German Labor Delegation
The German Labor Delegation (GLD) was a social democratically oriented organization of German emigrants in the USA at the time of the National Socialist rule in Germany.
development
With the support of the Jewish Labor Committee , the Social Democratic Federation and the American Federation of Labor , the GLD was founded on March 10, 1939 in New York City . The aim was to establish contacts between the German social democratic emigrants and the American labor movement. Last but not least, in America she should try to find sources of financial support for the work of the SPD in exile ( Sopade ). The former Prussian Interior Minister Albert Grzesinski was elected as the first chairman . The later state minister in Schleswig-Holstein, Rudolf Katz , became secretary . The co-founders also include the former Lord Mayor of Altona Max Brauer , Hedwig Wachenheim , the co-founder of the Workers' Welfare Association , the Austrian Social Democrat Alfred Braunthal , Gerhart Seger , formerly a member of the Reichstag , and the economist Alfred Kähler . In the following period, Friedrich Stampfer , the former editor-in-chief of Vorwärts , the trade unionists Siegfried Aufhäuser , Erich Rinner and Wilhelm Sollmann were co-opted into the committee. In 1943 the chairmanship of the group passed to Brauer and Aufhäuser.
The GLD published the Neue Volkszeitung as a mouthpiece. The paper initially appeared as a daily newspaper and later as a weekly newspaper. The organization had few members. In the Weimar Republic they were mostly part of the right wing of the party. The group therefore spoke out against working with the KPD. However, their effectiveness was also limited by internal conflicts. This included the dispute over Grzesinski's participation in the Council for a Democratic Germany , which saw itself as a reservoir for all emigration including the KPD . In addition, it was hardly possible to actually raise donations. An office could only be maintained with the support of the Jewish Labor Committee. After all, in 1940 the committee helped to save several hundred endangered Social Democrats from arrest by the German security authorities and to get them out of France. The GLD also dealt with the drafting of plans to rebuild the free labor movement and to introduce democratic structures in a post-National Socialist Germany. Due to its size and its planning work, it is sometimes referred to by researchers as the “study society”.
literature
- Franz Osterroth , Dieter Schuster : Chronicle of the German social democracy. Vol. 2: From the beginning of the Weimar Republic to the end of the Second World War .; Verlag JH Dietz Nachf., Hannover 1963 p. 377, p. 391.
- Rainer Behring: Democratic foreign policy for Germany. The Foreign Policy Concepts of German Social Democrats in Exile 1933-1945 (Contributions to the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties), ed. from the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties , Vol. 117, Droste, Düsseldorf 1999, pp. 492-544, ISBN 3-7700-5218-8 .
- Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978- 3-86732-032-0 , pp. 346-383.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ For the JLC, see the website of this organization , (English), and the “Guide to the Jewish Labor Committee, Chicago Records 1952-1986” , (English).
- ↑ See the "Guide to the Social Democratic Federation of America Records 1933-1956" , (English).
- ^ Wolfram Werner: Emigrants in the Parliamentary Council , in: Exil und Neuordnung. Contributions to constitutional developments in Germany after 1945 , ed. by Claus-Dieter Krohn and Martin Schumacher (documents and texts, edited by the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties , Volume 6, edited in cooperation with the Herbert and Elsbeth Weichmann Foundation in Hamburg), p . 161–174, here p. 163.