Georg von Vollmar

Georg von Vollmar

Georg von Vollmar , actually Georg Carl Joseph Heinrich Ritter von Vollmar auf Veltheim , (born March 7, 1850 in Munich , †  June 30, 1922 in Urfeld am Walchensee , Haus Soiensaß, Upper Bavaria ) was a German politician and the first chairman of the Bavarian SPD .

Life

Vollmar came from a noble family of officials. His parents - married since 1849 - were Anton von Vollmar (1824–1868), who worked as a secret registrar in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, and Karoline, nee Loibl (1824–1903; her father Georg Loibl; head of the district tax office in Miesbach). The spouses lived separately as early as 1857; From 1860 onwards, the father insisted on the divorce of the apparently broken marriage. The son Georg attended the Latin school and boarding school of the Benedictines of St. Stephan in Augsburg from 1861–1865 , where he received a strictly Catholic education. He was unable to attend the St. Stephan grammar school because of bad grades in the Latin school (overall grade IV, the worst grade at the time). Following the example of his uncle Joseph von Vollmar (Colonel), he initially aspired to a military career in 1865 and joined the Bavarian army as a volunteer and cadet . During the war against Prussia in 1866 he was promoted to lieutenant . He deserted in 1867 ("release as punishment") and, without the knowledge of his parents, signed up in 1868 as a volunteer in the papal army of Pius IX. in Rome. At the instigation of his father, at the end of 1868 (he had signed his commitment by 1872 and made himself two years older) he was transferred to the Bavarian embassy in Rome and sent back to Munich. For the Franco-Prussian War he was denied re-entry into the Bavarian army because of his desertion . As a war telegraph officer in the service of the field railway, he nevertheless took part in the campaign against France. Under unexplained circumstances, he was shot in the left foot at Blois in January 1871 and returned as an invalid. His high military relatives (an uncle by marriage was General von Brodesser) achieved his rehabilitation and the alimentation with a high disability pension (1,087 gulden p. A.). In addition to working as a journalist and writer, he dealt with politics, philosophy and literature (living with his mother Karoline Loibl in Munich and Miesbach; his father died unexpectedly at the end of 1868). In 1877 he became editor of the Dresdner Volksbote through social democratic contacts . Because of lese majeste sentenced to ten months in prison, he was serving this sentence in the prison Zwickau .

From 1879 to 1880, at the suggestion of August Bebel, he became editor-in-chief of the central organ, Der Sozialdemokrat , which appeared in Zurich during the period of the Socialist Law . In 1881 he had to give up this activity because of his radical revolutionary ideas, with which he came more and more into opposition to social democratic members of the Reichstag. After a short stay in Paris, he entered the Reichstag in 1881 for the Saxon constituency of Mittweida . Vollmar was a member of the Reichstag from 1881 to 1887 and 1890 to 1918, from 1890 for the constituency of Munich II. He was also a member of the Saxon Landtag from 1883 to 1889 and a member of the Bavarian Landtag from 1893 to 1918.

Julia Kjellberg

Villa Soiensaß

Since 1884 he had contact with the extremely wealthy Swedish industrialist daughter Julia Kjellberg, whom he married in 1885. Their son Sigfried died in 1887, a few months old. The rich wife made it possible for the former left-wing radical politician to have a comfortable life and had a luxurious villa with a park built in Urfeld am Walchensee, which both moved into at the turn of 1889/90 and lived in until their deaths. From then on Vollmar approached reformism / revisionism and maintained close contacts with exponents of the right wing of the party such as Eduard David , Wolfgang Heine , Adolf Müller and Albert Südekum . In the Munich pub Eldorado on July 1 and 6, 1891, in two speeches, he tried to justify his political change in order to bring about economic and social improvements on the basis of the existing state and social order. With this he developed more and more to the antipode to August Bebel .

He was instrumental in building a Bavarian state association of the SPD, the first state party conference of which took place on June 26, 1892 in Regensburg. There, Vollmar and G. Löwenstein submitted a report on the importance and activities of the Bavarian Landtag , which was published together with the Landtag election program for the elections in 1893 in a publication Die Socialdemokratie und die Wahlen zum Bayerischen Landtag (Nuremberg 1892). In this election program was u. a. raised the following demand: “Care of science and art, unlimited freedom of their teaching and practice. Creation of a school law based on the following principles: Free of charge for school lessons and teaching materials, payment of the costs by the state, improvement of the elementary school, in particular by extending school hours and replacing the useless holiday school with effective continuing education. Food for school children in need at public expense. Relief of teachers from church service and improvement of their salaries; secular school inspection. ”From 1894 to 1918 he was state chairman of the Bavarian SPD . In 1903 he agreed to work in an imperial government. At the beginning of the First World War he was a vehement advocate of the truce policy and until the end of the war an intolerant supporter of a victory peace.

In 1918 he resigned from his mandate for health reasons.

His body was buried in the forest cemetery in Munich / Alter Teil in grave no. 90-W-11.

The foundation of the Bavarian SPD for political education, the Georg-von-Vollmar-Akademie in Schloss Aspenstein in Kochel am See and the highest award of the Bavarian SPD, the Georg-von-Vollmar-Medal, are named after Vollmar.

plant

• About the next tasks of the German social democracy. Two speeches, given on June 1st and July 6th, 1891 in the “Eldorado” Munich . M. Ernst, Munich 1891. MDZ Reader
• Speeches and writings on reform policy (= International Library. Vol. 92). Selected and introduced by Willy Albrecht. JHW Dietz, Berlin et al. 1977, ISBN 3-8012-1092-8 .

Literature about Vollmar

• Georg v. Vollmar . In: Werner Blumenberg : Fighters for Freedom . To. JHW Dietz, Berlin and Hanover 1959, pp. 80–87.
• Paul Kampffmeyer : Georg von Vollmar. G. Birk & Co., Munich 1930.
• Georg von Vollmar Papers (1846–) 1857–1922 (–1929). (PDF; 468 kB) International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam 2012.
• Reinhard Jansen: Georg von Vollmar. A political biography (= contributions to the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Vol. 13, ISSN  0522-6643 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1958.
• Robert Hofmann: Georg von Vollmar - a red knight without fear and blame ?: Critique of the literature and sources on the biography of the social democratic politician. createspace, 2018, ISBN 978-1-71890-046-2 .

Web links

Commons : Georg von Vollmar  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Georg von Vollmar in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Georg von Vollmar  in the German Digital Library
• Georg von Vollmar in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Homepage of the Georg von Vollmar Academy
• Article with photos from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on the 80th anniversary of Vollmar's death

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Familienbogen 9/3296 City Archives Munich
2. ^ Yearbooks of the archives of St. Stephan, Augsburg
3. ^ Military files Georg von Vollmar, Main State Archives Munich
4. ↑ foglio di Matricolare Georg von Vollmar, Staatl. Archive Rome
5. ^ Letter from Uncle Joseph v. May 27, 1873, Vollmar Papers