Joseph Seitz

Joseph Seitz (born October 28, 1864 in Unterköblitz (Upper Palatinate), † December 3, 1928 in Berlin ) was a German trade unionist.

Life and work in the empire

Joseph Seitz was born on October 28, 1864 as the son of a railroad man in Unterköblitz in what was then the district of Wernberg in the Upper Palatinate (today: Wernberg-Köblitz ). He learned the profession of typesetter in Schwandorf and in Kempten (Allgäu) . On his journey as a journeyman, the man from Upper Palatinate joined the German Book Printers Association in Tilsit in June 1883 (since 1892: Association of German Book Printers ). Seitz had to leave East Prussia during a local labor dispute. Further stops on his hike: Leipzig , Cottbus , Altenburg . The twenty-year-old assistant attended in AltenburgAdolf Vogenitz , a designated printer functionary under the Socialist Act, to whom Seitz owed important union impulses. Seitz 'hiking trails as a journeyman led him from Schluckenau in Bohemia via Ansbach to Passau .

Seitz moved to the Bavarian capital in May 1889. His actual union career began in Munich . As early as 1889 his colleagues elected him to the local Munich tariff commission. As its chairman, he was centrally involved in the great book printers' strike of 1891/1892, which lasted several weeks, in the struggle for the introduction of the nine-hour day, which ended with a disastrous defeat for the union . The defeat initially sealed the end of a Germany-wide collective bargaining agreement with entrepreneurs that had been regulating industrial relations since 1873. In the period from 1893 to 1896, the Munich resident held the post of regional leader on a voluntary basis (in the language of the time: district chairman). Since 1894 Seitz participated as a delegate in all national congresses of his union.

As a respected Bavarian Gauleiter, Seitz initially opposed the reintroduction of a collective bargaining association with the employers' side, but in 1896 he bowed to the vote of the general assembly of the Association of German Book Printers . He soon rose to become a recognized tariff expert in his union and took on central functions in the committees that settled labor disputes through arbitration. Between 1898 and 1899, employers and employees moved the collective bargaining office and collective bargaining committee to Munich at short notice . During this time Seitz was an assistant representative in front of both national bodies. In 1899, the two highest committees for regulating industrial relations returned to Leipzig. In the conflict over excluded association members who were in harsh opposition to the union's collective bargaining policy , the Bavarian pleaded for tolerance and re-admission of the excluded, who gathered in their own small trade union organization. From 1899 to 1904 Seitz acted as assistant chairman of the regional collective bargaining court in Munich, before his colleagues sent him to the office of Bavarian assistant chairman at the national level in 1904 (until 1918).

In 1904 the Bavarian Gaukonferenz elected him as a paid Gauvorsteher (annual salary: 2,100 marks). In the tense relationship with the Franconian colleagues who advocated a division of the Gau Bavaria, the new chairman was able to prevail and maintain the unity of the powerful regional association. Seitz held the office until 1918. With more than 5,000 members, the Gau Bavaria was one of the most developed within the association before the war. Always elected unanimously, Seitz was nicknamed "King of Bavaria" by the chairman of the book printers' union Emil Döblin . From 1902 to 1906 the Bavarian chairman also held the office of local chairman in Munich. Seitz was a member of the SPD without holding any prominent party positions. In contrast to many of his professional colleagues, Seitz did not stand out as a writer. His profession remained practical wage policy .

In terms of internal organization, the Bavarian pleaded for the merger of the two trade union “power centers” Leipzig and Berlin . His suggestion: to move the Leipzig editorial team of the influential “Correspondent for Germany's Book Printers and Type Foundry” to the seat of the association's executive committee in Berlin. In terms of professional policy, he remained stuck with the traditions of his trade union: He refused to accept unskilled workers and instead supported the establishment of a new labor union. Only after the First World War did he advocate the acceptance of women into the traditional union. During the World War, Seitz defended the official war policy of the General Commission of Germany's Trade Unions , which ultimately hoped for a victory peace. In contrast to other union leaders, Seitz abstained from all chauvinistic and annexionist tones.

On January 31, 1918, Emil Döblin , who had been chairman of the book printers' union for 30 years, died. The Würzburg general assembly from May 27 to June 1, 1918 - a kind of union rump parliament - elected Joseph Seitz as the new chairman. He took up the new office on October 1, 1918 and moved to the capital of the Reich. At the age of 56, he became the sixth chairman since it was founded in 1866 at the head of the best-organized German trade union.

