Gustav Dahrendorf

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Gustav Dahrendorf

Gustav Dietrich Dahrendorf (* 8. February 1901 in Hamburg , † 30th October 1954 in Braunlage ) was a German politician of the SPD , consumer cooperative , co-founder of the Young Socialists , journalist , member of the Reichstag and the father of Ralf (1929-2009) and Frank Dahrendorf ( 1934-2013).

Education and political beginnings

The son of a worker attended elementary school in Hamburg. From 1915 to 1918 he completed a commercial apprenticeship. He then worked as a representative and office worker. He joined the socialist youth workers' movement in 1914 and joined the free trade unions ( ADGB ) in 1917 and became a member of the SPD in 1918. At the beginning of the twenties he joined the Hofgeismar group of young socialists.

Weimar Republic

In 1921, Dahrendorf played a leading role in drawing up the Kiel Principles , in which the Young Socialists demanded the affirmation of the Weimar Republic . He belonged to the Reich leadership of the Young Socialists, the State Executive Committee of Hamburg of the SPD and the Gauleitung of the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold . From 1924 to 1932 he held the office of chairman of the Hamburg youth committee. On October 3, 1924 he founded the Club of October 3 with Theodor Haubach , Egon Bandmann and Alfred Vagts (all SPD) as well as Hans Robinsohn , Ernst Strassmann and Heinrich Landahl (all DDP ) , the aim of which was to fight the enemies of the Weimar family together Republic and which should also ensure mutual support in political initiatives.

From 1924 to 1933 he worked as an editor (editor-in-chief) of the SPD organ Hamburger Echo . From 1927 to 1933 he was a member of the Hamburg Parliament (Landtag). In the Reichstag election of November 6, 1932 , he was elected to the Reichstag in constituency 34 (Hamburg) ( 7th electoral period : from November 1932 to March 1933). He was re-elected in the Reichstag election on March 5, 1933 ( 8th electoral term ).

time of the nationalsocialism

On March 24, 1933, he was taken into " protective custody " for a few days . In May 1933 he was arrested again and imprisoned for three months in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp .

After his release, he was initially unemployed. At the end of 1933 he moved to Berlin. From 1934 he worked first as a trainee, then as managing director of the Märkische Brikett-Handelsgesellschaft belonging to the Flick Group in Berlin , Nuremberg and Munich . During this time he was successfully active in the coal trade and used the business connections to maintain contacts with Nazi opponents. On August 25, 1936, he was listed with the Hamburg Gestapo under the "List of SPD Citizenship Representatives" and in the SD - "Directory of SPD Reichstag Members" ("1933 resident Hamburg 26, Lohof 24, now Berlin-Schmargendorf, Crampassplatz 4" ).

Dahrendorf was one of the social democratic functionaries who joined the Christian-social Kreisau circle , which was involved in the conspiracy of July 20, 1944 . In the resistance he had connections to Ernst Schneppenhorst and Josef Simon . In contrast to Julius Leber and Adolf Reichwein , he supported the politics of the Goerdeler Group. He was arrested on July 23, 1944 as part of the " Operation Grid ". An encrypted telegram dated July 20, 1944, to the commander of Wehrkreis X (Hamburg), from which it emerged that Dahrendorf was to be the civil agent of the Reich Government Goerdeler and acting mayor of Hamburg , fell into the hands of the Gestapo . He was imprisoned in the Gestapo prison in the Gestapo headquarters (Berlin). Together with Julius Leber and Adolf Reichwein he stood before Freisler 's People's Court . On October 20, 1944, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and loss of honor and imprisoned in Brandenburg-Goerden prison. The prisoners there were liberated by the Red Army on April 27, 1945 .

post war period

In 1945 he was a member of the central committee of the SPD and was one of the signatories of the action agreement of the central committee (ZK) of the KPD and the central committee of the SPD of June 19, 1945. Until February 1946 Dahrendorf was vice-president of the German central administration of the fuel industry for the Soviet zone of occupation in Berlin . In opposition to Otto Grotewohl , however, he became a staunch opponent of the forced unification of the SPD and KPD .

Therefore, on the advice of Ulrich Biel , he returned to Hamburg in February 1946. In July 1946 he was elected to the board of the consumer cooperative "Production". He won a mandate in the Hamburg citizenship and was sent to the Frankfurt Economic Council of the Bizone , where he held the office of Vice President from 1947 to 1949. For this reason, he resigned his citizenship mandate on August 18, 1947. In June 1948, as chairman of the Berlin committee in the bizone economic council, he negotiated the planned currency reform with social democratic Berlin city councilors .

He was deputy chairman of the supervisory board of the Braunschweigischen Kohlen-Bergwerke in Helmstedt , the Rheinische AG for lignite mining and briquette production in Cologne and a member of the foreign trade advisory board at the Federal Ministry of Economics .

On September 16, 1948 he was elected managing director of the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Konsumgenossenschaften mbH (GEG). In 1951, as part of the coordination, he also became chairman of the board of the Central Association of German Consumer Cooperatives in Hamburg. He was also chairman of the supervisory board of the Bank für Gemeinwirtschaft in Frankfurt am Main, of which the GEG was one of the founders and shareholders.

He made an active and decisive contribution to the fact that the consumer cooperatives became an important factor in the economic life of the young Federal Republic after the suppression by the Nazi regime . His commitment was to consumer protection , and so it was consequent that he played a key role in founding the consortium of consumer associations in 1953, of which he became the first chairman.

