Julius Moses (politician)

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Julius Moses 1868–1942

Julius Moses (born July 2, 1868 in Posen ; died September 24, 1942 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp ) was a German politician ( USPD , SPD ), member of the Reichstag , and a physician who was committed to social medicine and socio-political issues in the Weimar Republic .

biography

He was born as the son of the Jewish tailor Isidor Moses (1837–1892) and Pauline (1843–1907), née. Levin. He grew up in poor conditions. Four of his eight siblings died young. After graduation in 1888 he studied medicine at the University of Greifswald , where he in 1892 with a dissertation on the hemophilia doctorate was. In 1893 he opened a private practice in the north of Berlin .

In 1896 he married Gertrud Moritz (1874–1943, victim of the Holocaust), they had three children. The son Erwin Moses (1897–1976) managed to emigrate, as did the son and later X-ray doctor Rudi Moser (1898–1979), the daughter Vera (1900–1943) fell victim to the Holocaust. The couple separated in 1913, and Moses lived with Elfriede Nemitz (1893–1979) from 1916, they had two children, including the later Bremen politician Kurt Nemitz (1925–2015). Moses and Elfriede Nemitz were forced to separate in 1935 after the National Socialist race laws were passed.

In 1895 Moses gave his first political speech at the March celebration of the German Liberal Workers' Association and there demanded a memorial for the fallen in 1848. In 1902 the "Jewish era" of Julius Moses began. From 1902 to 1910 he was editor of the weekly Generalanzeiger in Berlin for the entire interests of Judaism with a circulation of 25,000, from 1904 to 1906 the satirical newspaper Schlemiel appeared . In 1910 he became the publisher of Hausarzt , organ of the Association of General Practitioners in Berlin. At his suggestion, Thomas Mann wrote the essay The Solution to the Jewish Question in 1907 . This came about as part of an intellectual survey initiated by Moses and was published together with 97 other statements from prominent personalities from the fields of art, culture, literature, science and politics. In contrast to the previous intellectual surveys by Isidor Singer and Hermann Bahr , in Moses' survey for the first time a considerable number of participants spoke out in favor of a Zionist solution to the “Jewish question”. Moses himself also sympathized with Zionism at this point .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, Moses was in " protective custody " from June to December 1933 . After the National Socialist race laws were passed in 1935, he separated from his non-Jewish partner. In the same year Moses was forced to move into a Jewish house in the Berlin district of Tiergarten . In 1938 his license as a general practitioner was withdrawn. Moses was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp on July 7, 1942 , and died there at the end of September 1942 under unexplained circumstances. A surviving prisoner reported that he found Moses in a room in August "lying on the floor, only poorly covered with a blanket, very hungry, but full of hope for a better future."

Political career

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag

Moses joined the Social Democratic Party in 1912. He advocated the dissemination of sexual hygiene knowledge and contraceptive measures. With his propagated “ birthing strike ” he made himself extremely unpopular in conservative circles because of the demographic goals of the militarists, who wanted Germany to have a military superiority through high birth rates.

In 1913 he took part in the founding of the Social Democratic Medical Association. From 1920 to 1932 he was a member of the Reichstag . He was first on the board of the USPD . Since 1922 he was active in the party executive of the SPD .

1924 to 1933 he was editor of the medical doctor es. There he was committed to a “reform of the entire health care system in the radical social sense” (Nadav). He called for better social conditions for the working class. He defended himself against Section 218 , against women working during pregnancy and against the prevailing housing shortage. In 1928 he published numerous articles in social democratic magazines about human experiments that had become known . In 1930 he was instrumental in the development of guidelines for novel therapeutic treatments and for carrying out scientific experiments on humans. He was an early warning of Adolf Hitler's plans and his views on medical tasks.

In the Reichstag, Moses advocated a strong health policy, as in this speech of March 6, 1931:

“Health policy is part, perhaps the most important, of general policy. I have always taken the position that we should always judge all our political measures, all legislative proposals, all decisions in the committees according to the impact they have on public health. "

Commemoration

Julius Moses stumbling block

Since 1992 one of the 96 memorial plaques for members of the Reichstag murdered by the National Socialists has been commemorating Moses near the Reichstag in Berlin .

