Konrad Haenisch

Konrad Haenisch (1918)

Benno Fritz Paul Alexander Konrad Haenisch (born March 13, 1876 in Greifswald , † April 28, 1925 in Wiesbaden ) was a German journalist , editor and politician ( SPD ).

Life

1893 Haenisch was charged with " social democratic (the activities" with a classmate suicide committed) in Greifswald from school directed and in a mental hospital admitted. In 1894 he began an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Leipzig , where he made contact with social democratic circles. His family (conservative Prussian officials and academics) found out about this, had him kidnapped and forcibly sent to the Bethel institution . Only when friends published the events in the Leipziger Volkszeitung did the family stop the activities against Haenisch.

In Leipzig he worked from March 1895 to 1898 for the "Leipziger Volkszeitung". During this activity he made first contacts with Parvus , with whom Haenisch had a lifelong friendship (own pseudonym "Parvulus"). He began to be actively involved in the Leipzig SPD and wrote his first work for the SPD theory magazine Die Neue Zeit published by Karl Kautsky .

In 1898 Haenisch worked briefly in Ludwigshafen , at the Palatinate Post , which belonged to the right wing, "revisionist" wing of the SPD. There he was released after a short time because of his stance against revisionism .

Then he moved back to Saxony in January 1899, this time to Dresden . Here he was a member of the editorial board of the Saxon Workers' Newspaper , an important organ of the left wing of the SPD; shortly before that, Rosa Luxemburg was editor-in-chief there. When the local editor-in-chief , Georg Ledebour , gave up his office in April 1900, Haenisch left the editorial office and went to Dortmund , where he worked as an editor for the Rheinisch-Westfälische Arbeiterzeitung from 1900 to 1905 . In Dortmund, Haenisch developed a keen interest in cultural life and also wrote theater reviews for the newspaper's feature section .

From 1905 to 1907 Haenisch was back in Leipzig, where he again wrote for the Leipziger Volkszeitung , under the editor-in-chief of Franz Mehring . During this time he began working with Paul Lensch . In 1907 he returned to Dortmund to join the Arbeiterzeitung . In the Dortmund SPD, he was involved on the side of revisionism opponents. Together with Rosa Luxemburg , Haenisch propagated the mass strike as a means of political combat.

In 1911 he moved from the provinces to the capital Berlin, where he worked for the SPD party executive as head of the “literary central office for leaflets and agitation brochures”. At the same time, he taught as a lecturer at the Berlin workers' education school.

In 1913 he ran for the first time for the Prussian state parliament . Together with Otto Braun and Adolf Hofer , he was elected for the Niederbarnim - Oberbarnim constituency , the then largest Prussian state electoral district. Haenisch remained a member of the Prussian Landtag for the SPD until his death in 1925.

The First World War began in August 1914. Haenisch rejects the war credits , but in October switched to the course of the SPD majority, which supported the war credits. Together with Paul Lensch and Heinrich Cunow, he formed the Lensch-Cunow-Haenisch group in the course of 1915 . The group tried to justify the position of the SPD majority on the war in a Marxist way and was close to Parvus , who took a similar position. In this context he worked from 1915 to 1919 for the magazine Die Glocke published by Parvus .

In the wake of the November Revolution Haenisch was in November 1918 - initially with Adolph Hoffmann (USPD) - Minister of Culture of the first SPD-led Prussian state government and led the Ministry even after Hoffmann's resignation until the failure of his education policy as a result of the Weimar school compromise 1921. During his tenure, the ministry banned in December 1920 a. a. the world premiere of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen . Haenisch appointed the non-party Islamic scholar Carl Heinrich Becker as Undersecretary of State. Becker later took over the ministerial office and played a key role in shaping the cultural policy of the social democratic governments of Prussia.

Memorial plaque for Konrad Haenisch in Wiesbaden

In 1922 the Prussian Minister of the Interior appointed Severing Haenisch as the regional president of the administrative district of Wiesbaden . He held the office until his death in 1925. During the so-called Ruhr occupation in 1923, Haenisch was expelled from the French occupation zone . Nevertheless, he was committed to the Franco-German understanding during this time . Haenisch was concerned about the threat to parliamentary democracy from extreme forces from the left and right and became involved in the Republican Reichsbund from 1921 and in the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , of which he was a founding member, from 1924 . Haenisch was an honorary doctorate from the University of Frankfurt .

Family and offspring

Konrad Haenisch was a cousin of the sinologist, Mongolist and Manchurist Erich Haenisch .

Haenisch had been married to Wilhelmine Bölling, the daughter of a lathe operator from Dortmund, since 1901. The couple had a daughter, Elsa, who emigrated with her Jewish husband from Hamburg to the USA in 1938, where she lived in Florida, became a US citizen in 1945 and died in 1988, and four sons: Walter (1906–1938, executed in Moscow) , Ernst (journalist, founded the Oberbayerische Volksblatt in Rosenheim with a US license in 1945 ), Eberhard (killed in World War II) and the youngest son Götz.

