Friedrich Stegen

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Half-length portrait of Friedrich Stegen by a still unidentified artist

Friedrich Stegen (full name: Carl Heinrich Friedrich Stegen , * 1815 or 1818 in Linden ; † April 3, 1875 in Alfeld an der Leine ) was a German worker functional , printer and in 1849 co-founder of the North German workers' association . At the time of the beginning of industrialization in the Kingdom of Hanover , Stegen campaigned politically for the emancipation of the workers , less through radical revolutions than through the education of workers and reforms .

The entrepreneur Friedrich Stegen is considered an important personality of the Hanoverian social democracy and founded a forerunner of the Alfelder Zeitung . Often in conflicts with the old authorities of the 19th century, the socially committed man was finally elected mayor of the city of Alfeld .

Life

Inscription on the board at the "House of the German Workers' Education Association Eintracht", later " Union House Eintracht" at Neumarkt 5b in Zurich

Born at the beginning of the Kingdom of Hanover, there is currently "no reliable information about Friedrich Stegen's childhood, school days and youth [otherwise ...]." After training as a printer, Stegen went on a journey as a journeyman and worked in Gießen , Stuttgart , and Wiesbaden and in Switzerland in Zurich , where he became a member of the Zurich Reading Association, later the German Workers' Education Association, Eintracht .

After his return to the royal seat of Hanover, where after the end of the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover, King Ernst August I reigned with the gusto of an absolutist divine grace , Friedrich Stegen found a job and took the initiative to found it on August 23, 1845, following the Zurich model of the Hanoverian "book printer reading club", "which is seen as the nucleus of the printer's union ".

A good two years later, the March Revolution began in Hanover, the Hanoverian Workers' Association emerged from the book printer reading association on April 1, 1848 , and its members elected Stegen as their president.

On June 11, 1848, Stegen traveled to Mainz for the first national printer's meeting to represent the interests of his Hanover colleagues as a delegate .

About two weeks later, Stegen, who was friends with the much more radical Ludwig Stechan , was arrested on June 26, 1848 at the instigation of the conservative-liberal Interior Minister Johann Carl Bertram Stüve for " high treason " on the grounds that he had had " diatribes " printed. "At least that is what the rulers called printing works that they considered subversive." According to the investigations of the Royal Hanover General Police Director Karl Wermuth and his Prussian counterpart Wilhelm Stieber , the alleged works came from the pen of the businessman Friedrich Conrad Theodor Wiechel . Before the Hanover city court, however, Stegen was able to make credible that he did not know the content of the incriminated writings.

After the North German Workers 'Association was founded in Berlin in August and September 1848 , Stegen was elected vice-president of the "General Workers' Association" in 1849. As a deputy of the workers' association in Hanover , Stegen traveled to Bremen in 1850 to represent the interests of the Hanoverian colleagues there from May 28 to 29, 1850. Between the end of 1850 and the end of 1851 the central office of the North German Workers' Association was also relocated from Bremen to Hanover.

In the meantime, Friedrich Stegen had co-founded the "Lindener Workers' Association" in his birthplace Linden on September 19, 1849 - was also elected President in 1850 by its members. With the founding of this further workers' association, Stegen wanted to "tackle non-political tendencies in the Hanover association". The association only existed until 1852. In the same year, Stegen left Hanover and moved to Alfeld .

At his new place of residence, Friedrich Stegen became the owner of a book printer, with the help of which he first published the "Wochen- und Werbungblatt für die Stadt Alfeld, Elze and Gronau " as a sample number on December 23, 1852 , which was the first edition of the Weekly newspaper appeared under the heading Lower Saxony People's Newspaper .

In 1855 Friedrich Stegen bought the Lührig house in Alfeld in Kurz Strasse and married Caroline Witte from Grünenplan , who gave birth to her son Robert in the same year and Georg Stegen three years later in 1858 . Also from 1855 and until 1860 Friedrich Stegen received several warnings and fines for his weekly and advertising magazine, which often served as a mouthpiece for the political opposition and is considered to be the forerunner of the later Alfelder Zeitung , among other things for "offensive attack on Christianity " . In 1859 the magazine was even temporarily banned.

