Karl Gandorfer

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Karl Gandorfer (portrait photograph 1919)

Karl Gandorfer , sometimes also Carl Gandorfer (born on February 23, 1875 in Pfaffenberg ; died on August 21, 1932 in Munich ) was a German politician of the Bavarian Farmers' Union (BBB), which was renamed Bayerischer Bauern- und Mittelstandsbund in 1922 . From 1928 he represented them in the German Peasant Party (DBP), which was formed throughout Germany .

As a mandate holder , Gandorfer was represented in various parliaments and political bodies during the last years of the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic , for example as a member of the Bavarian State Parliament (1913–1918 and 1919–1924) as well as the Reichstag ( Weimar National Assembly 1919/20 and Reichstag 1928–1932). In addition, after the accidental death of his brother Ludwig, he took his place and acted as chairman of the central peasant council in the newly proclaimed Free State , the Republic of Bavaria , under Kurt Eisner's presidency in the wake of the November Revolution. In this office he was indirectly involved in the Bavarian revolutionary government between November 1918 and February 1919.

Life

The entrance to today's Zollhof (photograph from 2010), the former property of the Gandorfer brothers, today a monument in the Pfaffenberg district of the Mallersdorf-Pfaffenberg community

Gandorfer was born as the son of a self-employed farmer in Pfaffenberg in Lower Bavaria. From 1881 to 1888 he attended elementary school . He then ran his own farm as a farmer in Pfaffenberg - at times together with his brother Ludwig Gandorfer . In 1911 he became mayor there. Politically, he was involved in the left-liberal Bavarian Farmers' Union, which temporarily (from the 1890s) formed the anti-clerical opposition to the Catholic Bavarian Center Party together with the Social Democrats in the state politics of Bavaria .

In 1913 Gandorfer succeeded in the course of a by-election for the Straubing Pastor Jakob Wagner, who had been recalled from the central faction of the state parliament , and was a member of the farmers' union in the Bavarian Chamber of Deputies (second chamber) until 1918 . There he quickly developed into a protagonist of the left wing of the BBB. As such, he tried towards the end of the First World War in autumn 1918, together with his brother Ludwig, who had switched from the SPD to the USPD in 1917 , to win over the rural population in Lower Bavaria for a revolutionary radicalization.

From June 1918, the Gandorfer brothers took 15-year-old Wilhelm ("Helmi") Liebknecht, a son of the leader of the Spartacus group , Karl Liebknecht , who was still imprisoned as a result of his anti-war engagement, on their agricultural property, the Zollhof. Later, until September 1918, the other siblings Robert and Vera Liebknecht also followed, as their parents found their stay in Berlin too unsafe.

During the November Revolution in Bavaria , Karl Gandorfer supported the overthrow of the Wittelsbach monarchy and the proclamation of the Free State of Bavaria and the Bavarian Republic as the figurehead of the so-called "Lower Bavarian Radicals" . After Ludwig Gandorfer's accidental death on November 10, 1918, he took the place of his brother in the Bavarian Revolutionary Government under Kurt Eisner ( USPD ) as Chairman of the Central Farmers 'Council (also known as the Parliamentary Farmers' Council) . In January 1919, Gandorfer was also elected to the Weimar National Assembly as a candidate for the BBB for constituency 25 (Lower Bavaria-Upper Palatinate) .

In Bavaria, after Eisner's assassination by a völkisch-anti-Semitic assassin, a political power vacuum had arisen in which the Central Council of the Bavarian Republic and the newly elected Landtag (since January 1919) mutually agreed to legitimize the formation of a government. When in April 1919 against the set up by parliament SPD - minority government under Johannes Hoffmann from the Central Council and the Revolutionary Workers 'the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed, some peasants' councils and the majority of followers attracted the Bauernbund behind who fled to Bamberg Hoffmann-government were, their support for Karl Gandorfer back. For the time being, however, he continued to head the Central Peasant Council, whose resigned members he replaced with left-wing farmers' groups who supported the proclamation of the Soviet Republic. In order to evade the threat of arrest in the turmoil of the struggle for the Soviet republic, Gandorfer went into hiding for a short time at the end of April 1919.

After the violent suppression of the Soviet Republic by Freikorps and Reichswehr associations , Gandorfer was able to regain his reputation in the farmers' union and was again a member of the Bavarian state parliament from November 1919 to 1924. In May 1928 he was elected to the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a candidate for the German Peasant Party (DBP) - in which he was a representative of the Bavarian Farmers' Union - for constituency 25 (Lower Bavaria) , to which he belonged without further interruption until his death.

In his final years, Gandorfer was not only a member of the Reichstag publicly against the rising National Socialism . In his role as mayor of Pfaffenberg, he had Heinrich Himmler, who had been the " Reichsführer SS " since 1929, expelled from the hall at a political event in 1930 .

Gandorfer died in August 1932 - about six months before the seizure of power of Hitler and his Nazi party - at the age of 57 years from the effects of diabetes disease infection.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Gandorfer in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History
  2. ↑ Carl Gandorfer - the pioneer of the Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture (online at karl-geisenfelder.de, accessed on September 18, 2014), quotation from it: “ ... about Gandorfer: The Pfaffenberg economist was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1913 by a by-election because the previous mandate holder, Straubing parish preacher Jakob Wagner, was forced to resign his seat in the state parliament because of his appointment as parish priest of Amberg. "
  3. ↑ Michaela Karl: Liebknecht's Children (online at www.literaturportal-bayern.de, accessed on September 14, 2014)
  4. ↑ Georg Köglmeier, Johann Kirchinger: Parlamentarischer Bauernrat, 1918–1920 in the Historisches Lexikon Bayerns (online www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de, accessed on September 14, 2014)
  5. ↑ Historical Association for Lower Bavaria: Negotiations of the Historical Association for Lower Bavaria , 2003, p. 215.
  6. ↑ Kurt Riezler / Karl Dietrich Erdmann: Diaries, Essays, Documents , p. 734.
personal data
SURNAME Gandorfer, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gandorfer, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (BBB; DBP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Pfaffenberg
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1932
Place of death Munich