Friedrich Westmeyer
Johann Friedrich Westmeyer (born January 14, 1873 in Osnabrück , † November 14, 1917 in Rethel , military hospital on the Western Front ; also Fritz Westmeyer ) was a socialist politician and trade unionist.
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Life
Apprenticeship and wandering years
Friedrich Westmeyer was born the second youngest of five children. He was the son of a bricklayer who died when Friedrich was still a child. The mother had to provide the main part of the family's livelihood first as a laundress, then as a nurse. In Osnabrück he attended the community school and then completed an apprenticeship from July 1, 1888 to June 27, 1892 with the chimney sweep Brandt in Bielefeld, the chief master of the guild. From 1892 to the beginning of 1895 he found work as a journeyman in the same company. This was followed by his journey as a chimney sweep journeyman from 1895 through West Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy. He sustained a serious injury to his right thigh; for this reason he could no longer practice the profession he had learned. After completing his wanderings, he stayed in Fürth and trained in woodworking machines.
Trade unionist, editor, politician
He quickly became a member of the Association of Woodworkers and their functionary. From around 1895 he was active in the Social Democratic Party. He led a large woodworker strike, for which he was reprimanded. From 1896–1902 F. Westmeyer was first a reporter, then in 1898 (local) editor of the Franconian Daily Mail of the local SPD newspaper in Nuremberg. His marriage to Amalie Oefner (1900 marriage) had two children: Amalie (born 1900) and Hans (1902). He held his next position as editor from 1902–1904 at the Volkswillen in Hanover. During that time, he was sentenced to three months in prison for blasphemy. In 1904 F. Westmeyer took part in the International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam.
Party organizer
When Westmeyer came to Stuttgart in 1905, Clara Zetkin had already gathered a group of Marxists around her. So he could build on fellow campaigners who also approved of Rosa Luxemburg's strategic and tactical line . His closer political friends included Clara Zetkin, the siblings Berta and August Thalheimer , Arthur Crispien , Käte and Hermann Duncker , Helene and Edwin Hoernle , Hertha Gordon (who later became Hertha Walcher, married to Jacob Walcher), Fritz Rück , Jacob Walcher . From 1905 to the end of 1910 he worked as an editor for the Swabian Tagwacht in Stuttgart. There he repeatedly drew attention to the poor housing in Stuttgart. As an illustration, he used the circumstances of the housing in the Schellenturm . In 1905, his time in Hanover resulted in a three-month prison sentence, which he had to serve in Hechingen . In 1906 Westmeyer was elected chairman of the Social Democratic Party - District Association Heslach . For his party he ran for the Reichstag in 1907 and took part as a delegate at the party congress in Nuremberg in 1908. 1908–1914 he was chairman of the Social Democratic Association in Stuttgart (1912 2nd chairman). Thanks to his initiative, the Waldheim Sillenbuch was built in 1909 . In 1910 he was delegated to the party congress in Magdeburg.
Fight for the day watch
As a "leftist" he was a member of the press commission of the Swabian Tagwacht in 1911 . Westmeyer, who was a staunch opponent of the truce policy , was dismissed from the editorial office of the Swabian Tagwacht at the end of 1910 . The other most important editors, however, remained true to their Marxist line. A long struggle began between the left, who spoke for the majority of the Stuttgart party and the numerous industrial cities, and the right-wing state executive under Wilhelm Keil. Jakob Walcher was added to the editorial team. The battle for the most important party newspaper in the southwest intensified at the beginning of the First World War . The state executive made the youngest editor Walcher sole responsibility. But since he remained an anti-militarist and the editors could not defeat all regulations and censorship measures, the state executive appointed Wilhelm Keil as editor-in-chief at the beginning of November ; the three editors on the left, Jakob Walcher, Arthur Crispien and Edwin Hoernle, were fired. Similarly, all party newspapers in the German Reich with left-wing anti-militarist tendencies were brought into line. Friedrich Westmeyer began to publish his own newspaper ( Social Democrat ). In 1912 he was a delegate at the social democratic party congress in Chemnitz and in the same year worked as an employee - (full-time) secretary - of the Stuttgart district association. From 1912 to 1917 he was a member of the Württemberg state parliament . In 1913 he took part in the party congress in Jena and was one of the organizers of the Bosch strike in Stuttgart that same year . In January 1915, his position as party secretary was terminated. To secure his material existence, he opened a cigar shop in Stuttgart's Marienstrasse in February 1915. The cigar shop quickly developed into an information and communication meeting point for the left in Stuttgart.
