Hans Jahn (politician)

Johannes "Hans" Jahn (born August 29, 1885 in Hartha ; † July 10, 1960 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German SPD politician , trade unionist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life and work

Jahn, who joined the SPD in 1903, completed an apprenticeship as a blacksmith and in 1909 became an authorized representative of the German Blacksmiths Association in Bremen, to which he had been a member since 1903, and worked as a stoker from 1914 and as a locomotive driver from 1917. In 1920 Jahn became secretary of the works council department of the German Railway Workers' Association , from 1927 to 1933 he was on the board of the union, which has since been renamed the Union of Railway Workers in Germany , and was also a member of the management of the General German Association of Civil Servants (ADB). He was also a member of the Provisional Reich Economic Council .

In 1932 Jahn, who stood up for an active fight against the NSDAP on the board of the unit association , began to build up a clandestine network of around 100 railway workers in the event of a fascist takeover. After the NSDAP came to power, he succeeded in withdrawing 17,000 index cards with member addresses of the association from the access of the Gestapo . After he had not succeeded in preventing the trade unions from adapting to Hitler's government, he himself worked as an insurance agent after the General German Trade Union Confederation was broken up. In close contact with the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) and its general secretary Edo Fimmen in Amsterdam, Jahn built an effective resistance organization among railway workers until his first arrest in the spring of 1935.

emigration

Since Jahn's role was not known to the Gestapo at the time of his arrest, he was released in June 1935 and fled first to Czechoslovakia , later to Amsterdam and finally to Antwerp (where the important ITF activist Hermann Knüfken was based), from where he reorganized his network of ITF railway workers, which in 1937, according to Jahns, had 1,300 contacts. The groups smuggled illegal literature into Germany, collected information and, after the start of the war in 1939, began to carry out acts of sabotage and the like. a. to commit against transport trains. At that time, Jahn was politically close to the groups Neu Beginnen and Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (ISK). In 1938 Jahn moved to Luxembourg in order to make his activities directly on the German border more effective. In 1940, after the German invasion of Luxembourg, Jahn, who was threatened with the death penalty in Germany, had to flee to London via France, Spain and Portugal, leaving his family behind, where he was active against the swastika in union structures in exile such as the Union Freedom League . In 1944, Jahn, supported by the OSS , tried to smuggle in illegal trade union cadres from exile into Germany, and cooperated with the OSS in acts of sabotage in German-occupied northern Italy.

But he also took part in the programmatic work in exile. In London, for example, he belonged to the group around Hans Gottfurcht , who made program proposals for a unified German trade union federation for the period after the war under the title The New German Trade Union Movement.

After 1945

At the beginning of 1945 Jahn returned to Germany, where he began to set up a railway workers' union, first in Leipzig and then in the British zone, from which the Union of Railway Workers of Germany (GdED) emerged in 1947 , of which he was chairman from 1949 to 1959. During this time he was also a member of the federal executive committee of the DGB . He was a member of the main transport advisory board of the Federal Republic of Germany and the administrative board of the Federal Railroad . From 1956 until his death, Jahn was President of the ITF.

Jahn was a member of the German Bundestag from its first election in 1949 until his death in 1960. As a member of parliament that was always directly elected, he represented the Hanover-Land constituency.

Quotes

• “Even today Germany is a paradise for the Nazis and a hell for the anti-Nazis! And should one give one's last strength for this people? There is nothing learned from the so-called Social Democrats, nor is their vest so clean that they can do anything against the reaction, let alone want to! " (In a letter of November 6, 1947)
• "Only if we succeed in averting the plight of the people through trade union work will we have the prospect of permanently consolidating democracy in order to preserve human dignity."

literature

• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 7). Metropol, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 .
• Dieter Nelles: Resistance and International Solidarity. The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) in the resistance against National Socialism with special consideration of seafarers. Dissertation. Klartext, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-956-0 (on Jahn here especially pp. 271–279, pp. 327–338 and pp. 381–387).
• Michael Rudloff: Hans Jahn (1885–1960) Social Democratic trade unionist in American uniform. In: Michael Rudloff, Mike Schmeitzner: Such vermin also exist in Leipzig. Social Democrats and the SED. Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 174-185.
• Alfred Gottwaldt: Railway workers against Hitler. Resistance and persecution on the Reichsbahn 1933–1945. Marix, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86539-204-6 ( review ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Jahn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center