Works

• Ferdinand Freiligrath : We are the force! Selection of political and proletarian poems. With biographical sketch and explanatory afterword by Konrad Haenisch. 3. Edition. Gerisch, Dortmund 1910.
• Schiller and the workers. Appendix: 1. Schiller Chronicle, 2. On Schiller Literature (= treatises and lectures on socialist education. Vol. 6). Kaden, Dresden 1912.
• The agitation on the young workers. From the speeches of the Landtag member Konrad Haenisch in the sessions of the Prussian House of Representatives on May 11 and 12, 1914. Ebert, Berlin 1914.
• War and social democracy. Three essays. Auer, Hamburg 1915.
• Where is the main enemy? Verlag der Internationale Korrespondenz Baumeister, Berlin 1915.
• German Social Democrats - Social Democratic Germans. Speech (...) delivered on March 3, 1915 (...). Landgrave, Chemnitz 1915.
• The German worker and his fatherland. Verlag der Internationale Korrespondenz. Berlin-Karlshorst 1915.
• Social Democracy and National Defense. Vorwärts bookstore, Berlin 1916.
• The German social democracy in and after the world war. With an appendix: On the bibliography of socialist war literature (= war-political individual writings. Vol. 6/7). Schwetschke, Berlin 1916.
• Franz Klupsch : The baiting of Jews. A serious threat to the state and economic reconstruction of Germany. With a letter of introduction from Konrad Haenisch ( Economy and People. Writings on the rebuilding of Germany and recovery of our people. Ed. By the German Economic-Political Society, Berlin). Berlin 1920.
• State and university. A contribution to the national education question. Publishing house for politics and economics, Berlin 1920.
• New paths in cultural policy. From the reform practice of the German republic. Dietz, Berlin 1921.
• Gerhart Hauptmann and the German people. Dietz, Berlin 1922.
• Lassalle . Man and politician. With a portrait of Lassalle by Jakob Steinhardt and 10 facsimile supplements. Schneider, Berlin 1923.
• August Bebel . Schneider, Berlin 1923.
• Parvus. A sheet of memory. Publishing house for social science, Berlin 1925.
• Johann Plenge : In the days of coup in 1918/19. From my correspondence with Konrad Haenisch. With a letter to Philipp Scheidemann dated November 8, 1918. Bredt, Münster (around 1934).

literature

• Wilhelm Stapel : The intellectual Germany and the republic. Open letter to Konrad Hänisch. Hanseatische Verlags-Anstalt, Hamburg 1921.
• Walter Wittwer: Haenisch, Konrad. In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon. Dietz, Berlin 1970, p. 182 f.
• Robert Sigel: The Lensch-Cunow-Haenisch Group (= contributions to a history of Bavaria in the industrial age. Vol. 14). Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-428-03648-4 .
• Wolfgang Herber : Reformer of Prussian school policy. The President of the Government Konrad Haenisch (1876–1925). In: Wiesbaden Courier. Vol. 45 (1989), H. 197 of 26./27. August 1989, WK-Magazin, p. 6.
• Matthias John: Konrad Haenisch (1876–1925). "And from that moment on he became someone else" ( BzG - small series of biographies ). 2nd, supplemented edition. Trafo, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89626-471-0 .
• Erich Weidner: Konrad Haenisch. From Greifswald high school student to Minister of Culture of Prussia. In: Heimathefte for Mecklenburg and Vorpommern. Vol. 15 (2005), H. 3, pp. 14-18.
• Matthias John: Selected letters from leading social democrats to Konrad Haenisch and his letters to third parties. Trafo, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89626-410-9 .
• Wolfgang Hofmann:  Haenisch, Konrad. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , pp. 442-444 ( digitized version ).
• Heinz Dieter Tschörtner : Konrad Haenisch and captain. In: Gerhart-Hauptmann-Blätter. Vol. 11 (2009), H. 1, pp. 7-10.
• Jürgen Seul (Ed.): Rudolf Lebius . Letters to Konrad Haenisch. From the life of a social democratic journalist. Contributions to Rudolf Lebius research. Volume 1. 3rd edition, Verlag ePubli, Berlin 2018, ISBN 9783746728254 .

Naming schools, streets

• Konrad Haenisch High School, Berlin
• Konrad-Haenisch School, Frankfurt am Main
• Haenischstrasse, Frankfurt am Main
• Haenischstrasse, Dortmund
• Konrad-Haenisch-Strasse, Hanover

See also

• Cabinet deer
• Cabinet Braun I

Web links

• Literature by and about Konrad Haenisch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Konrad Haenisch in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Haenisch, Benno Fritz Paul Alexander Konrad. Hessian biography. (As of January 16, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Walter Wittwer, p. 183.
2. ^ Gabriele Stammberger , Michael Peschke : Well arrived - Moscow. The exile of Gabriele Stammberger 1932-1954. Basisdruck Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-86163-082-6 (autobiography of Walter Haenisch's wife).