Joseph Treffert

Joseph Treffert (born May 20, 1883 in Bensheim , † February 8, 1963 in Munich ) was a German trade unionist and local politician .

Life and work at the time of the monarchy

Joseph Treffert was born on May 20, 1883, the youngest of ten children of a master butcher in Bensheim an der Bergstrasse . His family of origin was deeply anchored in the Catholic milieu. His father died when he was three years old.

After completing elementary school, Treffert learned the printing trade in his hometown and then went hiking with other members of Catholic journeyman's associations . In 1901 he joined the Association of German Book Printers as an assistant at Fredebeul & Koenen in Essen . Further stations of his wanderings (by bike) were Bremerhaven , Berlin , Dresden , Prague , Munich , Ulm , Stuttgart , Heidelberg .

As an active member of the Kolping Society , from August to October 1905, Treffert completed a course at the central office of the People's Association for Catholic Germany in Mönchengladbach . During his second job in Essen from October 1905 to May 1906, Treffert got into conflict with his union because of his criticism of anti-religious statements in a bookbinder's meeting, which led to his exclusion from the free trade union association of German book printers in December 1905.

Around 1906 member of the Christian book printers ' union Gutenberg-Bund and the German Center Party . During his stay in Siegburg in 1907, Treffert attended regular lectures at the University of Bonn . In the spring of 1908 the young printer received a "call" to the headquarters of the Volksverein for Catholic Germany as a workers secretary for the Mönchengladbach district and as an editor to the "Westdeutsche Arbeiterzeitung", the organ of the Catholic workers' associations.

In December 1910, the main board of the Gutenberg Association decided to appoint Treffert as a full-time editor at the association organ "The Typograph". South Hesse moved to the then independent town of Neukölln in February 1911 and took up his new post on March 1, 1911. At the start of the job, Treffert postulated four goals: Gaining equal rights for the Gutenberg Association vis-à-vis the Association of German Book Printers, expanding the collective bargaining community, representing the interests of the assistants, technical training for members.

As a devout Catholic, the new editor sharpened the tone towards the free trade union association, which he "unmasked" as atheist and socialist. At the same time he attacked the principals (the common expression for employers in the graphic trade) in "Typograph" who, in his opinion, unjustly preferred the free trade union association. After the Gutenberg Association was fully recognized as a collective bargaining partner during the war, at the end of the war, Treffert took part in collective bargaining as a “full” negotiating member.

In December 1911, the very active editor founded the "Association of Graphic Circle in the Gutenberg Association", which was supposed to serve the technical training of colleagues. From January 1914 he also edited the technical supplement “Graphische Nachrichten” as an accompanying further training organ.

Treffert played a special political role in the so-called “ trade union dispute ”, which concerned the legitimacy of Christian trade unions and the question of whether Catholics are also allowed to join non-Catholic organizations. The Catholic editor, who worked in a predominantly Protestant trade union, argued vehemently at the extraordinary congress of Christian trade unions in Essen in November 1912 and at the 3rd German workers' congress in favor of centrally organized interdenominational associations without the tutelage of the clergy.

After the outbreak of the World War, Treffert was drafted immediately in August 1914, but released in December 1915. He then took over not only the editing of the trade union newspaper, but also largely the function of the appointed union chairman Paul Thränert . In August 1916, Treffert moved to the War Food Office as private secretary of the Christian union chairman Adam Stegerwald (from November 1919: Reich Food Office ).

During the Weimar Republic

In 1919 Adam Stegerwald tried in vain to persuade his colleague to move with him to the Prussian Ministry of Welfare. Treffert remained in his old office as a consultant in a news department that was integrated into the Reich Ministry of Economics in September 1919. In this capacity he was a member of a commission of inquiry to investigate the background to the Kapp Putsch in March 1920.

Since he left the editor in 1916, Treffert worked part-time on his old trade union newspaper. The general assembly of the Gutenberg Federation elected him in 1919, 1923 and 1926 to the board of the Christian trade union. In 1926 he had to reject old friends in Essen who wanted to make him the main cashier. At the 14th General Assembly in 1930 he resigned from all functions due to overload.

Like his chairman Paul Thränert, Treffert avoided any polemical tones in the interwar period with regard to free trade union competition, but refused to work closer together for religious reasons.

As a member of the Center Party, the printer successfully ran as a city councilor for the then still independent city of Neukölln. In 1921 he was elected by the district council as a paid city councilor. As a municipal civil servant, he left the Reich Ministry of Economics at the same time. As a city councilor in Neukölln and as an elected center member of the Greater Berlin city election proposal of his party from 1920 to 1921 and 1925 to 1933, Treffert made housing policy and building policy his unrestricted domain on various social and organizational levels.

The center politician made a name for himself throughout the country as chairman of the supervisory board of the St. Joseph savings and settlement cooperative, which was founded in 1919 and planned and implemented the first Catholic settlement in Berlin. It was founded under the impression that the Prussian Minister for Science, Art and Public Education Adolph Hoffmann took office , whose anti-Christian statements aroused fear of a new culture war in the Catholic milieu .

With the votes of the two workers' parties, Treffert lost his office as a paid city councilor in 1924. According to the "dismantling regulations" issued by the Reich and Prussia, around 2000 city administration employees (including paid district councilors) lost their jobs. The dismissed initially worked for 2 years as managing director for the Reichsverband deutscher Bauproduktivgenossenschaften, which is closely related to the Christian trade union movement, before he transferred to the umbrella organization of Christian workers ', salaried employees and inseminators' unions as head of the department for housing and settlement at the German trade union federation.

