Karl Mössinger

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Karl Mössinger (born February 13, 1888 in Eichstetten am Kaiserstuhl , † September 4, 1961 in Saarbrücken ) was a German social democrat , trade unionist and political activist in exile in France.

Life

Karl Mössinger's father, Karl Adam, was a farmer, he himself a trained locksmith.

Mössinger was from 1919 to 1924 authorized representative of the German Metal Workers' Association (DMV) in Aachen , and subsequently until 1928 party secretary of the SPD for the Aachen district.

From 1928 to 1933 Mössinger worked as state secretary of the SPD in what was then the Saar area . He came there with his partner and, from 1952, his wife Luise Mössinger-Schiffgens : “In 1928 Luise Schiffgens came back to Saarland with her two daughters and Karl Mössinger, state secretary of the Saar SPD. The couple became involved in building workers' welfare and in the united front against annexation to Hitler's Germany. Luise also taught at a party school. "

After the Saar area became part of the German Reich again on March 1, 1935 , the couple emigrated to France and were quartered in Revel (Haute-Garonne) . Heinrich Rodenstein , who was later in frequent contact with Mössinger, recalled: "The group housed in the" Hotel du Midi "also included the Reich emigrants Karl Mössinger, secretary of the Ulm metalworkers' association, and Luise Schiffgens, well-known SPD parliamentarian and her adult daughter Therese (?). ”Rodenstein is wrong here twice: Mössinger was, as already shown above, not a“ Secretary of the Ulm Metalworkers' Association ”and as someone who had lived and worked in Saarland since 1928, he was also not a“ Reich emigrant ”. Mössinger's ties to the Saar area also remained a point of reference for many of his political activities during his exile and in the period after the Second World War, as did Luise Schiffgens.

In exile Mössinger joined the Movement Free Germany for the West (BFDW), which also operated under the name Comité “Allemagne libre” pour l'Ouest (CALPO).

In 1943 Mössinger was one of the founders of the CALPO branch responsible for Belgium and Luxembourg, to which he belonged until 1945. After Röder and Strauss, however, he withdrew from this strongly communist-influenced organization and turned to SOPADE . Nevertheless, he went down in GDR historiography as a social democratic advocate of the KPD's united front policy .

Mössinger worked in the Confédération générale du travail (CGT), which was illegal under the Vichy regime, and belonged to its German language group . In addition, from 1944 he was chairman of the Union des Refugiés Sarrois en France (Association of Saar Refugees in France), of which Luise Schiffgens also belonged.

The acquaintance between Rodenstein and Mössinger, which has apparently existed since Revel, meant that their paths continued to cross, which Rodenstein reported several times:

“In the fall of 1944 I became a member of the construction workers' union. In the French trade unions, membership is only ever acquired for the current year. Karl Mössinger registered me - without asking me in advance - with the newly formed 'Fédération des Groupes Socialistes en France' (FGSE). He correctly assumed that I wanted to belong to an SPD in the future. I still have membership card no. 64, issued on July 25, 1945 and valid until December 31, 1945. Günter Marktscheffel has acknowledged the contribution from January to December . Under his leadership, a conference of German socialists took place in southern France in the spring of 1945, in which Karl Mössinger and I also took part. "

Karl Mössinger then also supported Rodenstein when he returned to Germany.

Mössinger himself remained in France until the end of December 1945 and, together with the refugee commissioner of the League of Nations, organized the repatriation of emigrants from the Saarland from France. From 1946 to 1953 he was a civil servant in the Saarland Administrative Commission and then in the Saarland Ministry of Economics.

Luise Schiffgens co-founded the Saarland Social Democratic Party in 1946 . Its state secretary was Karl Mössinger from 1953 to 1955. His last political office - undated by Röder and Strauss - was that of the chairman of the CDU-affiliated Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (BVN).

source

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless other sources are named, all of the following information comes from the article in the Biographical Handbook of German-speaking Emigration after 1933–1945 . The documents in the Federal Archives ( "Free Germany" movement for the West, RY 61, 1944-1945 / 1946 ), which also contain material on Karl Mössinger, were not evaluated .
  2. ↑ a b c FrauenSichtenGeschichte (ed.): ... groundbreaking. More women's street names for Saarbrücken! , P. 36
  3. ^ Heinrich Rodenstein: Revel 1935
  4. ^ CALPO - Committee Free Germany for the West
  5. ↑ For the large number of exile organizations active in France with reference to the Saarland, see: German Emigrant Groups in France , Federal Archives Signature RY 61 / V 232/13
  6. ^ Heinrich Rodenstein: August 1944 - The end of the German occupation
  7. ↑ Heinrich Rodesntein: Getting back to Brunswick and Henry Rodensteinstraße: Return with family
personal data
SURNAME Mössinger, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade unionist, social democrat, emigrant
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Eichstetten am Kaiserstuhl
DATE OF DEATH 4th September 1961
Place of death Saarbrücken