Work in the Weimar Republic

As the new chairman, Seitz represented his union in the future at the board conference of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions (from 1919: General German Trade Union Federation ADGB). After the end of the war and the November Revolution, Seitz rejected far-reaching ideas of socialization in unison with other union leaders. Above all, the graphic industry is not ready for socialization. Instead, he opted for the “tried and tested course” of cooperating with the entrepreneur with the help of a differentiated collective bargaining system.

Until 1922, there was always a strong left-wing faction on the printer's union days. The opposition forces had their political base in the Leipzig and Berlin USPD and KPD milieu. Their criticism was directed primarily against the past war policy of the trade unions and the cooperation with the employers. However, the opposition forces at the trade union days did not succeed in pushing through their own personnel alternatives on the union board. The opposition gathered around the opposition newspaper "Der Graphische Block". Seitz strictly rejected organizational steps against the association opposition. (“A movement has never been stopped by repression.”) Despite “right-wing” positions, Seitz was always elected chairman with the votes of the opposition and was a symbol of the bipartisan unity of the printing union. With the return of the right wing of the USPD and its strong union affiliation in the SPD in 1922, an opposition largely disappeared at the national trade union congresses. As a member of the Provisional Reich Economic Council from 1920 onwards, Seitz shared the illusions of many trade union leaders that this body could be transferred to a full legislative chamber in the field of social policy. In the board conference at the beginning of 1919, Seitz participated in the commission that formulated “central union principles” for the post-war period. In the text, which reflects the reformist program of the free trade unions, a lot of collective bargaining and trade union experience of the printing union flowed into it.

In September 1919, Seitz headed the small German book printer delegation at the Lucerne Congress of the Book Printer International, which took the first steps to restore collegial cooperation after the war inferno. The delegates elected Seitz to the enlarged secretariat commission. It was only with the solidarity of the Union International that the German book printers succeeded as the only German union in having the association journal “Korrespondent” continue to appear three times a week during the period of inflation.

Close union activists posthumously emphasized two life achievements of the association chairman. In 1920 the Buchdruckerverband founded its own apprenticeship department with sustained support from Seitz. Like hardly any other German trade union, the printers influenced the content of the vocational training of their own offspring. Since the early 1920s, Seitz also supported (together with the association cashier Bruno Schweinitz ) the construction of a new union building in Berlin . This idea arose from his long-cherished union-political idea of ​​pooling union forces in Berlin. Early planning made it possible to save part of the association's assets in the phase of hyperinflation. The building in Berlin-Neukölln , planned and realized by the Bauhaus architects Max Taut and Franz Hoffmann in the New Objectivity style , moved in 1926 the printing works, the editors of the Association Gazette and the Gutenberg Book Guild . Joseph Seitz also found a new home with the other board members of the association in Neukölln.

Under Joseph Seitz's leadership, the Association of German Book Printers consolidated during the phase of economic stabilization in the Weimar Republic . With almost 90,000 members, the union recruited over 90% of the employees in the trade and exceeded the Christian union “ Gutenberg-Bund ” with 4,200 members many times over. Joseph Seitz died on December 3, 1928 in Berlin. His burial took place in the Munich forest cemetery . On All Saints' Day in 1929, the Association of German Book Printers unveiled its own grave monument in the forest cemetery.

literature

• Karl Helmholz : Strive for his example! In: Jungbuchdrucker. Volume 10, No. 1, January 1, 1929.
• Karl Michael Scheriau: fellow artists and colleagues. Origin, structure, mode of operation and objectives of the trade union organization of German book printers from 1848 to 1933. Libri-Books, Berlin 2000.
• Lothar Uebel (Ed.): Worked, unionized, used to. 75 years association house of the German book printers by Max Taut. Industrial Union of Media, Printing and Paper, Journalism and Art, Berlin, Stuttgart 2000.
• Rüdiger Zimmermann : Karl Helmholz and his friends. A “stumbling block” in front of the printer's house. Karl Richter Association for Research into the History and Cultural Traditions of Buchdrucker e. V., Berlin 2013.

Web links

• Correspondent for Germany's printer and type foundry from 1863-1932. Retrieved December 16, 2013 . 
• Willy Krahl: Seitz, Joseph. In: International Concise Dictionary of Trade Unions. Berlin, 1932, p. 1462.