Kuno Brandel

Kuno Brandel (born November 29, 1907 in Stuttgart , † September 15, 1983 in Baden-Baden ) was a German trade unionist , journalist and anti-fascist . He is considered a formative personality for the integration of the West German labor movement into the West after the Second World War .

Life

The trained toolmaker was a member of the German Metalworkers Association and the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) from 1923 . In the following years he was elected to the board of the metal workers' youth in Stuttgart and was a representative of this organization in the union youth cartel of the General German Trade Union Confederation (ADGB) and a regular contributor to various union magazines. In 1928 he was expelled from the KPD after a short membership and in the same year switched to the youth organization of the Communist Party Opposition (KPO) .

He was up to the transfer of power to the Nazis union activities in 1933, after which he worked in the underground on. In 1934 he was taken into custody by the Gestapo and held for several months. Shortly before being arrested again, he managed to escape to France in 1935 . From there he went to Spain and took part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side . After the fascists' victory , Brandel fled to France again, where he was imprisoned as a political refugee in Paris in September 1939 . He had previously resigned from the KPD-O. By receiving one of the danger visas for the United States approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt , Brandel finally managed to escape from Europe to New York in 1941 .

In New York Brandel worked again as a toolmaker and journalist, he also got in touch with the group around Jay Lovestone . After graduating, he worked for the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). He stayed in the United States for a total of 8 years, a time that would prove to be politically formative for him. After returning to West Germany in 1949, Brandel first became editor of IG Metall magazine, and from 1957 to 1961 he was editor-in-chief. In 1954, at the same time he was accepted into the IG Metall executive board, he was given responsibility for the press, radio and advertising. Since 1958 he was also a member of the supervisory board of Neunkirchner Eisenwerk AG.

From the end of the 1950s, tensions arose over the political course of IG Metall and its chairman Otto Brenner . Brandel advocated a more pragmatic trade union policy, advocated an opening up in economic and socio-political issues in line with the Godesberg program of the SPD , alliances with the workers' wing of the CDU and supported - which ultimately led to his disempowerment in March 1961 - in open contradiction Brenner the rearmament and rearmament policy of the federal government. According to the historian Julia Angster, this is primarily due to acculturation influences during Brandel's exile in the United States, which, like many other members of German exile , shaped him strongly in the direction of Western values ​​and in the sense of an open , pluralistic society. Brandel was a member of an informal but very influential personal network called the Circle of Ten , consisting of US and German trade unionists and Social Democrats. It existed from the end of the war until the 1960s.

In addition to a Western set of values ​​as a result of exile, it was in particular anti-communism , which began increasingly in the 1930s, that united the German members of the Circle of Ten with their American colleagues. Because of the dubious role of the Soviets in the Spanish Civil War, the so-called "Stalin Purges" from 1936 to 1938, and especially after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, the former communists broke with their convictions; a difficult and painful process even for Brandel, as Angster emphasizes.

Against this background, Brandel led the fight for the western integration of the West German trade unions from 1949, with ideal and logistical support mainly from the circle of ten, and initially within IG Metall. At that time, IG Metall, at least on the board, was still largely in the Weimar tradition of strict anti-capitalism and class struggle. The long-running internal disputes led to Brandel's dismissal as editor-in-chief and press officer in March 1961 - a procedure that caused a great stir among the public. Brandel officially resigned from IG Metall at the end of October 1961. The Düsseldorf program of the DGB from 1963, which is essentially the programmatic fundamentals followed the Godesberg Program of the SPD and the anchor of the West German unions in the market sealed basic order should confirm Brandels course a little later.

Brandel was then accepted into the board of IG Bau-Steine-Erden in 1962. Since the end of 1966 he was on the board of this union as a consultant for East-West issues and international relations, and he was again editor-in-chief of the union magazine. In 1967 Kuno Brandel criticized, in an open letter to the DGB chairman Ludwig Rosenberg , without prior consultation with the board of his union, the idea of ​​sending a DGB delegation to the celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution in Moscow . The IG Bau-Steine-Erden, which saw it as an "act of disloyalty" towards its board of directors, then removed Brandel from all offices. Then, with Lovestone's support, he was given a position in the ICFTU Brussels office , where he worked until his retirement in 1972.

literature

• Julia Angster: Consensus Capitalism and Social Democracy. The westernization of the SPD and DGB . Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56676-8 ( Ordnungssysteme 13; At the same time: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2000).
• Stefan Heinz : Kuno Brandel (1907–1983). In: Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the collaboration of Julia Pietsch: Emigrierte Metallgewerkschafter in the fight against the Nazi regime (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 3). Metropol, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-210-7 , pp. 459-465.
• Stefan Heinz : Exile and rebuilding of the union after 1945: Kuno Brandel and Fritz Rettmann - two paths through life from the point of view of the history of experience and memory, in: Stefan Berger (ed.): History of the union as a history of memory. May 2, 1933 in the trade union remembrance and positioning after 1945 (= publications of the Institute for Social Movements - Series A: Representations, Vol. 60), Klartext Verlag, Essen 2015, pp. 191–211.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Theodor Bergmann , “Against the Current”. History of the Communist Party Opposition, Hamburg 1987, p. 362.
2. ↑ Detailed report u. a. about the circle of ten in Spiegel No. 45/1959
3. ↑ Detailed report on Brandel's exclusion from IG Metall in Spiegel No. 14/1961
4. ↑ Brief report on Brandel's admission to the board of IG Bau-Steine-Erden in Spiegel No. 36/1962

Web links

• Archive of Social Democracy, Friedrich Ebert Foundation