Hans Tittel

Hans Tittel (born September 1, 1894 in Dresden , † August 8, 1983 in Nuremberg ) was a German trade unionist and socialist politician.

Life

Union, SPD

Tittel learned the stone printer's trade and became a member of the trade union and the socialist youth in 1909, and of the SPD in 1912 . Hans Tittel, who worked in Stuttgart , was an active opponent of the truce policy . He belonged to the left-wing Westmeyer group even before the war and, like many others on the Stuttgart left, was excluded from the SPD after the First World War . Together with Clara Zetkin , Friedrich Westmeyer and Georg Dietrich , he was arrested at the end of 1914 for anti-militarist work and connection to the International Socialist Youth Congress in Bern. After eight months in detention, he was drafted as a soldier.

KPD, KPD (O)

Hans Tittel was a delegate to the founding party congress of the KPD in Berlin in 1918/1919 and co-founder of the KPD in Württemberg . He was a delegate at the party congresses in 1919 and 1920 and secretary at the 4th party congress. From 1920 to 1923 he was a member of the central committee. There he voted in 1921 against the expulsion of Paul Levi , whom he held in high regard both politically and personally. From the end of 1919 he worked as political director in Württemberg.

At the party congresses he took a position against bureaucratic centralism and inspired the “Stuttgart demands” of 1922. In the KPD he was part of the political circle around Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer . The 8th party congress elected him to the revision commission. In 1923 he was sent from headquarters to Thuringia, where he was elected political director. After October 1923 he was in protective custody from November 23, 1923 to mid-1924 , but was released as a candidate for the state parliament.

In 1924, after the first ultra-left turn in the KPD, he was relieved of his functions and sent to the Red Aid in Berlin . After half turning away from the ultra-left course in the KPD, he became head of the press office in Berlin in 1926 and political director in Thuringia again at the end of 1926 . In 1927 Hans Tittel was elected to the state parliament and sent as a delegate to the 11th party congress. In 1928 he was Thuringian delegate to the VI. World Congress of the Communist International (Kl) , where he was one of the few who openly presented his position against the course of Stalinization ( RGO policy and social fascism thesis ). At the end of 1928 he was expelled from the KPD as one of the first “ Brandlerists ” and one of its leaders. In Thuringia, large parts of the membership, the functionaries and the management bodies showed solidarity with him and went to the KPD (O) , of which he was a co-founder. In Leipzig he worked as an editor of the newspaper “ Arbeiterpolitik ” as long as it was published. H. Tittel was political leader of the KPD (O) in Thuringia and a member of the Reich leadership. In 1931 he turned against the course of the KPD (O) minority around Jacob Walcher and Paul Frölich , who went to the SAPD . In Thuringia, he succeeded in winning leading SAPD supporters for the KPD (O).

Emigration and resistance

After the National Socialists came to power on January 30, 1933, he initially worked as head of the illegal Berlin committee of the KPD (O), but had to flee. First he emigrated to Czechoslovakia , where he headed the border work and published the Ascher “Arbeiterpolitik”. In the summer of 1938 he had to leave the country and went to Paris . In the autumn of 1939 he left the KPD (O) during the Paris dispute. When the war broke out, he was interned in Le Vernet. The comrades who were already in the USA helped him to obtain a visa for the USA. He later stated that he and his friends (the AK minority) in Paris had still not realized that the comrades in the US were about to give up communism. The comrades of the minority group of 1939, almost all of whom came to the USA, decided at the end of 1941 to forego any political activity. Hans Tittel was back in his job as a lithographer in the USA.

return

In 1962 he returned to Germany and lived in Nuremberg. He joined the SPD, but was very critical of its policies. He maintained friendly contacts with former KPD (O) members.

literature

• Theodor Bergmann : "Against the Current". The history of the KPD (opposition). 2nd edition Hamburg 2001.
• Karl Hermann Tjaden: Structure and function of the "KPD opposition" (KPO). Meisenheim am Glan 1964.
• Tittel, Hans . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. 2., revised. and strong exp. Edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

Commons : Hans Tittel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files