Fritz Lamm

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fritz Lamm (born June 30, 1911 in Stettin , † March 15, 1977 in Stuttgart ; pseudonyms Rudolf Ketzer and Thomas Müntzer ) was a German socialist and board member of the Association of Friends of Nature .

Life

1911 to 1933: youth in Germany

Lamm was born the son of Jewish merchants. From 1917 he attended the Bismarck secondary school in Stettin , which he graduated from primary school after 12 years . Lamm initially worked in his father's business, which was soon closed in 1929/30. Afterwards he worked as a volunteer at the social democratic magazine Stettiner Volksbote .

Lamm had been a member of the German-Jewish traveling association of comrades in Stettin since April 1920 . “It was not so much parental home or school but rather the Association of Comrades that shaped his political development and laid the foundations for his political interest; This organization set the course for his life. ”From the beginning of 1927 to mid-March 1929 he was head of the Stettiner Kameraden-Gruppe and, under the influence of Max Fürst , came into ideal proximity to the black crowd that was forced by them . When the black heap was excluded from the association of comrades on Pentecost 1927 , Lamm stayed with the comrades .

In the internal disputes, Lamm increasingly turned to the socialist wing of his comrades and left the association at the end of 1930. His increasingly Marxist consciousness led him away from the youth movement and towards the organizations of the labor movement. In the spring of 1930 Lamm became a member of the SPD , the SAJ and the Friends of Nature ; In 1931 he joined the Central Employees' Association , a socialist-oriented trade union.

In 1931, however, Fritz Lamm was expelled from the SPD twice. One reason for this was his simultaneous membership of the German Peace Society (DFG). Lamm then became a founding member of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD), later a member of its local leadership in Stettin and a member of the Socialist Youth Association of Germany (SJVD).

1933 to 1948: Constantly on the run

After the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, Fritz Lamm was initially taken into " protective custody " for five days . Another arrest took place on May 3rd. On January 2, 1934, Lamm was sentenced to 2 years and 3 months imprisonment before the 4th criminal senate of the Reichsgericht in Leipzig for “preparing for high treason” - producing and distributing illegal writings. Lamm was serving his sentence in Naugard Prison . When he was released from custody at the end of October 1935, he was immediately placed under police supervision. Nevertheless, on January 14, 1936, he managed to escape to Stuttgart and from there to Switzerland. Lamm was then arrested by the Swiss authorities and deported to Austria, from where he managed to escape to Czechoslovakia after six weeks .

Lamm arrived in Paris in mid-August 1938 and worked there for the Socialist Workers' Party , a. a. as secretary for Jacob Walcher and Fritz Sternberg . He was arrested again on September 1, 1939 and spent six weeks in the central prison in Paris until he was locked up in the Vernet d'Aridge camp in the Pyrenees as an "enemy alien". An attempt to escape in October 1940 failed. He only managed to escape in December 1941, and Lamm went into hiding in Marseille for three months .

With forged exit papers, Fritz Lamm managed to leave the country by ship via Casablanca to Havana in Cuba in March 1942 . There he was initially taken to the Tiscornia internment camp for six months . Until 1948 he worked as a partial diamond cutter and secretary of the union of foreign diamond cutters . He later also became a correspondent and accountant for an import business for Swiss watches. During his time in Cuba he maintained political relations with, among others, August Thalheimer , at whose funeral he gave the eulogy in 1948. He was also part of a group of German-speaking exiles in Havana for whom Ursula Krechel set a literary monument in her novel Landgericht . In addition to Fritz Lamm herself, she portrays Hans and Lisa Fittko , Emma Kann , Julius Deutsch and Boris Goldenberg in this context .

1948 to 1977: Back in Germany

After the end of the Second World War , Lamm tried to return to Germany several times without success. He was only able to enter the country in November 1948 and returned to Stuttgart, the starting point for his escape twelve years ago. Here he worked until his retirement as an employee at the Stuttgarter Zeitung, where he was also a member of the works council . He was politically active in the IG Druck und Papier and the SPD , which he had rejoined in 1948. In the latter and in the monthly magazine funken , which he published from 1950 until it was closed in 1959 , Lamm represented left-wing socialist positions, which is why he was expelled from the SPD after the Godesberg Program was passed and the SDS was excluded in 1963. The convinced atheist Lamm was also active in the Stuttgart local association of the German Freethinkers Association , which was headed by Susanne Leonhard .

