Hermann Duncker

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Hermann Ludwig Rudolph Duncker (born May 24, 1874 in Hamburg ; † June 22, 1960 in Bernau near Berlin ) was a German KPD functionary, Marxist historian and social scientist as well as a lecturer in workers' education . He was a co-founder of the Marxist Workers' School and from 1949 until his death Rector of the FDGB - “Fritz Heckert” trade union college .

Youth and Studies

The son of a merchant attended high school in Göttingen from 1883 to 1891 . He then took up music studies at the Leipzig Conservatory . In 1893 he became a member of the SPD . After completing his music studies, he passed his Abitur as an external student in Goslar in 1896 and began studying economics , history and philosophy at the University of Leipzig . a. Wilhelm Wundt , Karl Bücher and Karl Lamprecht . Duncker received his doctorate in 1903 for Dr. phil. , his dissertation topic was the medieval village trade .

family

In 1898 he married the then teacher Käte Döll , who also became a publicist, SPD and KPD functionary and activist of the socialist women's movement. Their daughter Hedwig (1899–1996) became a doctor with her own practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The first son Karl Duncker (1903–1940) became a psychologist and one of the most well-known exponents of Gestalt theory ; he committed suicide in 1940 in American exile. The youngest son Wolfgang Duncker (born February 5, 1909) was also a communist. As a supporter of Nikolai Bukharin , however, he fell victim to the Stalinist purges (arrested in 1937, died in 1942 in Vorkuta labor camp ), and his parents were only certain of his death in 1948. Wolfgang's wife Erika Duncker (1907–2001) survived with their son Boris (born in Moscow in 1937) as a worker in a tank factory. She and her second husband Felix Hartmann returned to Germany, to the Soviet Zone , at the end of 1945 , but moved on to Switzerland in 1947.

Traveling teacher, journalist and functionary with the SPD and KPD

From 1900 Duncker taught in workers' education associations , from 1903 he worked in the editorial office of the SPD-affiliated Leipziger Volkszeitung , which was then headed by Franz Mehring . 1904–05 he headed the workers' secretariat in Leipzig, then until 1907 in Dresden. After the Mannheim party congress of the SPD, Duncker worked as a " traveling teacher " for social democracy. From 1912 to 1914 he worked at the party's central school. In the First World War he had to do military service 1915-18.

Hermann Duncker was a co-founder of the Spartakusbund . He took part in the November Revolution in 1918 and was one of the founders of the KPD , whose first headquarters (board of directors) he belonged to in 1919. From 1920 to 1933 he worked again as a traveling teacher, he headed regional and central party schools of the KPD. In 1923 he took over the training department at the headquarters. Within the party, he belonged to the more moderate "middle group" that advocated a united front with the SPD. In 1925 he was a co-founder and then head of the Berlin Marxist Workers School (MASCH). From 1927 to 1928 he was the head of the education department of the Central Committee of the KPD. At the same time he wrote numerous works, including the series "Elementary Books of Communism" and "Small Lenin Library". Since he was close to the “right” wing of the party, he lost his influence in the course of the radicalization of the KPD after 1929.

Persecution under National Socialism and emigration

Shortly after the takeover of the Nazi regime Duncker was established in February 1933, " protective custody taken". He was imprisoned in Spandau and in Brandenburg prison and released in November 1933. He lived under police supervision until November 1936 in Friedrichroda, Thuringia . Then he emigrated to Denmark to his friend Martin Andersen Nexø , in 1937 to Great Britain and 1938 to France. Duncker was desperate about the persecution of his son Wolfgang and his friend Nikolai Bukharin during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union. In addition, because of his rejection of the Hitler-Stalin pact, he came into conflict with the KPD leadership in Moscow. In Paris he gave courses at the German Adult Education Center until he fled further into the so-called free zone of the Vichy regime in southern France before the invasion of the Wehrmacht in the summer of 1940 .

At the end of 1940, Käte Duncker, who had been living in the USA since 1938, obtained a visa to bring her husband to join her. In May 1941 he traveled from Marseille to Casablanca , where however the Vichy authorities interned him for some time as an " enemy alien ". He did not arrive in New York until September 1941 . From 1944 he belonged to the German exile organization Council for a Democratic Germany .

Professor and head of the FDGB school

The grave slab for Hermann Duncker in Berlin

In May 1947, Käte and Hermann Duncker returned to Germany from the USA. There he joined the SED . In September 1947 he became a full professor for the history of social movements and dean of the social science faculty at the University of Rostock . Although he was almost blind, Duncker became rector of the FDGB federal school in Bernau near Berlin in February 1949 . From this, the trade union college "Fritz Heckert" emerged in 1952 , which Duncker headed until his death in June 1960. From 1955 to 1960 he was also a member of the FDGB federal executive committee.

His urn was given a place on the wall of the Socialist Memorial in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde.

Awards

The University of Rostock appointed Hermann Duncker as its honorary senator when he left in 1949. On June 16, 1953, he was one of the first to receive the Karl Marx Order - the highest state award in the GDR. The Karl Marx University of Leipzig awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1954, and on June 14, 1955, he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold.