Youth and educational work
He saw the party as a place of political education, from which a common understanding of basic questions of the labor movement and a common will for political action should gradually develop. Accordingly, he worked as a trend-setting theorist and organizer. In addition to extensive publication activities, he was also the editor of the Stuttgart newsletter Der Sozialdemokrat (January to March 1915 and August / September (?) 1916 to March 1917). He saw one of his tasks in the youth workers and workers who had been neglected by the party for various reasons. Therefore he campaigned for the creation of independent workers' youth organizations. The initiators of the free youth organization founded in Stuttgart in 1906 include Westmeyer, Käte Duncker, Jacob Walcher, Helene Hörnle, Wilhelm Schwab, Max Hammer, Clara Zetkin, Otto Krille, Karl Lüpnitz, Fritz Rück and Albert Kern. Westmeyer, together with Clara Zetkin, Bertha Thalheimer and Helene Hörnle and other comrades, also tried to organize the women workers who later played an important role in anti-war work when the men who belonged to the anti-militarist left had to go to war. He made sure that the female party members received the equality and other party literature published by Clara Zetkin for free.
Active anti-militarism
The disputes over support for World War I led to the breakup of the party. The Stuttgart Left criticized in September 1914 that Karl Liebknecht had approved the war credits in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914 out of party discipline. Liebknecht accepted the criticism and was the only one to vote against the loans in December 1914. Westmeyer he was expelled from the social democratic parliamentary group in June 1915. With Franz Engelhardt and Ferdinand Hoschka he formed his own parliamentary group, the "Socialist Association". On March 19, 1916, Westmeyer took part in the Reich Conference of the International Group, later called the Spartakusbund , in Berlin. Like many others on the Stuttgart Left, he was drafted into the military. In March 1917 he received his position order. As late as August 1917, Westmeyer was sworn in as a candidate for a replacement by the Stuttgart city council as a member of the municipal council. He died on November 14, 1917 in Rethel, near Reims in a military hospital on the western front.
Works
- The misery in Stuttgart . Publishing house of the Social Democratic Association, Stuttgart 1911.
- The Stuttgart Waldheim. Stuttgart 1911.
- M. Richter: The woman in industry and agriculture in Württemberg . Vorwärts bookstore, Berlin 1913 (review)
literature
- G. Adler: Westmeyer, Johann Friedrich . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 479-480.
- Jacob Walcher (1958): Fritz Westmeyer . In: SAPMO-BA (unpublished book manuscript).
- Günther Sauter: Friedrich Westmeyer . In: Bundschuh 2. Jg., 1977, No. 5, ZDB -ID 131516-x , pp. 20-21.
- Theodor Bergmann , Wolfgang Haible, Galina Iwanowa: Friedrich Westmeyer. From social democracy to the Spartakusbund. A political biography . VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-87975-719-4 .
- Theodor Bergmann: Friedrich Westmeyer in the Stuttgart labor movement . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement . Issue 2 1998, p. 100 ff.
- Frank Raberg : Biographical handbook of the Württemberg state parliament members 1815-1933 . On behalf of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-016604-2 , p. 1009 .
- Werner Skrentny, Rolf Schwenker, Sybille Weitz, Ulrich Weitz: Stuttgart on foot . Silberburg-Verlag, Tübingen 2008. ISBN 978-3-87407-813-9 .
- Westmeyer, Friedrich . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Skrentny, p. 66
- ^ Therese Schlesinger : Social Democratic Women's Library, edited by the executive committee of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Berlin, Buchhandlung Vorwärts Paul Singer GmbH Luise Zietz , Women and the political struggle. 40 S. Price 30 Pf. Klara Weyl , The women and community politics. 32 p. 30 pfennigs. Luise Zietz, Child Labor, Child Protection and Child Protection Commission. 63 pages. Price 50 pfennigs. M. Richter, Women in Industry and Agriculture in Württemberg. 38 pages. Price 40 pfennigs. Mathilde Wurm , The Women and the Prussian Parliament. 32 p. 30 pfennigs. Adolf Braun, The workers and the trade unions. 36 p. 40 pfennigs . In: The new time. Weekly of the German Social Democracy . 32.1913-1914, Volume 1 (1914), Issue 13, pp. 487-490. Digitized
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Westmeyer, Friedrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Westmeyer, Johann Friedrich (full name); Westmeyer, Fritz; Richter, M. (pseudonym) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German socialist politician and trade unionist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 14, 1873 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Osnabrück |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 14, 1917 |
| Place of death | Rethel |