-Syndicalism . Berlin, Cologne: Libertad, 1994. 320 pages. ISBN 3-922226-21-3 .
  • Hartmut Rübner: FAUD , in: Hans-Jürgen Degen (ed.), Lexikon der Anarchie / Encyclopaedia of Anarchy / Lexique de l 'anarchie, Bösdorf 1993 ff., Verlag Schwarzer Nachtschatten, loose leaf edition, Erg.-Lfg. 1 (1994), 8 pp.
  • Hartmut Rübner: Left radical trade union alternatives. Anarcho-syndicalism in Northern Germany from its beginnings to illegalization after 1933 , in: Archive for the history of resistance and work, 14 (1996), pp. 66-108, Germinal-Verlag Bochum
  • R. Theissen / P. Walter / J. Wilhelms: Anarcho-syndicalist resistance on the Rhine and Ruhr . (Anti-authoritarian labor movement in the resistance, vol. January) Meppen 1980.
  • Marcel van der Linden / Wayne Thorpe: The rise and fall of revolutionary syndicalism , in: "1999" magazine for social history of the 20th and 21st centuries. 3/1990 Hamburg. Pp. 9–38 and as a separate print / brochure 1992
  • Angela Vogel: The German anarcho-syndicalism. Genesis and theory of a forgotten movement , Berlin 1977
  • Axel Ulrich: On the resistance of the Free Workers' Union of Germany against National Socialism. Your conspiratorial network in Hesse and in the Mannheim / Ludwigshafen area, in: Nassauische Annalen. Yearbook of the Society for Nassau antiquity and historical research. Vol. 99. Wiesbaden 1988, pp. 153-171.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FAU.de: Imprint. Retrieved March 23, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Cf. Vera Bianchi: Feminism in proletarian practice: The "Syndikalistische Frauenbund" (1920 to 1933) and the "Mujeres Libres" (1936 to 1939) , in progress - Movement - History , Issue I / 2018, pp. 27-44 .