Georg Jungclas

Georg Max Walter "Schorsch" Jungclas (born February 22, 1902 in Halberstadt , † September 11, 1975 in Cologne ) was a Trotskyist politician and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Youth and Weimar Republic

He grew up in a social democratic working-class family that moved to Hamburg in 1904, trained as a bookseller and in 1915 joined the free-thinker youth . In 1916 Jungclas became a member of the Free Youth Organization of Hamburg-Altona , which rejected the SPD's civil peace policy and which later became part of the Free Socialist Youth . In 1919 he joined the KPD and belonged to the small minority of the Hamburg party that did not join the KAPD in 1920 . After completing his apprenticeship as a bookseller, Jungclas worked as a worker at Blohm & Voss and took part in the March campaign in 1921 . After its failure, Jungclas worked in Thuringia as a traveling teacher for the KPD until 1922 and held courses on the history of the workers' movement. This was followed by his work in the construction of the Barkenhoff children's home in Worpswede , founded by the Red Aid of Germany (RHD) , before Jungclas became a member of the KPD's military apparatus in 1923 and took part in the Hamburg uprising . Until 1926 Jungclas worked in Hamburg in the publishing bookstore Carl Hoym of the German Comintern publishing house, whose managing director at the time was Karl Retzlaw . After his time at Carl Hoym, he worked in other bookshops.

Jungclas belonged to the left wing of the KPD and in September 1926 signed the letter of the 700 in support of the Russian Left Opposition around Trotsky, although an English website claims that Jungclas still had serious concerns about the Soviet dissident in 1926. It was only when he was expelled from the party in 1928 that he joined Trotsky. With Hugo Urbahns and Karl Jahnke , he was one of the better-known opposition activists in Hamburg and joined the Lenin League founded in 1928 . In September of the same year he helped to publicize the Wittorf affair , as a result of which Ernst Thälmann was temporarily deposed as chairman of the KPD. With the Trotskyist minority of the Lenin League , he then founded the Left Opposition of the KPD (LO) in 1930 . While in contact with Trotsky's son Lev Lvovich Sedov , he met Trotsky personally in Copenhagen in 1932.

The time of fascism

In 1933, shortly after the handover of power to the NSDAP , Jungclas emigrated to Copenhagen , where he built up a group in exile for the organization renamed IKD and played an important role in the union of the Danish Trotskyists. In 1940, after the occupation of Denmark by the Wehrmacht , Jungclas, who had previously kept himself afloat by doing odd jobs, had to go into hiding; During the occupation he was instrumental in the production of various underground newspapers. In September 1943 Jungclas and his Danish comrades took part in the rescue operation for the Danish Jews . Arrested by the Gestapo in May 1944, deported to Germany and imprisoned in the prisons in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel , Moabit and Bayreuth (there in a cell with Eugen Gerstenmaier ), Jungclas escaped an expected death sentence for high treason only by destroying the files at the Bombing of the People's Court ; In mid-April 1945 he was finally liberated by Allied soldiers.

Georg and Leni Jungclas burial site

Political activity in post-war Germany

After the liberation, Jungclas immediately began to rebuild the section of the Fourth International in Germany; from 1946 to 1967 he was their full-time secretary, and until the end of the sixties he was the defining figure of the organization alongside Willy Boepple and Jakob Moneta . Jungclas was also involved in the reorganization of the Association of International Communists of Germany (IKD) and was one of the initiators of the short-lived UAPD in 1951 , which expelled its Trotskyist members in 1952. Jungclas then decided, together with the rest of the IKD, to go to work in the SPD, where he founded the Marxist working groups (MAK) and the journal Sozialistische Politik . He was also active in training with the falcons and the Jusos .

After the SPD separated from the SDS , Jungclas publicly showed solidarity with the SDS, left the SPD and joined the SDS-Fördergesellschaft, which put him in a minority position in the German section of the Fourth International. Due to his age and health, he gradually withdrew from practical political work from 1967 onwards. In 1969 he was involved in the open reconstitution of the German section of the Fourth International under the name GIM , and continued to be active as a journalist until his death in 1975.

