Hirsch-Duncker trade associations

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The Hirsch-Duncker trade unions (officially until 1919 the association of German trade unions , since 1919 part of the union ring of German workers ', salaried employees and civil servants' associations ) were founded on September 28, 1868. They stood on a liberal basis and competed with the socialist free and Christian trade unions . The organizations united in it existed until 1933.

Empire

The trade unions were founded at a workers' meeting called by Max Hirsch . The model statutes were drawn up primarily by Franz Duncker on a socially liberal basis . After the two, the organizations were usually referred to as Hirsch-Duncker trade unions until their end.

Its aim was to implement a social reform through a balance of interests and cooperation between employees and employers . The trade unions followed the example of the English trade unions . The protection and promotion of the rights and interests of its members should take place through law. This was done by setting up self-help organizations such as sick, disabled, funeral and old age support associations. Politically, the trade unions were close to the left-wing liberal German Progressive Party , although the majority of its members refused to accept social reform impulses. This is why Hirsch found even less support for his unions in the Progress Party than Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch did for his cooperatives at the time .

Numerous clubs have been established since 1868. These merged in 1869 to form the Association of German Trade Unions. In 1869 there were about 258 clubs with around 30,000 members. The actual tour was with Max Hirsch. Until 1905 he was an "association attorney". The association magazine was the weekly "Der Arbeiterverein", which appeared until 1933.

Despite the conviction that employees and employers have the same interests, the trade unions were not economically peaceful associations. At the end of 1869 there was a first miners' strike in the Waldenburg district . The Waldenburg miners' strike lasted eight weeks and ended unsuccessfully. The defeat weighed heavily on the trade unions. As a result, the clubs mainly expanded the support system.

Compared to the free and Christian trade unions , the trade unions fell behind. In 1910, at the height of their development, the unions had only 122,000 members while the free unions had over 2.5 million members.

Especially after the turn of the century, the trade unions took part in several major labor disputes. They took part in the miners 'strike of 1905 and the miners' strike of 1912 .

In 1907 the clubs gave themselves a new program. In addition to socio-political demands, this contained the principle of party-political and religious neutrality. However, nothing changed about the fundamental proximity to left-wing liberalism, which was organizationally split up in 1893 into the Free People's Party and the Free Union . However, the left-wing liberals, reunited in the organization of the Progressive People's Party since 1910 , attempted for their part in 1912 to bring all workers together under their supporters in the Reich Association of Liberal Workers and Employees . However, these efforts were not very successful, after a year the association only had around 3,400 members.

The trade union of German women and girls was the women's organization of the trade unions. It was founded in 1902 and in 1919 had 25 local groups. The purpose was "to improve the economic situation of working women and girls without being active in political or church relationships".

Weimar Republic

After the November Revolution, the trade unions initially merged with the Christian trade unions in the DGB . In November 1919 they left the umbrella organization again. A year later they founded the union ring of German workers ', salaried employees and civil servants' associations. In addition to the workers 'unions of the Hirsch-Duncker trade associations, this also included the trade union federation of employees as an amalgamation of employee associations and the Ring of German Civil Service Associations as an umbrella organization for civil servants' associations.

The labor unions rejected the November Revolution from as such, but have the November agreement , the ZAG , choosing the National Assembly and the Republic supported. During the Kapp putsch , they stood in the camp of the defenders of democracy. The allied organizations rejected the class struggle as undemocratic and non-union. The strike was recognized as the union's last resort, but in practice the negotiated solution was preferred. On the one hand the program and on the other hand the weakness of the organization contributed to this.

After the November Revolution, the clubs were able to win new members. With 225,000 members, they remained the smallest union of the 1920s. The organization was firmly behind the Weimar Republic , but had little influence. By 1931 the number of members had dropped to about 149,000. The clubs were initially close to the German Democratic Party (DDP). When its chairman Anton Erkelenz left the party in 1930 and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), it was also a symbol of the weakening German liberalism . With the decline of the DDP at the end of the republic, there were rapprochements with the ADGB and the SPD . In May 1933 the Hirsch-Duncker trade unions were also victims of the breakdown of the trade unions. Your assets were taken over into the newly founded German Labor Front (DAF).

literature

  • Wolfgang Ayaß : Max Hirsch. Social liberal union leader and pioneer of adult education centers , Berlin 2013 (= Jewish miniatures 141). ISBN 978-3-942271-96-7
  • Hans-Georg Fleck: Social justice through organizational power and balance of interests. Selected aspects of the history of the social liberal trade union movement in Germany (1868/69 to 1933) : In: Erich Matthias , Klaus Schönhoven (ed.): Solidarity and human dignity. Stages in German trade union history from the beginning to the present . Bonn 1984 pp. 83-106, ISBN 3-87831-391-8
  • Hans-Georg Fleck: Social liberalism and the trade union movement. The Hirsch-Duncker trade associations 1868–1914 . Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-7663-2502-7
  • Hans-Georg Fleck: Social liberalism and trade union movement in Prussia . In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung XIV (2002), pp. 259-280, ISBN 3-7890-8095-0
  • Hans-Georg Fleck: 'Against the rampant social rule of law'. Trade union social liberalism and the German Progressive Party. In: Detlef Lehnert (Ed.): Social liberalism in Europe. Origin and development in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2012 ISBN 978-3-412-20927-8 , pp. 83-107.
  • E. Matthias: Sources on the history of the German trade union movement in the 20th century limited v. ed. v. K. Schönhoven et al. H. Weber, on numer. Bde. Ber. Cologne 1985ff.
  • Michael Schneider: Highs, crises and lows. The unions in the Weimar Republic . In: Ulrich Borsdorf (Hrsg.): History of the German trade unions from the beginning to 1945 . Cologne, 1987 ISBN 3-7663-0861-0 p. 321f.
  • Wolfgang Schmierer: Hirsch-Duncker trade unions . In: Gerhard Taddey (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German history . People, events, institutions. From the turn of the times to the end of the 2nd World War. 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-520-81302-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. On October 19, 1868, Duncker wrote: "That it will be possible to steer this extremely important matter, in contrast to the extremely socialist attempts, on a path that is satisfactory for all parts." Quoted from Werner Ettelt, Hans-Dieter Krause : The struggle for a Marxist trade union policy in the German labor movement 1868–1878. Tribüne, Berlin 1975, p. 89.
  2. The model statutes and other documents from the early days of the trade unions are printed in: Collection of sources for the history of German social policy 1867 to 1914 , Section I: From the founding of the Empire to the Imperial Social Message (1867-1881) , Volume 4: Workers' Law , edited by Wolfgang Ayaß , Karl Heinz Nickel and Heidi Winter, Darmstadt 1997, pp. 4–7, 82, 85, 87, 89ff., 93, 98, 101f., 104f., 108f., 111f., 120, 122–125, 127, 133f., 136f., 189, 191, 207f., 236, 246-252, 254-257, 259, 261, 263-266, 268, 274, 277, 279, 285ff., 289f., 294f., 337f., 348f., 351-357, 361, 364, 372-376, 378, 387, 421f., 425, 551
  3. See James J. Sheehan : Der deutsche Liberalismus. From the beginnings in the 18th century to the First World War 1770–1914. Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09653-0 , pp. 182f.
  4. Cf. Dieter Langewiesche : Liberalism in Germany. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-11286-4 , pp. 159f.