Gravestone Dahrendorf , Ohlsdorf cemetery

In Dahrendorf, a fixation of the consumer cooperative movement on its leaders, sometimes judged to be fatal, was reflected . In 1953, the year of the 50th anniversary of the consumer cooperative central association, all hope and confidence were concentrated on him: With Dahrendorf, a member of the cooperative at the head of the central association and the GEG, who brings with him all the intellectual and ethical prerequisites as an economic politician and economic organizer, is around today and to give the stamp of the German consumer cooperative movement tomorrow. Dahrendorf himself assumed and praised the democratic constitution in the consumer cooperative system without critically addressing the problems of the separation of apparatus and members.

After the Second World War, Dahrendorf acknowledged the political and denominational neutrality of the consumer cooperative movement. But he was firmly integrated into the SPD. He turned against a split in the cooperatives and demanded in the same breath that the path must be reversed. His demand was that there should be a big left-wing party in Germany that would be the political home of all trade unionists and cooperative members. The SPD should become the popular movement of the left across all unnatural borders.

Gustav Dahrendorf died suddenly in 1954 during a cure in Braunlage in the Harz Mountains. He was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, grid square Y 12 (south of Norderstrasse ).

Honors

The Grand Cross of Merit with a Star , awarded by the Federal President, was presented to Gustav Dahrendorf as Chairman of the Management Board of GEG and the Gustav Borgner Supervisory Board in 1954 by Hamburg Mayor Kurt Sieveking . At the ceremony on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Konsumgenossenschaften (GEG) , the mayor said that these awards would honor everyone who had given their energy to work for the benefit of consumers.

Afterlife

In his outstanding personal power, Dahrendorf paved the way for ties to socialist traditions in the consumer cooperative system, the DGB and the SPD. This linkage to “natural” conditions determined the strong evaluation of attitudes in the cooperative movement. One generation later, this attitude could no longer be taken for granted, so that the co op scandal broke out in the late 1980s , which marked the downfall of the great consumer cooperative tradition.

The Dahrendorfweg in Hamburg-Horn is named after him. In 1957, the Dahrendorfzeile near the Plötzensee execution site in Berlin was named after him.

The fishing steamer Gustav Dahrendorf from Gemeinwirtschaftliche Hochseefischerei GmbH, Bremerhaven (GHG), is named after him. It was built in 1954 at the Rickmers shipyard in Bremerhaven , had 640.29 GRT , held 5000 baskets , was 56.56 m long and 8.84 m wide. It was the first fishing vessel to have a controllable pitch propeller and was equipped with a fish meal system. In 1955 he went out on his first fishing trip under Captain Petersen.

literature

  • Erich Matthias:  Dahrendorf, Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 484 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Walther G. Oschilewski : Will and Action. The way of the German consumer cooperative movement. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Central Association of German Consumer Cooperatives. V. Verlaggesellschaft deutscher Konsumgenossenschaften mbH, Hamburg 1953.
  • Walther G. Oschilewski: Gustav Dahrendorf. A fighter life . Arani-Verlag, Berlin-Grunewald 1955.
  • P. Rosenzweig: Dahrendorf, Gustav Dietrich . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag , East Berlin 1970, pp. 79-80.
  • Martin Schumacher, Katharina Lübbe, Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : M. d. R. The members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation. 3. Edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Ditmar Staffelt : The Reconstruction of Berlin Social Democracy 1945/46 and the Unification Question - a contribution to the post-war history of the lower and middle organizational structures of the SPD , Verlag Peter Lang , Frankfurt 1986, ISBN 978-3-8204-9176-0 , page 428
  • Thanks to Gustav Dahrendorf: On the death of Gustav Dahrendorf. In: Sozialdemokratischer Pressedienst, H. 247, October 30, 1954, p. 7f. Digital ed .: Bonn: Library of the FES , 2001. (PDF)
  • Gustav Dahrendorf: Mayor of Hamburg on July 20, 1944 , published by the Heinrich Kaufmann Foundation, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-3616-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christof Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953. Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 2007, p. 68 f.
  2. ↑ German Resistance Memorial Center : biographical website
  3. ↑ Thanks to Gustav Dahrendorf: On the death of Gustav Dahrendorf. , P. 7
  4. ↑ Holger Martens : On the way into the resistance: The "Echo" assembly of the Hamburg SPD 1933 , page 25 ( online ). 1st edition 2010.
  5. ↑ Walther G. Oschilewski : Wille und Tat , p. 165
  6. ^ Gustav Dahrendorf: 1953: Planning and freedom in the economy. In: Gustav Dahrendorf: The human being as a measure of all things, speeches and writings on German politics 1945–1954 , Ed .: Ralf Dahrendorf. Publishing company of German consumer cooperatives, Hamburg 1955, p. 181
  7. ↑ Celebrity Graves
  8. ↑ Great Crosses of Merit ( Memento from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: Hamburger Abendblatt . No. 146, June 28, 1954, p. 7.
  9. ↑ Dahrendorfweg. ( Memento of October 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). On Stadtwiki Hamburg. Retrieved April 13, 2008.
  10. ↑ Dahrendorfzeile . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  11. ^ The GHG was a subsidiary of the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Konsumgenossenschaften mbH (GEG).
  12. ^ GHG fish steamer Gustav Dahrendorf ( memento from February 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved May 19, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Dahrendorf, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dahrendorf, Gustav Dietrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdHB, MdR, consumer cooperative and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1954
Place of death Braunlage