Honors through naming

Orders and Medals

After Duncker's death, employees in scientific or FDGB institutions were honored with the Hermann Duncker Medal for “outstanding trade union achievements” .

Street names

Hermann Duncker monument in Rostock

In the district of Berlin-Karlshorst a street was named after him during the GDR era (from 1961); it was renamed back to Treskowallee in 1992 .

In 1960, in Leipzig- Neulindenau , Dunckerstraße, which had been named after the Leipzig founder Gustav Heinrich Duncker († 1882) since 1908, was renamed to Dr.-Hermann-Duncker-Straße. The surrounding area is called the Dunckerviertel .

A Hermann-Duncker-Straße there

School or company names

The current Protestant elementary school in Berlin-Lichtenberg was called Hermann-Duncker-Oberschule in GDR times .

In Schierke in the Harz there was the FDGB convalescent home Hermann Duncker , as well as one in Heubach , Hildburghausen district.

In the Klingenberg settlement Am Sachsenhof there was the FDGB district union school Hermann Duncker .

In the Siebleben district of Gotha, Gotha IV during the GDR era, the Polytechnic High School, which opened in 1982, was called POS Hermann Duncker . After the fall of the Wall it was renamed the Justus Perthes Oberschule after the Gotha publisher . Today it is the Gotha-Siebleben elementary school .

From the 1970s to 1990 an optical company in Rathenow was called VEB Augenoptik 'Hermann Duncker' .

In 1984 the 41st Fla-Missile Brigade (FRBr) of the National People's Army (NVA) was formed from the former 16 Fla-Missile Regiment . This brigade was also given the honorary name Hermann Duncker .

Monuments

Hermann Duncker Bernau

In Berlin-Karlshorst, in a small park near the Karlshorst train station, there is a monument made by the sculptor Walter Howard and erected in 1976, which is under protection.

In Rostock there is also a memorial to Hermann Duncker on the square named after him on Langen Straße. This concrete sculpture, unveiled in 1977, was also designed by Walter Howard.

In the garden of the former district union school of the FDGB Hermann Duncker in the Klingenberg settlement Am Sachsenhof there is still a bust of him. A bronze relief with an inscription stands in front of his last place of work in Bernau, see picture on the right.

Fonts

  • The right to life. 1896
  • Union and class struggle . 1898
  • Utopians. 1909
  • What does socialism mean? 1909
  • An ancient social poetry. 1910
  • The scammed scammers program. 1923
  • The ABC of capitalist profit. 1925
  • About the struggle of Rosa Luxemburg against reformism. 1925/26
  • Engels' warning call. 1927
  • Kautsky's socialist development from science to utopia. 1927
  • Marx and Engels in the fight against petty-bourgeois socialism. 1928
  • The spiritual testament of Engels. 1928
  • Marx wrote “ Das Kapital ” for you too ! 1948
  • Free will? 1948
  • A philosophy for the proletariat. In: Socialist monthly books. 1 = 3 (1897), no. 7, pp. 405–407 (PDF)

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann Duncker  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Duncker: The medieval village trade (excluding the food industry) according to the wisdom tradition . Inaugural dissertation. Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig 1903. Online resource . OCLC 897457770
  2. ^ Archives on Wolfgang Duncker
  3. ↑ Mario Keßler: Exile and Post-Exile. Displaced intellectuals in the 20th century. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2002, p. 98.
  4. ^ A b Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. K. Dietz, Berlin 2008, p. 203.
  5. ↑ a b c Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Duncker, Hermann . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  6. ^ Mario Keßler : Western emigrants: German communists between USA exile and GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2019, pp. 57–58.
  7. ↑ a b Entry on Hermann Duncker in the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium
  8. ↑ Awarded the Karl Marx Order to deserving worker functionaries . In: New Germany . June 16, 1953, p. 3 .
  9. ↑ Today the 4th FDGB Congress begins - Karl Marx Order for the FDGB / Outstanding trade unionists received the Patriotic Order of Merit / Herbert Warnke awarded the FDGB literature prize . In: New Germany . June 15, 1955, p. 1 .
  10. ↑ Gina Klank, Gernoth Griebsch: Encyclopedia Leipziger street names . Ed .: City Archives Leipzig. 1st edition. Verlag im Wissenschaftszentrum Leipzig, Leipzig 1995, ISBN 3-930433-09-5 , p. 58 .
  11. ^ Location of Dr.-Hermann-Duncker-Straße on the online Pharus map of Leipzig
  12. ^ H.-Duncker-Straße in the street catalog Wittenberg
  13. ^ H.-Duncker-Straße on the online Pharus map in Bernau
  14. ↑ Hermann-Duncker-Straße in Bad Saarow on google.maps
  15. ^ Website of the school in Gotha ( Memento from January 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ Information on VEB Optik in Rathenow , accessed on October 11, 2011.
  17. ↑ State monument list Berlin: Hermann Duncker monument
personal data
SURNAME Duncker, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Duncker, Hermann Ludwig Rudolph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD functionary, Marxist historian and social scientist, rector of the trade union college "Fritz Heckert"
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1960
Place of death Bernau