Treffert, who as an autodidact had impressive expert knowledge, advanced to become the spokesman for the Christian trade unions and a source of ideas for the German Center Party on all housing and building policy issues. The “German Work. Monthly for the aspirations of the Christian national workers ”. He was able to gain a lot of experience as a participant at national and international conferences. In the broad political spectrum of the Center Party, the trade unionist, as a representative of the labor movement, emphatically voted in favor of maintaining the forced housing economy in order to preserve cheap housing for the workers.

His main interest was residential construction . Here he demarcated himself in a polemical manner from the social democracy and the free trade unions. From a Christian and ethical point of view, he saw the opportunity for emancipation for large families in the housing construction funded by the cooperative. In the Christian trade union milieu, he was regarded as the proven expert on questions of home finance through building societies and their legal basis.

In 1930 the general association of Christian trade unions and the cooperative organizations close to the Christian trade unions concluded an agreement with the Society of Friends of Wüstenrots, which was founded in 1919, in order to prevent further fragmentation in the field of building societies. The Christian trade unions received a seat and vote on the supervisory board. Treffert resigned from the service of the Christian German Trade Union Federation and took over the regional office of the Society of Friends of Wüstenrot on April 1, 1930 .

In addition to his managerial work at Bausparkasse, he was elected an unpaid city councilor by the Reinickendorf district assembly in 1930 . Treffert, deeply connected to the Christian trade unions by tradition, social awareness and spiritual inclination, was a networker who moved a lot in the Catholic milieu: supervisory board of Deutsche Bodenkultur AG, member of the supervisory board of Neuköllner Großhandelsgesellschaft, member of the board of trustees of a number of hospitals, retirement and youth homes and one Range of economic, religious, social, political, cultural and charitable organizations.

The time of National Socialism

In 1933, Treffert was dismissed for political unreliability and assaulted by the SA . In 1936, South Hesse moved to his old home and bought a house in Jugenheim . During the war he was conscripted to work in a clothing factory for soldiers in Bickenbach (Bergstrasse) . He was in strict opposition to the Nazi regime.

post war period

After the war he was CDU co- founder of the Starkenburg province . In his hometown of Bensheim, the CDU obtained an absolute majority in the first local elections after the war. Trefferts was elected mayor of Bensheim with votes from the CDU and SPD on March 21, 1946. Re-election as mayor with votes from the CDU and FDP for a further six years in June 1948. The material need and the housing shortage in the city (3400 evacuees and 2400 displaced persons) searched Treffert u. a. counter this by founding non-profit housing cooperatives.

Treffert was a co-founder and long-time vice-president of the Hessian Municipal Assembly and co-founder of the German Municipal Assembly and the Council of European Communities. He also represented his city in many other municipal and economic institutions. At the end of his second electoral term in June 1954, Treffert resigned from his office , honored as holder of the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class and holder of the Papal Order Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice . After leaving office, Treffert was made an honorary citizen of Bensheim. After the war, he did not take on any trade union offices, but tried to implement many of his old union policy goals at the local level. He held the office of chairman of the Bensheim adult education center until his death. Joseph Treffert died on February 8, 1963 in Munich . In Bensheim today a street commemorates the first freely elected mayor of the post-war period.

Works

• Memories of Essen In: Gutenbergbund, Essen local association. Festschrift on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the local association, connected with the St. John's Festival, on Sunday, July 11th, 1926, in the domed hall of the municipal hall building. Essen 1926, pp. 29-36.
• First Catholic settlement in Berlin. Their creation and development. Berlin 1932.
• 40 years of the federal magazine Der Typograph In: Der Typograph. Volume 42, No. 45, November 4, 1932.
• Local politics of the city of Bensheim. A report by Mayor Treffert on the achievements of the Bensheim city administration during his tenure from 1946–1954. Bensheim 1954.

literature

• 25 years of the Gutenberg Association. Historical review of the 25th anniversary of the Gutenberg Association. Gutenberg-Bund publishing house, Berlin 1919.
• Career of our mayor. In: Official bulletin of the mayor of Bensheim. No. 19, April 4, 1946.
• Emil Milo Blust: He deserves the crown of life. For the hundredth birthday of Bensheim's mayor and honorary citizen Joseph Treffert. In: Bergstrasse Anzeiger. 151 born May 20, 1983.
• Otto Büsch u. Wolfgang Haus: Berlin as the capital of the Weimar Republic 1919–1933. With a statistical appendix to the electoral and social statistics of democratic Berlin 1919–1933. De Gruyter, Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-11-010176-9 .
• Bensheim. Traces of history. Edition Driesbach, Weinheim 2006, ISBN 978-3-936468-31-1 .
• Seated in front of the door. Berlin city councilors and members of the magistrate persecuted during National Socialism from 1933 to 1945. Active Museum Association, Berlin, 2006, ISBN 3-00-018931-9 .
• Rüdiger Zimmermann : The busy Catholic: Josef Treffert (1883–1963). In: thought leaders and strategists. The trade union press in the graphic arts industry and its editors since 1863. Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86331-302-9 , pp. 213-218.

Web links

• Splitters, class traitors or unrecognized trade unionists? History and legacy of the Gutenberg Association 1893–1933. Retrieved April 30, 2010 .