A stumbling block has been laid in front of his former home in Berlin-Moabit , Bundesratufer 9 .

literature

  • Astrid Blome et al. (Ed.): The solution of the Jewish question: A survey by Julius Moses in 1907. Ed. Lumière, Bremen 2010, ISBN 978-3-934686-83-0 .
  • Holger Böning : People's doctor and prophet of horror. Julius Moses. A Jewish life in Germany. Ed. Lumière, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-943245-40-0 . Review on H-Soz-Kult
  • Holger Feldmann-Marth:  Moses, Julius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 205 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Dieter Fricke : The correspondence of the former Reichstag member Dr. Julius Moses. In: Dieter Fricke: Jewish life in Berlin and Tel Aviv 1933 to 1939. Von Bockel, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-928770-87-X .
  • Thomas Grafe: The loss of hegemony of liberalism. The “Jewish question” as reflected in the intellectual surveys of 1885–1912. In: Yearbook for Research on Antisemitism 25 (2016), pp. 73-100.
  • Norbert Jachertz: Julius Moses: “There is no medicine without politics”. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt. Volume 103, No. 6, 2006, pp. A-328, B-287, C-2720
  • Nicole Mayer-Ahuja: Mass unemployment, social policy and the health consequences. The survey of doctors by Reichstag member Dr. Julius Moses from the crisis year 1931 (= modern history of medicine and science. Volume 10). Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1999.
  • Daniel Nadav: Julius Moses: his "Jewish era" . In: Labor Movement and History. Festschrift for Shlomo Na'aman on his 70th birthday . Edited by Hans-Peter Harstick , Arno Herzig , Hans Pelger. Trier 1983, pp. 82-100. (= Writings from Karl-Marx-Haus 29)
  • Daniel Nadav: Julius Moses (1868–1942) and the politics of social hygiene in Germany. Bleicher, Gerlingen 1985.
  • Kurt Nemitz : Julius Moses and the 1913 birthing strike debate. In: Yearbook of the Institute for German History. Edited and introduced by Walter Grab. Volume 2, 1973, Tel Aviv 1973, pp. 321-335.
  • Kurt Nemitz: The efforts to create a Reich Ministry of Health in the first phase of the Weimar Republic 1918-1922. In: Medical History Journal. Volume 16, 1981, pp. 424-445.
  • Kurt Nemitz: Preserving the spiritual legacy in a meaningful way. In memory of the doctor and parliamentarian Dr. Julius Moses. Special print from medicine and Judaism. Lectures at the commemoration event in Dresden on the occasion of the November pogrom 1938. Self-published by the Association for Regional History and Politics Dresden e. V. Special issue of the historical sheets. Dresden 1994.
  • Andreas Jens Reuland: Human experiments in the Weimar Republic. Books on demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1823-0 (doctoral thesis Heidelberg 2003 under the title: Human experiments in the Weimar Republic and Julius Moses' "Fight against experimentation" )
  • Michael Schneider (Ed.): Julius Moses: Pacemaker of the social democratic health policy in the Weimar Republic. Lectures on the occasion of the exhibition opening on December 15, 2005 in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Berlin (= History Discussion Group. Vol. 65). Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Historical Research Center, Bonn 2006, ISBN 3-89892-474-2 ( PDF; 7.5 MB ).
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Moses, Julius. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 17: Meid – Phil. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-22697-7 , pp. 161-166.

Web links

Commons : Julius Moses  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Julius Moses  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933-1945. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1991, ISBN 3-7700-5162-9 , p. 403.
  2. ↑ Report by Hermann Wolff in: Das Parlament No. 51 of December 16, 1988, p. 12. Quoted in Schumacher, MdR , p. 403.
personal data
SURNAME Moses, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1942
Place of death Theresienstadt concentration camp