Algeria solidarity

As a porter , Georg Jungclas was one of the most important German supporters of Algerian independence and worked closely with Michel Raptis . He was the senior of a Cologne group that was composed primarily of young workers ( workers' youth cartel ). On May 1, 1958, they made their first demonstrative appearance with an FLN flag sewn by Leni Jungclas and a banner with the words "Freedom for Algeria". It was one of the first public, pro-Algerian expressions of sympathy nationwide.

Another action by the group on November 26, 1958 on the occasion of a meeting between Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle in Bad Kreuznach was no less spectacular . Georg Jungclas, Helmut Schauer and Heinz "Micky" Beinert used this opportunity to penetrate the entourage of international press representatives with a VW Beetle decorated with the FLN flag , to whom Beinert was still trying to convince him and his companions shortly before he was arrested. was able to hand over Algerian leaflets on paper with the falcon's letterhead . After the intervention of Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, they were released from the subsequent brief detention .

Georg Jungclas was also the brain behind the information service published by Cologne's Algeria sympathizers, which appeared between September 1958 and April / May 1962 in a total of 23 issues under the name Free Algeria (FA) and contained largely translated articles from Algerian or French sources.

“Responsible until the beginning of 1959 was Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, who had risen to become SPD member of the Bundestag, then for a few issues the Cologne Young Socialist chairman Willi Glomb and until the end the Cologne SPD city councilor Willy Pertz . The actual "maker" of the A4 format magazine was Georg Jungclas [..]. The edition of the booklets fluctuated between 3000 and 6000 pieces. The magazine thus only reached a small audience; However, this consisted largely of “multipliers” in companies and unions as well as in left-wing social democracy. In the narrower range of Algeria sympathizers, it served as a means of developing their own positions and arguments. "

- Claus Leggewie : Kofferträger (article) , p. 173

Another action that Junglas carried out together with Michel Raptis in February 1960 was not aimed at the general public. Together they withdrew 200 million old Francs (over one million DM) at a branch of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. The money was intended to finance the work of the FLN in Germany. The mistrust of the bank employees in the face of such an unusual cash withdrawal was great, but Jungclas and Raptis were able to leave the bank unmolested with a suitcase full of money.

On December 18, 2004, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Algerian War of Liberation, Leni Jungclas received an award presented by the Algerian ambassador for her husband, who had since passed away, in recognition of her support for the Algerian cause. On this occasion, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, Gert von Paczensky , Heinz Beinert and Jakob Moneta were also honored.

Leni Jungclas

Helene "Leni" Jungclas (born August 22, 1917 in Cologne, † June 28, 2009 in Cologne) came from a social democratic working class family in Cologne. Her parents were the aforementioned Willi Perz and his wife Maria.

Leni was active in the free thinker youth since 1929 and learned the trade of milliner (hat maker). After her Vaster joined the SAPD in 1932 , she joined the Socialist Youth Association of Germany affiliated with the party , in whose Cologne group Jakob Moneta and Hans Mayer were also active.

After 1933 Leni took part in the illegal work of the SAPD. When her resistance group was exposed, she remained unmolested because her arrested comrades did not reveal their names.

After the end of the Second World War, Leni Perz took part in building the Falken in Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine . In 1947 she joined a Marxist group in the Cologne SPD, which was composed of former SAP members, left-wing social democrats and communists excluded from the KPD. The Marxist Working Group (MAK) later emerged from this group . In 1950 she met Georg Jungclas, who had come to Cologne, with whom she soon lived. The couple did not marry until 1962, however. Leni, who passed her master hat maker examination in 1954 and temporarily ran several shops in Cologne, found Trotskyism through Jungclas. Her shop on Wilhelmsplatz in Cologne-Nippes , which was the only one that could exist until the early 1960s, was of great importance for the livelihood of herself and that of her partner, and it was also an important and inconspicuous starting point during her work in Algeria.

