Joseph Belli

Joseph Belli (born January 11, 1849 in Rammersweier near Offenburg , † August 19, 1927 in Gengenbach ( Baden )) was a German organizer of the social democratic distribution of literature and a writer.

biography

Joseph Belli, son of a farmer, attended the village school in Rammersweier until 1862, after which he took up employment as a farm worker. From 1864 to 1867 he completed an apprenticeship as a shoemaker in Offenburg. He became a member of the Catholic journeyman's associations and from 1867 to 1877 went on a journey through southern and western Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland. From 1870 to 1872 he did his military service.

In 1868 he became a member of the workers' education associations . He joined the Social Democratic Labor Party in 1869. Before that, he had already been involved in trade union and political activities on the road. In 1877 he settled in Kreuzlingen near Konstanz as an independent shoemaker. According to the Socialist Law , he helped to bring Social Democratic writings across the German-Swiss border.

At the end of 1879 he was commissioned by the German Social Democrats to organize the illegal transport of the social democratic organ, Der Sozialdemokrat , printed in Zurich , across the border to Germany. Under the direction of Julius Motteler , he built a smoothly functioning transport and distribution system for socialist German literature at home and abroad, which went down in history under the name of the Rote Post .

In 1880 Belli took part in the congress of German social democracy held at the Swiss Castle Wyden because of the Socialist Act . From 1882 to 1883 he was imprisoned in Austria for revolutionary activities. In 1890 he returned to Germany and until 1919 worked as an authorized signatory at the social democratic publishing house JHW Dietz in Stuttgart . In addition, he was employed as a cashier for the Württemberg state organization of social democracy until 1903.

He published his memoirs in several party magazines, which he published in 1912 under the title The red field post under the Socialist Law . From 1919 he lived withdrawn in Gengenbach.

In Konstanz, on the site of the former Chérisy barracks, the Joseph-Belli-Weg and in Offenburg the Joseph-Belli-Straße are named after him.

Works

• The red field post under the Socialist Law. With an introduction: memories from my childhood, teaching and traveling years . JHW Dietz, Stuttgart 1912. Table of contents
  • The red field post under the Socialist Law. With an introduction: memories from my childhood, teaching and traveling years . JHW Dietz Nachf., Stuttgart 1921. Digitized FES
  • Heinrich Gemkow (Ed.): The Red Field Post. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1956.
  • Hans J. Schütz (Ed.): The red field post under the Socialist Law. JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin / Bonn 1978, ISBN 3-80120029-9 .

literature

• Review: J. Belli, The red field post under the Socialist Law. With an introduction: memories from my childhood, teaching and traveling years. Stuttgart 1912, published by JHW Dietz Nachf. 171 pages. Price tied to 1 mark . In: The New Time . 30.1911-1912, Volume 2 (1912), Issue 53, pp. 643-644. Digitized FES
• Heinrich Gemkow: Epilogue to Joseph Belli . In: the same (ed.): Die Rote Feldpost . Pp. 253-285.
• Ernst Engelberg : Revolutionary Politics and Red Field Post, 1878-1890 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1959.
• Belli, Joseph . In: Lexicon of socialist German literature. From the beginning to 1945. Monographic-biographical presentations . Leipzig 1964, pp. 104-105.
• Heinrich Gemkow: Belli, Joseph. In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, p. 40 f.
• Markus Bürgi: Belli, Joseph. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Web links

• Literature by and about Joseph Belli in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Joseph Belli in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library