Hamburg uprising

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Ernst Thälmann, member of the Hamburg parliament and leader of the Hamburg uprising

The Hamburg uprising (also called Barmbeker uprising ) of 1923 was a revolt started by parts of the KPD in Hamburg on October 23, 1923. The aim was the armed overthrow in Germany based on the model of the Russian October Revolution in 1917. According to the ideas of the German October , the uprising should be the signal for a revolution in all of Central Europe and initiate the communist world revolution .

The attempt was futile from a military point of view and ended on the night of October 23rd to 24th. 24 police stations were stormed (17 in Hamburg, seven in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein ). 88 civilians and Hamburg police officers as well as six communist activists died during the uprising. A total of seven communist members of the citizenry were arrested on the night of October 24th and the following days. The MP Hugo Urbahns went into hiding and was only arrested on January 13 of the following year. It was not until a year later that the Communist MPs, editors and trade unionists involved were convicted. The MPs were Karl Rühl , Fritz Esser , Alfred Levy and Karl Köppen . Other politicians like Ernst Thälmann or Hans Kippenberger went into hiding. The exact details and the assessment of the effects of the uprising are still controversial today.

background

The background to the uprising was the crisis of the Weimar Republic . During this time there were numerous militant clashes. While the economic situation deteriorated rapidly in 1923, partly due to the hyperinflation approaching its climax , the KPD gained popularity. The occupation of the Ruhr had radicalized the political disputes further. In August, a nationwide strike took place against the incumbent Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno . End of September, the imposed national government the state of emergency over the Republic. On October 1, the Black Reichswehr putsch in Küstrin . On October 13, the Reichstag passed an enabling law that, according to the initiator Gustav Stresemann , should enable a legal dictatorship . In Hamburg, a demonstration of several thousand unemployed stormed the ban mile around the town hall, which at that time was still associated with acute danger to life. In Saxony and Thuringia, coalition governments including the KPD formed in mid-October, which the KPD saw as an opportunity to take power.

The attitude to an armed insurrection attempt in Germany was controversial within the communist movement. While influential members of the Comintern flirted with the idea, the KPD leadership was against an uprising. The exact motives of the small Hamburg group under Hugo Urbahns and Hans Kippenberger , who planned the uprising, has not yet been fully clarified. It is believed that the beginning of the uprising should force its own party leadership to take action.

The contradictory, the former Communist Party functionary writes Erich Wollenberg in the Black protocols of Jens Johler that the Hamburg uprising of Heinrich Brandler was intended as a test balloon for an all-German revolution. A local uprising should “feel with the sword” whether a revolutionary situation exists in Germany: Should the uprising lead to a mass uprising, the KPD would give the signal for an armed uprising. Should the survey fail to take place, the KPD would emerge from the situation without major damage.

procedure

On the night of October 22nd to 23rd, the military leaders of the KPD section “Wasserkante” received operational orders from the regional leadership. At 5 a.m. the storm began on the police stations to remedy the glaring lack of weapons of the insurgents. Although the KPD in Hamburg had around 14,000 members at the time, only around 300 actively participated in the uprising. They managed to capture a total of about 250 rifles.

In addition to Hamburg, Altona and the Stormarn district were the scene of the attempted coup. The police stations in the Stormarn communities of Bramfeld and Schiffbek were attacked and the service weapons were captured. Railway and road blockades were carried out in Bad Oldesloe , Ahrensburg and Rahlstedt . In Bargteheide , the community leader was arrested by the rebels and a " Soviet Republic of Stormarn " was proclaimed.

With the exception of Barmbek , Eimsbüttel and the town of Schiffbek in Stormarn , the uprising attempts were crushed within a few hours. Only in Barmbek, where around 20 percent of the voters had voted for the KPD in the previous election, did the rebels receive support from the population, who took part in building barricades and provided the rebels with food. Here they could survive the day under constant gunfire. During the night, convinced of the hopelessness of the situation, they secretly left their positions, so that the major attack by the Hamburg police the next day came to nothing. Due to this fact, the Hamburg uprising is also known as the Barmbeck uprising due to its local limitations.

On October 24th at 6 p.m., a few hours after the general end of the uprising, the citizens met for their regular meeting. In addition to the communist responsibility of the uprising, the Social Democratic MPs also addressed the plight of the German population, which could only make such an action possible. In addition to the DDP , which was involved in the government, the right-wing parties also rejected the uprising as an act of terrorism. The DVP would have found it appropriate to be even more tough on the insurgents. From the communist side, it was Karl Sess who commented on the events. He said nothing directly about the uprising, but attacked the other parties, above all the SPD, and the capitalist system. A total of seven communist members of the citizenry were arrested on the night of October 24th and the following days.

consequences

The uprising claimed at least 100 deaths and more than 300 wounded. 17 of the dead were police officers, 24 insurgents and 61 civilians who were not involved. 1,400 people were arrested. The largest trial against a total of 191 rioters took place from February 1925 in the Altona district court because of the Schiffbeck riots.

In the long term, the uprising made a major contribution to poisoning the climate between the two workers' parties. As a result, the Social Democrats refused to cooperate with the KPD. In addition, if they were in government positions, they intensified the repression against the KPD, which in turn increased the KPD's rejection of the Republic and the SPD .

