Heinrich Bürger (trade unionist)

Heinrich Bürger (actually Christian-Heinrich , born January 16, 1867 in Paderborn , † November 29, 1910 in Hamburg ) was a German trade unionist , author and founding chairman of the Association of German Railway Workers .

The illegitimate son of a cook began training as a clerk in Dresden and moved to Hamburg in 1886. There he first worked in the grocery industry, as a nurse in the Eppendorfer hospital and from 1891 as a station assistant on the railway, where he was released two years later for socialist agitation. In 1893 he was elected as a delegate to the Hamburg trade union cartel and made a name for himself as a speaker and secretary of the cartel board in the following years. At first he had sympathized with anarchist ideas, but now he moved closer to social democracy and became a member of the SPD around 1895 . During the Hamburg port workers' strike of 1896/97 he was a member of the agitation commission and made a particular effort to win the railway workers over to support the strike. At the end of 1896 he called a railroad assembly, which decided to found the Union of Railroaders and elected him first chairman. However, repression of the Prussian railway administration as well as course disputes within the railway union meant that Bürger soon concentrated again on local work in the Hamburg trade union movement. Here Bürger was particularly committed to founding consumer cooperatives and building the trade union building at Besenbinderhof in Hamburg. From 1903 he worked as secretary of the Central Association of Community and State Workers, a predecessor organization of the later ÖTV trade unions from 2001 Verdi .

In 1910, Bürger died of pneumonia.

Publications

• The movement of state and community workers of Hamburg-Altona 1906-1907 . Highlights from Hanseatic social policy. Anh .: A look at the Hamburg state-owned companies. Hamburg (1908).
• The Hamburg trade unions and their struggles from 1865 to 1890 . In addition to a graphic representation of the strikes and lockouts in the years 1885–1890. Hamburg 1899. Reprint March 2017, ISBN 9783744672566
• Summer vacation or recreational vacation for urban workers . A contemporary view from Heinrich Bürger. Ed .: Association of workers and sub-employees employed in municipal and state-owned companies. Berlin 1904.

literature

• Angela Graf: Citizen, Heinrich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 72-74 .

Web links

Friedrich Ebert Foundation: Bürger, Christian-Heinrich (1867-1910)