Josef Orlopp
Josef Orlopp (born August 29, 1888 in Essen , † April 7, 1960 in East Berlin ) was a German trade unionist, FDGB functionary in the GDR and a member of the National Council of the National Front .
Life
Training and first contact with the union
Josef Orlopp was born the son of a carpenter . His upbringing began in 1895 when he attended a Catholic elementary school in Essen. As a good student, he was able to skip a class and finish elementary school in 1902. Orlopp then spent three years at a voluntary training school. At the age of 15 he started an apprenticeship as a lathe operator in Essen. After completing his apprenticeship in 1907, Orlopp worked briefly as a journeyman in an art worker's hut in Steele , where he was won over by an old journeyman for the ideas of socialism .
Orlopp joined the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV) in 1907 . In the same year he went on a journey that took him via Hesse, the Palatinate, Baden, Württemberg and Switzerland to Austria and made the situation of ordinary people abroad clear to him.
In October 1910 Orlopp took up a job in the 9th mechanical workshop of the Krupp factories in Essen, where he quickly rose to become foreman and calculator. At the same time he became a member of the SPD , which he left the church in 1911. In 1912 Orlopp was elected chairman of the DMV. In this capacity he took part as a delegate at the 13th ordinary general assembly of the DMV from June 27 to 30, 1917 in Cologne.
In the first World War
During the First World War , Orlopp became an active opponent of the war and in 1917 he joined the USPD . In April 1917 he was a member of the strike committee of the munitions workers at the Essen Krupp works. After the proclamation of the republic in 1918, Orlopp was elected to the workers 'and soldiers' council in his hometown.
During the Weimar Republic
On March 2, 1919, he was elected as a USPD representative in the Essen city council, of which he was a member until 1925. During this time Orlopp was active as a trade politician in various committees (finance, art, committee of the gas and water works, committee for bathing establishments and the slaughterhouse and cattle yard). Because of his eloquence, Orlopp quickly rose to become the dominant debater of the Independent Socialists, especially as an advocate of the cultural and political interests of the working population. His further political career took him on 18 September 1920 in the Rhine County Council , where he a member of the Commission for the provincial, hospitals and nursing homes and the Provincial Employment Service was Brauweiler. After six years he resigned from this office.
Since in June 1919 the "Association of Community and State Workers" in Essen had advertised the position of a paid branch manager, Orlopp took over this service for the organized community workers on June 15, 1919 on the advice of the local USPD representatives.
During the Kapp Putsch in 1920, Orlopp, as 2nd chairman of the Executive Council in Essen, helped organize the actions of the striking workers. When it came to the political future of the USPD in 1920, a battle vote led by Orlopp achieved the return of the "rest of the USPD" to the SPD .
In Essen, Orlopp, in cooperation with the local adult education center and the city library , initiated an educational program (with a focus on business and economics) that was considered exemplary in the association.
In 1924 Orlopps was elected first chairman of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) in Essen. In September 1925 he was appointed to the headquarters in Berlin. On November 15, 1925, based on the resolutions of the Frankfurt Association Congress of August 1925, the association's board of directors founded a special group for gas, electricity and waterworkers ("GEW workers"), whose management was entrusted to Orlopp. This entrusted the skilled metal worker with the care of the most important group of workers within the organization (the section comprised 58,275 members in 1928, i.e. 73.4% of all workers employed in the GEW works).
One focus of Orlopp's work was the fight against the privatization of the utility companies in major German cities. ( Private capital would like to leave the subsidy companies to the cities. The profitable public-sector enterprises, on the other hand, should be left to private capitalist exploitation. )
Further stages in Orlopp's career are: co-initiator of the Reich Conference of Works Councils of the "Association of Community and State Workers " on November 28 and 29, 1927 in the town hall in Mainz , of which he became secretary in 1928, head of the Reich section of GEW workers, Head of the works council department, representative of the association on the supervisory board of the Gas-Coke Syndicate, in 1929 also member of the supervisory board of the Economic Association of German Gasworks and member of the committee of the General Association of the German Gas Industry Orlopp wrote central articles for the new trade journal “Wirtschaft und Technik”. Other positions were: Deputy Reichsabteilungsleiter of the new Reichsabteilung A (municipal companies and municipal administrations with 225,000 members) from 1929, collaboration on the "Handbuch der public Wirtschaft" (Berlin 1930, the central reference work of the general association), appearance at the 1st International Conference of Personnel of the GEW (1st International Energy Workers Conference) in Kiel from August 29th to 30th, 1930, delegation to the Provisional Reich Economic Council of August 23rd, 1932, election to one of the two Reich department heads of the municipal companies and administrations (5th meeting from 18th to 30th August 1930) November 20, 1932).
time of the nationalsocialism
After the National Socialist seizure of power Orlopp pleaded for resistance actions, but worked actively in the "union" - the former association organ that had been brought into line - until June 1933, when he was dismissed from the Reich Office ("disciplined"). In order to protect himself from persecution as an active trade unionist, he left the German capital, opened an electronics store in Hanover and ran his own fruit farm in Bad Harzburg from 1934 to 1935. But in 1935 Orlopp returned to Berlin, became the owner of a butter shop in the Wedding district and remained politically neutral until the end of the Second World War.
Career in the GDR
Orlopp joined the SPD in May 1945 and was soon one of the forces within the Social Democrats who set course for a merger with the Communists. For this purpose there was a first meeting with Walter Ulbricht on April 30, 1945.