Within the KPD itself, especially after the election of the insurgent leader Ernst Thalmann as chairman of the party, a heroic myth about the insurrection was developed that relied on the small number, the hopeless struggle and the heroism of the insurgents. The prevailing evaluation within the party interpreted the defeat primarily as a consequence of the party structures that were too poorly centralized and not geared to party obedience, which consequently had to be strengthened. So Thälmann in the party organ Die Rote Fahne :

“Our party as a whole was still far too immature to prevent these leadership mistakes. In the autumn of 1923 the revolution failed due to the lack of one of its most important prerequisites: the existence of a Bolshevik party. "

Sections of the bourgeois camp saw their fears of Bolshevism and revolution confirmed and relied more on an anti-democratic reaction policy. As a result, the German National People's Party was able to increase its share of the vote in the Reichstag elections in Hamburg in 1924 from twelve to around 20 percent, but fell back to around twelve percent in 1928.

The uprising was thematized in the 1954 film Ernst Thälmann - Son of His Class , shot in the GDR . The KPD leadership around Heinrich Brandler is held responsible for the failure . This prevented fighting from taking place in other cities.

literature

Scientific literature:

  • Werner T. Angress : The fighting time of the KPD 1921-1923 (translated from the American by Heinz Meyer), Düsseldorf (Droste) 1973.
  • Viktor Gilensen: The Comintern and the "Organization M." in Germany in the years 1923–1925 , in: Forum for Eastern European Ideas and Contemporary History , 3 (1999), no. 1, pp. 31–80. ISSN 1433-4887
  • Bernhard B. Bayerlein / Hermann Weber (eds.): Germany, Russia, Comintern, 2 .: Documents (1918–1943): After the archive revolution: newly developed sources on the history of the KPD and German-Russian relations , 2 volumes, Berlin 2015. ISBN 978-3-11-033976-5
  • Bernhard H. Bayerlein, Leonid G. Babicenko and a. (Ed.): German October 1923. A revolution plan and its failure , Berlin 2003. (Archives of Communism - Paths of the XXth Century. 3) ISBN 3-351-02557-2 .
  • Jörg Berlin: State guardian and revolutionary advocate. Workers' parties in the post-war period ; in: Ulrich Bauche u. a. (Ed.): “We are the force.” Labor movement in Hamburg from the beginning to 1945 ; Catalog book for the exhibition of the Museum of Hamburg History, VSA Hamburg 1983, pp. 103-131. ISBN 3-87975-355-5 .
  • Louis Biester (posthumously): The communist coup 1923 . In: Yearbook for the Stormarn District (1985), pp. 73-76.
  • Lothar Danner : Hamburg order police. Reflections on its history 1918–1933 , Hamburg 1958.
  • Heinz Habedank: On the history of the Hamburg uprising in 1923 . Berlin 1958.
  • Wulf D. Hund : The uprising of the KPD . In: Yearbook for Social Economy and Social Theory. Hamburg Studies. Opladen 1983, pp. 32-61.
  • ders .: Heinrich Vogeler. Hamburg shipyard workers. From the aesthetics of resistance . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-596-10742-3 .
  • KPD / ML (ed.): 50 years of the Hamburg uprising: 1923–1973 , Hamburg (Verlag Roter Morgen) 1973.
  • District collective Rotes Winterhude: The Hamburg Uprising - Course - Myth - Lessons . Hamburg 2003, 64 pages with photos and theses on the uprising and the current political situation from the left.
  • Angelika Voss : The "Hamburg Uprising" in October 1923 . In: Angelika Voss, Ursula Büttner , Hermann Weber: From the Hamburg uprising to political isolation. Communist Politics 1923–1933 in Hamburg and in the German Reich , Hamburg 1983, pp. 9–54.

Fiction depictions:

  • Willi Meinck : The autumn storm sweeps through Hamburg , Berlin 1954.
  • Sergei Tretyakov : Do you hear me, Moscow . Drama about the Hamburg uprising. Moscow, 1923.

Movies

theatre

  • Blutmond Schauspiel 2017. The play is based on the events of the Hamburg uprising of 1923. While barricades are being erected in Hamburg-Barmbek , two young people try to get to know each other again and are finally faced with the old dilemma: retreat into private happiness or the risk of collective action . Blutmond is a play by Greg Liakopoulos and the ensemble of the Theaterakademie Hamburg . Kampnagel Theater Hamburg.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hamburg State Archives: History Competition of the Federal President 2010/11: Scandals in History, p. 22.
  2. ↑ Voss, pp. 183-204.
  3. ↑ Erich Wollenberg : The Hamburg uprising and the Thälmann legend , in: Jens Johler (Ed.): Black Protocols, No. 6 , Berlin, October 1973, p. 9 Black Protocols No. 6 , PDF document, Papiertiger Archive Berlin .
  4. ↑ Angelika Voss: The "Hamburg uprising" in October 1923 , in: Hamburg in the first quarter of the 20th century - The time of the politician Otto Stolten. Seven papers , State Center for Civic Education Hamburg, Hamburg 2000, pp. 167-218.
  5. ^ Ernst Thälmann: Die Lehren des Hamburger Aufstandes, October 23, 1925. In: Selected speeches and writings in two volumes. Volume 1, Verlag Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1976, p. 69 ff.
  6. ^ Results of the Reichstag elections in Hamburg
  7. ↑ The pages 1-32 ( Memento of 20 December 2007 at the Internet Archive ) (PDF, 1.21 MB) and the pages 33-64 ( Memento of 20 December 2007 at the Internet Archive ) (PDF, 1.8 MB)
  8. ^ The Hamburg uprising in October 1923. A newsreel produced in Hamburg, March to August 1971 : 1. Remembrance , 2. Lieschen Müller's story , 3. The uprising is canceled , filmportal.de
  9. ^ Greg Liakopoulos: Play Blood Moon in the Kampnagel theater program , summary, ensemble and trailer at Vimeo