Fritz Tarnow

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Fritz Tarnow (born April 13, 1880 in Rehme (today Bad Oeynhausen ), † October 23, 1951 in Bad Orb ) was an important social democrat , trade unionist and member of the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic .

Life

Tarnow was the son of a carpenter, attended elementary school in Hanover, where he also trained as a carpenter. Then he went hiking in Germany. Tarnow worked as a carpenter until 1906. From 1901 to 1906 he was also a board member of the branches of the independent woodworkers' association in Rastatt , Oos, Bonn and Berlin . He then worked until 1908 as a literary-statistical assistant in the main office of the woodworkers' association in Stuttgart . In 1909 he graduated from the central party school of the SPD in Berlin. From 1909 to 1919 Tarnow was then head of the literary office (press office) in the main office of the woodworkers' association in Berlin. He was also a community representative from 1909 to 1915, a member of the district council and a member of the board of the SPD in Berlin-Friedrichshagen .

During the First World War he was a participant in the war. He was badly wounded and suffered permanent damage. During the November Revolution , Tarnow was a member of the workers 'and soldiers' council in Brandenburg an der Havel . Then he was first secretary and from 1920 to 1933 chairman of the woodworkers' association and was one of the leading persons on the federal executive board of the General German Trade Union Federation . As such, in the second half of the 1920s he was one of the most important proponents of Fritz Naphtali's concept of economic democracy . He was also temporarily secretary of the International Association of Woodworkers. In addition, he was a member of the Provisional Reich Economic Council from 1920 to 1933 . He also held a leading position in the Society for Social Reform and in the German Werkbund . In 1928 he entered the Reichstag for the SPD. In terms of wage policy , he coined the term purchasing power theory . He is also credited with the word from the SPD that the doctor at the bedside of capitalism must be. The speech at the Leipzig party congress in 1931 read in detail: “When the patient gasps, the masses outside go hungry. If we know this and know a medicine, even if we are not convinced that it cures the patient, but at least relieves his rattle, (...) then we give him the medicine and do not think so much at the moment that we are heirs after all and expect its end soon. "

At the same party congress, after discussing his proposals, he argued against voting on a motion by Erich Maeder who called for the gold standard to be lifted .

After Adolf Hitler's “ seizure of power ” in 1933 and the smashing of the trade unions, he was arrested on May 2nd. Hans Staudinger , until Prussia impact of government under Franz von Papen State Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Commerce, succeeded with a Köpenickiade the release of Tarnow Gestapo prison. Staudinger posed as a high Prussian official and ordered Tarnow's dismissal. He left the country immediately after his release. Initially Tarnow fled to the Netherlands , from there to Denmark and finally to Sweden . There he tried to rebuild the unions in exile.

In the Beck / Goerdeler shadow cabinet , Tarnow was planned as Reich Economics Minister in the event of a successful coup d'état following the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 .

In 1946 he returned to West Germany and was secretary of the trade union federation of Württemberg and Baden in 1946 and 1947 . From 1947 to 1949 he was secretary of the trade union council of the Bizone and the Trizone . In 1949 he retired, but was still a lecturer at the Academy of Labor in Frankfurt am Main . There is Fritz-Tarnow-Straße and a DGB federal school in Oberursel was named after him. His descendants now live in the vicinity of Frankfurt, Mainz, England, Denmark and Spain.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Bispinck, Thorsten Schulten: The concept of the expansive wage policy - a critical appraisal from today's perspective. In: Reinhard Bispinck, Thorsten Schulten, Peeter Raane (eds.): Economic democracy and expansive wage policy. On the topicality of Viktor Agartz . VSA-Verlag Hamburg 2008
  2. ↑ Quoted from "Institute for Financial Services"
  3. ↑ Minutes of the SPD party congress in 1931, page 85 (PDF; 23.9 MB)
  4. ^ Hans Staudinger: Economic Policy in the Weimar State. Memoirs of a political official in the Reich and in Prussia 1889 to 1934 , ed. and introduced by Hagen Schulze (Archive for Social History, Supplement 10), Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1982, p. 87. ISBN 3-87831-361-6 .
personal data
SURNAME Tarnow, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdR, trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Rehme
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1951
Place of death Bad Orb