Hermann Jochade

Stumbling block for Hermann Jochade in Berlin-Karlshorst

Hermann Jochade (born July 7, 1876 in Neuhaus im Solling ; † September 29, 1939 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a German trade union official and secretary of the International Transport Workers' Federation .

Live and act

Hermann Jochade grew up in the Holzminden district . His father worked as a shaft master on the railroad. Hermann Jochade attended an elementary school and then took a job at the Märkische Eisenbahn . He then completed vocational training as a former at an iron foundry in Lüneburg and in 1891 became a member of the Central Association of German Former and the SPD . After completing his military service, he went to the Howaldtswerft in Kiel for a short time . Since Jochade had taken part in a workers' strike, he was released and went to Hamburg in May 1899 . There he got involved in the union, which sent him to the Hamburg union cartel. From 1900 Jochade was a member of the executive committee of the Central Association of German Former and Professional Associates.

At the end of 1900, Jochade became unemployed and found a new job at Meyer's union printing company, which was based in Hamburg-Eilbek . As the German shop steward, Jochade reported on the organization of German formers to the International Former Secretariat, which was based in Paris . Jochade also wrote articles for the magazine Glück auf of the Formerverband. After the formers had joined the German Metalworkers Association , Jochade's activities for the union ended in 1901.

In 1901, the Association of Railway Workers in Germany appointed Jochade as editor of the association magazine Weckruf der Eisenbahner . A year later, Jochade took over the chairmanship of the association and held it, interrupted by a six-month prison sentence, until 1906. Jochade wrote critically, uncovered problems and mentioned the names of the persons responsible. For this reason he has been sued and convicted several times. Since 1901, Jochade has been collecting evidence of train and work accidents and wage cuts associated with layoffs. He wanted to send these to members of the Landtag and Reichstag. When Jochade published the document in 1904, it was banned immediately, even though the SPD parliamentarians were concerned with the interests of the railway workers due to the collection of material.

In 1904 Jochade took part as a delegate at the international congress of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) in Amsterdam . During the congress, Hamburg was chosen as the headquarters of the ITF. Jochade took over the position of secretary here until 1916 and from 1906 published regularly the trilingual correspondence sheet . Thus he tried to promote the cohesion of the participating organizations. In 1909 he replaced the paper with weekly reports that appeared in German, English, French, Swedish, Spanish and Italian. Jochade acted as a shop steward for internationally organized railway workers until the union of the railway workers merged with the German Transport Workers' Association in 1908. With the merger in 1908, Jochade moved to the new headquarters of the ITF in Berlin. In 1913, the ITF was the third largest international union of trade unions with 700,000 members, for which Hermann Jochade was largely responsible.

During the First World War , Jochade supported the war aims of his homeland and did military service as a soldier. Both during the war and in the years that followed, he continued to campaign for the interests of the trade unions. In 1916 the military authorities approved his election to the board of the German Railway Union. In 1919 Jochade participated in the rebuilding of the ITF and headed its "literary department", whose bookstore offered inexpensive fiction.

During the Weimar Republic , Jochade, who was considered a moderate trade unionist, did not take part in the clashes within the trade unions. Jochade preferred collective bargaining instead of strikes. Jochade won re-election as union chairman in 1922 with a clear majority. He continued to be involved in international committees and in educational work. In 1925 the railroad workers' union merged with the Reichsgewerkschaft deutscher Eisenbahnbeamten (Reichs Union of German Railway Officials and Candidates) to form the unified association of German railway workers . Hermann Jochade remained chairman of the union. At the end of March 1933, presumably at the urging of board members, he had to resign from all offices.

Jochade took an active part in the resistance fight against the Nazi regime. Among other things, he was a member of the illegal "Reichsleitung der Unions". In addition, Jochade is said to have brought some of the assets that he had secured from the unified association of German railway workers abroad after it was broken up.

During the Second World War , Hermann Jochade was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he was presumably murdered at the end of September 1939.

Since 2010 a stumbling block in Berlin-Karlshorst has reminded of Hermann Jochade.

literature

• Angela Graf: Jochade, Hermann . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 177-178 .
• Eberhard Podzuweit: Hermann Jochade. July 7, 1876 - September 28, 1939 , in: Siegfried Mielke , Günter Morsch (ed.): >> Be vigilant that night never falls over Germany again. << Trade unionists in concentration camps 1933-1945. , Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-031-8 , pp. 112-119
• 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 , pp. 39 ff., 62 ff., 156, 204 ff., 215 ff., 262 ff., 525 ff., 641 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Berliner Morgenpost of October 15, 2010: Lichtenberg, Five more stumbling blocks are being laid , accessed on July 29, 2015