Georg Jungclas was accompanied by his wife on the trip to pick up the FLN money from Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, and Georg and Leni Jungclas also took part in many other political actions. Jakob Moneta paid tribute to this in a speech on the 80th birthday of Leni Jungclas.

“Schorsch [carried] the small German Trotskyist movement on his shoulders, so to speak. However, it is forgotten to add that it was Leni who carried Schorsch on her shoulders. "

- Jakob Moneta : quoted from Wilfried Dubois and Helmut Wendler: Obituary: Leni Jungclas (1917–2009)

After the death of her husband, Leni Jungclas moved to the Westerwald , where she bought a house that was to be expanded as a training center for members and sympathizers of the Fourth International . Due to political disputes within the potential user groups and due to her advanced age, Leni had to give up the house and lived the last two and a half years of her life in a senior citizens 'home run by the workers' welfare in Cologne. She was buried with her husband in Cologne's southern cemetery.

Works

• "The Tragedy of the German Proletariat". In: Ernest Mandel (ed.): Fifty Years of World Revolution (1917–1967): an international symposium. Pathfinder, New York 1968, pp. 107-145.
• The forms of the capitalist state. Frankfurt / Main 1971
• From the history of the German section of the Fourth International. isp, Hamburg 1972.
• On the history of the May demonstration. isp, Frankfurt / Main 1976.

literature

• From the proletarian freethinker youth in World War I to the left in the 1970s: Georg Jungclas (1902–1975). A political documentary. With a foreword by Ernest Mandel, Hamburg: Junius 1980 ISBN 3-88506-106-6 .
• Claus Leggewie: porter. The Algeria Project of the Left in Adenauer-Germany , Rotbuch Verlag, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88022-286-X (quoted as: Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger (book) ).
• Claus Leggewie: Luggage carrier: The Algeria project in the 50s and 60s and the origins of "internationalism" in the Federal Republic , in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Vol. 25, No. 2 (June 1984), pp. 169–187 (cited as: Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger (essay) ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Jungclas in the catalog of the German National Library
• Georg Jungclas , in: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 . .
• Text about the underground work of the Danish Trotskyists 1940-45 (English)
• Jakob Moneta: Memories of Algeria Solidarity: A Porter , SoZ - Socialist Newspaper , February 2005, page 20
• Wilfried Dubois and Helmut Wendler: Obituary: Leni Jungclas (1917–2009) , SoZ - Sozialistische Zeitung , September 2009, page 23

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Death certificate No. 2754 from September 15, 1975, registry office Cologne West. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved May 7, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Unless other sources are named below, the presentation of Jungclas' biography follows the article Georg Jungclas , in: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : Deutsche Kommunisten. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
3. ^ Karl Retzlaw , in: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 . . The publications of this publisher are in the holdings of the German Historical Museum .
4. ↑ As a source is mentioned there: Georg Jungclas: From the proletarian freethinker youth in World War I to the left of the seventies , p. 48
5. ↑ Compare in particular the chapter Secret Meetings in the Hat Shop. Georg Jungclas - Trotskyists for the FLN , in: Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger , p. 104 ff.
6. ↑ Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger (book) , pp. 110–111
7. ↑ Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger (book) , pp. 111-113
8. ↑ There are different ways of writing the Willy Pertz mentioned by Leggewie; he is also often mentioned as a Perz .
9. ↑ Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger (book) , pp. 104-105
10. ↑ Jakob Moneta: Memories of the Algerian solidarity: A porter
11. ↑ The following statements are based on the obituary by Wilfried Dubois and Helmut Wendler listed under web links , unless a different source is named .
12. ↑ Leggewie pays tribute to this with its chapter heading: Secret Meetings in the Hat Shop. Georg Jungclas - Trotskyists for the FLN , in: Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger (book) , p. 104
13. ↑ Claus Leggewie: Kofferträger (book) , p. 104