Karl Helmholz

Stumbling stone at Dudenstrasse 10 in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Karl Helmholz (born September 12, 1873 in Halberstadt , † January 21, 1944 in Berlin ) was a German trade unionist and a victim of National Socialism.

Life and work in the empire

After completing elementary school, Helmholz learned the profession of typesetter and then joined the Association of German Book Printers . At the age of 20, his colleagues in Weimar elected him to the board of the local association of his union. In the following years, Helmholz played an important organizational role in the Weimar local association, in the Weimar district and in the Gauverband Osterland-Thuringia, where he held multiple mandates over the years . He earned his living as a proofreader in one of the 13 Weimar printing plants, probably at Straubing & Müller (formerly Bernhard Friedrich Voigt). In 1896 the unionized book printers in Weimar elected him to be their secretary. From 1898 to 1905 Helmholz took over the chairmanship of the traditional local association. Until 1902, the young proofreader also held the office of secretary, before he also took over the management office in the district that year. He was elected Gauleiter of the Gau Osterland-Thuringia (with the districts of Coburg , Erfurt , Gera , Gotha , Jena and Naumburg ) in 1905. Around 1905, Karl Helmholz also joined the SPD , without any particular party political activities being passed down from him. Helmholz drew national attention with his cultural-political activities.

In 1910 elected to one of the three full-time editors of the association journal “Correspondent for Germany's book printers and type foundry” founded in 1863. The paper appeared three times a week, more often than any other German trade union newspaper. The strong occupation of the trade union editorial team with three full-time editors was also unprecedented in Germany. Before the First World War, the circulation of the trade union newspaper of the best organized German trade union was 51,000 copies.

As a responsible employee, Helmholz prepared his union's participation in the International Exhibition for Book Trade and Graphics ( Bugra ) in Leipzig , which opened in 1914, and organized the participation of tens of thousands of colleagues.

War and revolution

After the outbreak of the war, the editorial staff of the “Korrespondent” quickly switched to the general “line of war” of the General Commission of Germany's Trade Unions : The Burgfrieden policy actually supported the war policy of imperial Germany. The “correspondent” briefly used a language that hoped with great confidence that the German arms would win and did not stop at chauvinistic resentment. Around the turn of the year 1914/1915, such nationalistic tones disappeared and, in view of the atrocities of war, gave way to a generally pacifist attitude at Helmholz. At the beginning of October 1916, the Helmholz military moved in together with his editorial colleague Karl Schaeffer . The 45-year-old initially stayed in Leipzig . In the November revolution of 1918/19, Karl Helmholz saw the beginning of a socialist future with euphoria, but warned against hasty socialization in the printing industry. Out of deep disappointment with the attitude of the majority social democracy, from the summer of 1919 on, Helmholz saw a clear left swing and a clear radicalization of the entire editorial team. For the editor, the Reichstag elections in June 1920 at the latest signaled the end of the illusions of a rapid democratic transition to socialist forms of economy. As an editor, Karl Helmholz reacted with an even stronger turn to cultural-socialist perspectives.

Weimar Republic

Helmholz took on a new area of ​​responsibility on October 1, 1920. He was assigned the editorial part of the newly appearing organ “Young Book Printer”. On the first association days after the World War, Helmholz had to stand against left-wing socialist opponents in the election as trade union editor, but was always elected with respectable majorities. Since 1922 - the year the remaining USPD and SPD merged - there have been no opposing candidates against Helmholz in elections.

During the Weimar Republic , Helmholz wrote several didactically well-prepared association stories that served internal union educational work. At the end of 1926, Karl Helmholz and his family moved from Leipzig to the new house of the Buchdruckerverband in Berlin-Kreuzberg . The three editors now lived and worked there (in addition to Helmholz, Willi Krahl and Karl Schaeffer ) and the entire executive board.

After moving from Leipzig to Berlin, Karl Helmholz played a prominent role in the choral society of Berlin printers and type founders, the “Typographia” (over 1000 members). In 1927 the "singing colleagues" elected him their 2nd chairman. In 1928 Helmholz supported the employment of the 32-year-old choirmaster Hugo Strelitzer , who broke new ground, felt obliged to the proletarian battle song and oriented himself towards the "great ensemble art of the Russians".

In the final phase of the Weimar Republic , Helmholz attacked the National Socialists head-on. In the printer's trade union journal, there were more articles confronting Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP with quotations from “ Mein Kampf ”. Also in the sheet of the apprenticeship department of the Association of German Book Printers there is often Helmholz's handwriting against the Nazis.

time of the nationalsocialism

Almost all board members and editors who lived in the trade union house of the Association of German Book Printers on Dreibundstrasse were arrested by SA men on May 2, 1933 and taken into police custody. The new rulers transferred Karl Helmholz from the Alexanderplatz police station to the detention center in Plötzensee without a trial.

Helmholz 'daughter Gertrud, who worked for the Berliner Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK), lost her job as a “boncent daughter”. From 1934 to 1938 his second daughter Frieda covered a Jewish company with her name that the Nazis destroyed in 1938. The family found a place to stay in a small apartment in a new block in Neutempelhof without the regular house searches being stopped. Helmholz, who repeatedly spoke out against the Nazis in public, was persecuted, repeatedly interrogated and arrested several times. Seriously ill, he came to the Steglitz hospital. Without the knowledge of his relatives, the doctors admitted him to the Wuhlgarten sanatorium in January 1944, where he was killed on January 21, 1944 by being given a poison injection.

Late honor

On June 7, 2013, a stumbling block was laid in front of the old association house of German book printers on the initiative of the Karl Richter Association to research the history and cultural traditions of book printers and Karl Helmholz and his roommates were commemorated in a separate brochure.

literature

• 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
• Rüdiger Zimmermann : The cultural socialist: Karl Helmholz (1873-1944). In: thought leaders and strategists. The trade union press in the graphic industry and its editors since 1863. Berlin 2016, pp. 184–202.

Web links

Commons : Karl Helmholz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Karl Helmholz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Correspondent for Germany's printer and type foundry from 1863-1932. Retrieved June 22, 2013 .