Johannes Fusangel

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Johannes Fusangel

John Fusangel (also: John Fußangel * 27. March 1852 in Dusseldorf , † 7. August 1910 in Hagen ) was a German politician ( Center Party ), journalist and newspaper editor .

Live and act

Fusangel comes from a Catholic middle-class family and attended high school in Düsseldorf. He finished studying various subjects in Innsbruck , Munich and Bonn without a degree. After extensive travels through Austria-Hungary and Italy , Fusangel became a journalist in 1875 and briefly edited the Düsseldorfer Volksblatt . During the Kulturkampf he expressed himself in favor of the Catholic position and against the Prussian state. Fusangel evaded possible arrest by the authorities by fleeing to Bavaria. There he worked for several Catholic newspapers in Würzburg , Regensburg and Passau , sometimes agitating polemically in the radical Catholic sense, including for the Catholic People's Party in Bavaria. In the last two stations he also appeared as a publisher, but had to discontinue the papers due to a lack of sales. After the Kulturkampf had subsided, Fusangel returned to Prussia and was editor of the “Westphalian People's Newspaper” in Bochum from 1884 to 1893 . From 1893 he lived in Hagen and was the founder and publisher of the "Westdeutsche Volkszeitung".

MP

Fusangel became a member of the Reichstag in the by -election required by the death of Peter Reichensperger on March 20, 1893, and was re-elected in the Reichstag election in 1893 and in 1898 and 1903 . During this time he represented the constituency of Olpe-Meschede-Arnsberg (Arnsberg 2) in Berlin. His attempts to move into the Prussian state parliament between 1898 and 1910 failed because of the three-class suffrage .

Political party

After the center had at times questioned Fusangel's membership of the party after the election (see below), it apparently could not avoid recognizing his position after his election successes. From 1898 to 1910 he was a member of the Provincial Committee of the Westphalian Center Party.

Historical meaning

Basically, Fusangel only became important after he moved to Westphalia. In his paper in the Ruhr area he addressed the problems of miners and denounced the grievances in the mines. In the years 1883 to 1886 he was a co-founder and leading figure of the legal protection association for the mining population of the Oberbergamtsbezirks Dortmund . This was one of the first organizations to stand up for the interests of miners in the Ruhr area. Even if the association soon lost its importance again, it nevertheless helped to anchor the organizational concept among the miners. Somewhat misleading because of its membership in the center, Fusangel became known as "Red John" even beyond the boundaries of the district.

Fusangel had already applied for a political mandate in vain during his time in the Ruhr area. After the death of Peter Reichensperger there were violent clashes within the Center Party in the constituency of Olpe-Meschede-Arnsberg in the Sauerland . Above all, small farmers, workers and artisans rebelled against the attempt by the aristocratic and bourgeois establishment of the Center Party to occupy this position without internal party discussion. Based on the workers from Attendorn , Fusangel was put up as a candidate against the official center candidate. His candidacy was highly controversial beyond the region, among other things because Fusangel met with rejection, especially in the clergy, with his positive use of the concept of democracy and his self-description as a “left-wing center man”. The leadership of the Center Party saw the events as a danger to the unity of political Catholicism and did everything in the election campaign to support the official candidate. In this case, the predominantly Catholic population did not follow the recommendations of the clergy, but voted for Fusangel by a large majority.

In the following years the elections for the Prussian House of Representatives and the Reichstag elections repeatedly split the center voters. The election campaigns between the candidates correspond in polemics and intensity to the arguments between parties from different political camps of the time. While the three-class suffrage in Prussia always prevented Fusangel from entering the state parliament, he was re-elected several times to the Reichstag.

However, his approval of the voters decreased more and more. A real defamation campaign of the local newspapers in the Sauerland, which saw themselves threatened economically by the West German newspaper Fusangels, undoubtedly contributed to this. It is no longer possible to understand to what extent the scattered rumors about unsound management were justified. However, it is correct to say that Fusangel did not meet the political expectations of his voters. He did not play a significant role in the Reichstag. He often stayed away from important votes himself.

An end to the conflict between the various groups of the Center Party in the Sauerland could of course only be expected if the party's dignitaries recognized the political participation claims of the workers and the other disadvantaged groups. Not least because of pressure from the Westphalian party leadership, Johannes Becker was nominated as an “official” candidate for the center for the 1907 Reichstag election, a workers' representative. In fact, numerous followers of Fusangel went to the Becker camp. Nonetheless, support for Fusangel remained substantial and an election campaign began which, in its intensity, attracted attention far beyond the region. As a result, Becker finally prevailed.

The person of Fusangel and the political developments associated with him have been presented in research (W. Loth) as examples of a profound internal differentiation between the Center Party and the Catholic milieu as a whole.

Fonts (selection)

  • What does Social Democracy give and what takes from the worker? . Bochum 1890.
  • My Luther trial. A consoling reflection on parity in Prussia . Bochum 1889.
  • The Thümmel Trial in Bochum. An open word to all honest people . Bochum 1888.

literature

  • Bernd Haunfelder : Member of the Reichstag of the German Center Party 1871–1933. Biographical handbook and historical photographs (= photo documents on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 4). Droste, Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-7700-5223-4 , pp. 159-160.
  • Wilfried Loth : Catholics in the Empire. Political Catholicism in the crisis of Wilhelmine Germany . Droste, Düsseldorf 1984, ISBN 3-7700-5123-8 .
  • Jens Hahnwald: Revolt in the Sauerland Center Party. The dispute over the occupation of the Reichstag mandate in the constituency of Arnsberg-Meschede-Olpe between 1893 and 1907. In: Südwestfalenarchiv, 11th year 2011 pp. 231–262
  • Dieter Pfau: 200 years of the Olpe district. Olpe, 2017 pp. 331–337

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Georg Kirchhoff: The state social policy in Ruhr mining 1871-1914 . Springer Verlag 2013, p. 49
personal data
SURNAME Fusangel, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (center), MdR, journalist and newspaper editor
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1910
Place of death Hagen