Josef Busch (gardener)

Josef Busch (born July 20, 1879 in Itzehoe , † May 18, 1956 in Berlin-Pankow ) was a German gardener and chairman of the General German Gardeners Association .

Live and act

Josef Busch was born the son of an estate and private gardener in Itzehoe. He completed an apprenticeship as a gardener and then worked for some time in Lokstedt , which at the time was known as the “gardener's village”. In 1903 he settled in Hamburg , where he acquired Hamburg citizenship at the end of 1908 . Since 1898 Busch belonged to the General German Gardeners Association, which was composed of mostly young members like Busch. Most members were in favor of merging the gardeners' association with the free trade union movement. Busch participated repeatedly in organizational matters, including as a delegate for the interests of the association. On January 1, 1904, the gardeners 'association merged with the German gardeners' association . Josef Busch was the first employee to get a permanent position. His area of ​​responsibility included the “1. Agitation district ".

During an extraordinary general assembly, the members of the Free Trade Unions elected Busch as their chairman. Busch went to Berlin as the youngest incumbent union chairman , where he became a citizen of Prussia in 1912 . Busch held the chair due to several re-elections with clear majorities until the end of the 1920s. He played a decisive role in the fact that the gardeners association was able to gain an extraordinary number of members from 1905 onwards. During the First World War , Busch did some military service. Despite the decline in membership due to the war, he managed to continue the gardening association in the period that followed. In order to be able to attract unskilled workers and foreign members, Busch advocated giving the association the new name "Association of Gardeners and Horticultural Workers". The corresponding name change took place on January 1, 1919. By 1920, Busch was able to recruit 900 new members who had previously been members of the Association of German Private Gardeners , which had been organized as a profession up until then .

Josef Busch was a member of the Federal Committee of the ADGB and its elected auditor since 1921. As a Social Democrat, he was temporarily a member of the USPD , but became a member of the SPD again after the 1922 Unification Party . Busch tried to prevent the union from being forced to join the planned industrial unions, but also realized that the unions could benefit politically from such a merger. When several associations merged to form the General Association of Workers in Public Enterprises and the Movement of People and Goods , a predecessor organization of the Union of Public Services, Transport and Traffic , Josef Busch was the only gardener to be elected board member. Of the approximately 24,000 members of the overall association, 11,300 were mostly young gardeners.

As a member of the board of directors, Busch headed the Reich technical group for gardening, parks and cemeteries in Department A (municipal operations and administrations). In 1932 the Reichsfachgruppe of rural road workers was added. During the Weimar Republic , this meant for Busch to stand up for existing collective agreements that were threatened by voluntary labor service . Buschs, who had been a member of the Provisional Reich Economic Council since 1921 , remained a member of the association's board of directors until November 1921. His further association activities ended with his immediate dismissal in July 1933. In 1934 Busch moved to Berlin-Niederschönhausen , where he worked as a freelance horticulturist. The company under his leadership continued to exist after the end of World War II in 1945.

literature

• Angela Graf: Busch, Josef . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 76-77 .