In the year of the proclamation of the German Empire , in which the "Hanover Workers' Association" celebrated its foundation festival in 1871, the co-founder Friedrich Stegen was also present in Hanover at the celebrations in Hanover.

In the following founding years , Stegens Zeitung appeared three times a week for the first time from 1874. After he died of pneumonia on April 3 the following year, the guests of the 30th foundation festival of the Hanoverian workers' association dedicated an "honorable obituary " to him in the same year 1875 .

Friedrich Stegen was often active in associations and had a decisive influence on life in Alfeld in the second half of the 19th century, not only as the mayor. "He had succeeded in consolidating the reputation of his newspaper and building up a circle of subscribers that ensured the continued existence of the paper," which was Alfeld's first local newspaper , "even after his death." It expanded its area of ​​distribution and appeared from 1876 first under the new name Kreiszeitung for the offices and cities of Alfeld, Elze u. Gronau as well as the neighboring villages in Brunswick and from 1883 as the Lower Saxony People's Newspaper, General Gazette for the offices, Alfeld, Gronau, Calenberg , Lauenstein , Eschershausen and Greene .

literature

  • Wermuth / [Wilhelm] Stieber : The Communist Conspiracies of the Nineteenth Century. In the official order for the use of the police authorities of all German federal states on the basis of the relevant judicial and police acts [...] , AW Hayn, Berlin 1853f. (Reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1969 and Verlag Klaus Guhl, Berlin 1976);
    • [...] Part two. Containing: The personal details of the persons appearing in the Communist investigations ; Pp. 125, 138; Digitized via Google books
  • Günter Scheel: The beginnings of the labor movement in the Kingdom of Hanover. Between integration and emancipation . In: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte , Vol. 48, [1976], pp. 17–70
  • Walter Buschmann : Linden trees. History of an industrial city in the 19th century (= sources and representations on the history of Lower Saxony , vol. 92), also dissertation 1979 at the University of Hanover, Hildesheim: Lax, 1981, ISBN 3-7848-3492-2 , p. 114ff.
  • Dirk Riesener : Police and Political Culture in the 19th Century. The Hanover Police Department and the political public in the Kingdom of Hanover (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen , vol. 35) (= sources and studies on the general history of Lower Saxony in modern times , vol. 15), also dissertation in 1996 at the University of Hanover , Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5841-8 , passim
  • Klaus Mlynek : STEGEN, Carl Heinrich Friedrich. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 346f .; partly online via Google books
  • Claudia Exner-Höbel, Ina Gravenkamp, ​​Thomas Grotjahn: Alfeld in the industrial age, contributions to the history of a small town in Lower Saxony, ed. von der Stadt Alfeld, Alfeld: Stadt Alfeld, 2008, ISBN 3000242120 , and ISBN 9783000242120 , pp. 38–54.
  • Klaus Mlynek: Stegen, Carl Heinrich Friedrich. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 600.

Web links

Commons : Carl Heinrich Friedrich Stegen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Deviating from this, the “Alfelder Wochenblatt” is called; compare for example Klaus Mlynek: STEGEN ... (see literature )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Compare the information under the GND number of the German National Library
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Lothar Pollähne: Carl Heinrich Friedrich Stegen (see under the section Web Links )
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Klaus Mlynek: STEGEN, ... (see literature)
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Matthias Quintel (responsible): Stegen printing works ... (see under the section Web Links )
  5. ↑ a b c Wermuth, Stieber: The Communist Conspiracies ... (see literature)
  6. ↑ For the naming, see the board at the house of the German Workers' Education Association in Eintracht at today's address Neumarkt 5b
  7. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Ernst August, King of Hanover. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , s. 163f.
  8. ^ Klaus Mlynek: March Revolution 1848/49. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 421f.
  9. ^ Wiechel, ... , in Wermuth, Stieber: The Communist Conspiracies ... (see literature), p. 138; on-line
  10. ↑ a b N.N .: Chronicle of the city on the alfeld.de page , last accessed on November 16, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Stegen, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stegen, Carl Heinrich Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social democratic newspaper publisher, worker functionary and mayor
DATE OF BIRTH 1815 or 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover-Linden
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1875
Place of death Alfeld (leash)