Orlopp became a member of the Magistrate and City Councilor for Trade and Crafts in Berlin from May 2, 1945 , in March 1946 he was elected Deputy Mayor and he was a city councilor in Berlin from 1946 to 1948 . Orlopp was a delegate of the Berlin party congress of the SPD, which decided to merge with the KPD on April 21, 1946 , as well as a delegate of the 2nd to 4th party congresses of the SED . Furthermore, from 1946 he was a member of the state or district management of the SED of Greater Berlin, until January 1949 also a member of the district executive of the SED Berlin-Reinickendorf .
From May to July 1947 Orlopp held the office of Vice President of the German Central Administration for Trade and Supply in the Soviet Occupation Zone . Since July he has presided over the German Central Administration for Inter-Zone and Foreign Trade and since 1948 the Central Administration for Inter-Zone and Foreign Trade at the German Economic Commission. On November 25, 1947, he signed the first Berlin interzonal agreement for the Soviet occupation zone , which provided for “lists of goods” totaling 312 million marks.
In 1948 Orlopp became a member of the German People's Council and in 1949 a member of the Provisional People's Chamber of the GDR . From October 7, 1949 - the day the GDR was founded - until 1951, he worked as head of department in the Ministry for Internal German Trade, Foreign Trade and Material Supply of the GDR (MIA). Orlopp made a bad prognosis for the West German economy, nevertheless - or precisely because of it - he was government representative for inner German trade until 1953. But he was unable to build an effective organization. Orlopp, however, played a major role in the growing trade with the communist states. In August 1953 he resigned from the Ministry of Internal German Trade, Foreign Trade and Material Supply for “health reasons”, but retained representative functions: honorary member of the Ministry and the Scientific Advisory Board for Foreign Trade. Orlopp was still active in other politics: since 1957 a member of the Presidium and Secretary of the Federal Executive of the FDGB and a member of the National Council of the National Front .
Orlopp belonged again to the People's Chamber of the GDR since 1953, was Vice President of the German Peace Council and a member of the World Peace Council.
In September 1959 he headed the FDGB delegation of the federal executive committee to Stuttgart, which however was refused entry at the 5th DGB congress.
Josef Orlopp died of a heart attack on April 7, 1960 in Berlin . His urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin-Lichtenberg .
Works (selection)
- [Speech]. In: 40th congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany on April 19 and 20, 1946 in Berlin . Vorwärts-Verlag, Berlin 1946, pp. 24-26.
- Collapse and departure of Berlin in 1945/46 . Berlin 1947,
- A nation acts across zone boundaries. Stroll through the history of domestic German trade . Berlin 1947,
- Live better through export and import . Berlin 1948,
- East and West in German foreign trade . Berlin 1948,
- Trade between the Soviet occupation zone and the western occupation zones of Germany . Berlin 1949,
- The way to free trade between East and West . Berlin 1955,
- A nation acts across zone boundaries. Stroll through the history of domestic German trade . Berlin 1957.
- German trade union unit . Edited by August Reitz , Franz Scheffel . Co-founded by Josef Orlopp and Theodor Brylla . Verlag Tribüne , Berlin May 1, 1959–1962.
- For the victory of the working class , memoirs (an orthodox interpretation of the labor movement from a Leninist point of view), not published.
Honors
On November 27, 1951, he opened the University of Applied Sciences for Foreign Trade in Berlin, which in future bore his name. 1954 Orlopp received the Patriotic Order of Merit of the GDR in silver; On the occasion of his 70th birthday he was awarded the Karl Marx Order . He was also the holder of the Fritz Heckert Medal (1956), the Ernst Moritz Arndt Medal , the German Peace Medal (1958) and the medal for participation in the armed struggles of the German working class from 1918 to 1923 .
On August 19, 1960, what was then Rittergutstrasse in Berlin-Lichtenberg was renamed Josef-Orlopp-Strasse . In Josef-Orlopp-Straße 92 and Rüdigerstraße 76, also in Lichtenberg, there was a memorial for Josef Orlopp until about 1990. The one in the street of the same name was made by the sculptor A. Wegwart, it was a bronze bust and was erected in 1968 on the occasion of Josef Orlopp's 80th birthday. It symbolized the honorary name of the rolling bearing factory of that time . It was on the street to the right of the building in a niche in the wall.
The monument in Rüdigerstrasse was erected in front of the Polytechnic Oberschule (POS) named after Josef Orlopp and probably disappeared when the school was renamed Ludwig-Erhard-Oberschule around 1991, but the base can still be seen (see picture).
In the seaside resort of Bansin on the island of Usedom, an FDGB rest home on the beach promenade was named after Orlopp. The building has since been demolished. The fallow area is referred to as the Orlopp area in the discussions about new development .
literature
- Werner Breunig, Siegfried Heimann , Andreas Herbst : Biographical Handbook of Berlin City Councilors and Members of Parliament 1946–1963 (= series of publications by the Berlin State Archives . Volume 14 ). Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9803303-4-3 , p. 204-205 (331 pages).
- Helmut Müller-Enbergs : Orlopp, Josef . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
Web links
- Information from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation
- 5 photos of Josef Orlopp in the Federal Photo Archive
- Rüdiger Zimmermann : Part 137. Biographical lexicon of the ÖTV and its predecessor organizations.
Individual evidence
- ^ Josef-Orlopp-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
- ↑ Information on the Orlopp memorial in Orlopp-Straße ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at bildhauerei-in-berlin.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Orlopp, Josef |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German FDGB functionary, MdV and member of the National Council of the National Front (GDR) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 29, 1888 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | eat |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 7, 1960 |
| Place of death | Berlin |