Immediately after his return from exile, Lamm had rejoined the Friends of Nature , to which he had belonged before 1933. He was initially involved in their Württemberg regional association and was elected Federal Cultural Advisor in 1969. In disputes within the association, he campaigned for a socialist orientation of the association and against its appropriation by right-wing social democratic and non-political currents ("flower pickers"). He had a great influence on the youth of nature lovers in Germany , especially on their Hessian state association, which under its then state chairman Klaus Vack was one of the most important pillars of the Easter march movement . Lamm's path also led via the Friends of Nature and the Easter March Movement to the Socialist Bureau founded in 1969, of which he was a member. Together with Klaus Vack, he was also elected to the editorial team of the SDS theory journal Neue Critique in 1966 .

Lamm kept in close contact with like-minded people and political companions until his death. He died of a heart attack on March 15, 1977 .

Honors

A falcon educational institution in Furtwangen is named after Fritz Lamm .

In her novel Landgericht , Ursula Krechel Fritz Lamm sets a small literary monument.

Works

  • Exchange of letters with the SPD , 1962
  • The grand coalition and the next tasks of the left, 1967
  • as an employee: Socialist left after the war. Contributions from Fritz Lamm and others. Selection from the magazine “Funken” 1950–1959. As a contribution to a history of the SPD after 1945 and the development of the socialist movement until 1960. Verlag 2000, Offenbach 1978
  • Habana - New York - Habana. Letters from exiles. 1983, ISBN 3-922836-10-0 .

literature

  • Michael Benz: The uncomfortable warrior Fritz Lamm. Jew, left-wing socialist, emigrant 1911–1977. A political biography. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89861-660-7 .
  • Detlev Brunner: Fritz Lamm - Exile in Cuba. In: Helga Grebing , Christl Wickert (ed.): The “other” Germany in the resistance against National Socialism. Contributions to the political overcoming of the National Socialist dictatorship in exile and in the Third Reich. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1994, pp. 146-172, ISBN 3-88474-086-5 .
  • Marvin Chlada (ed.): Christ as a grandfather clock. Selected texts critical of religion and society / Fritz Lamm. Alibri, Aschaffenburg 1998, ISBN 3-932710-55-X .
  • Oskar Negt : Fritz Lamm. We know we are nothing more than sparks. In: ders .: Insubordinate contemporaries. Approaches and memories , Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1994, pp. 131-139, ISBN 3-596-12250-3 .
  • Ernst Rohm (Ed.): Fritz Lamm in memory. June 30, 1911 - March 15, 1977. Leisure and hiking publishing house, Stuttgart 1977.
  • Werner Schmidt: The homeless friend of the people. Sketched using the example of the socialist Fritz Lamm. In: Bernd Jürgen Warneken (Ed.): Volksfreunde. Historical variants of social engagement , Tübingen 2007.
  • Karljo Kreter : Socialists in the Adenauer period. The magazine "Funken". From the homeless left to the inner-party opposition in the SPD. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-87975-382-2 .
  • Gregor Kritidis: Left Socialist Opposition in the Adenauer Era. A contribution to the early history of the Federal Republic . Offizin, Hannover 2008, ISBN 978-3-930345-61-8 .
  • Ursula Krechel : Regional Court . Jung and Jung, Salzburg / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-99027-024-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Workers' voice . Winter 2007 (No. 154), p. 41.
  2. ↑ a b c Michael Benz: The uncomfortable warrior Fritz Lamm. Pp. 48-61. Benz devotes himself in detail to Lamm's relationship with his comrades
  3. ↑ Michael Benz: The uncomfortable warrior Fritz Lamm. P. 64.
  4. ↑ Ursula Krechel: Regional Court. P. 305 ff.
  5. ↑ Michael Benz: The uncomfortable warrior Fritz Lamm. P. 407 ff.
  6. ^ The other Germany after 1945 - as a pacifist, socialist and radical democrat in the Federal Republic of Germany - Klaus Vack. Political-biographical sketches and contributions , edited by the Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-88906-116-8 , p. 86
  7. ↑ There are editions without ISBN, with ISBN 3-88534-155-7 and ISBN 3-88535-186-2 . With 239 pages, printed as Mskr.
personal data
SURNAME Lamb, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heretic, Rudolf (pseudonym); Müntzer, Thomas (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German socialist
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1977
Place of death Stuttgart