Löwenberger working group
The Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaft was an initiative founded in 1927 by the Breslau university professor Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy in the city of Löwenberg / Lower Silesia Province to improve living and working conditions in the Waldenburger Land .
History and foundation
After the First World War , the Versailles Treaty of June 20, 1922, split off East Upper Silesia from the German Empire and ceded it to Poland . As a result, large parts of the industry were lost to Germany and major economic problems arose. The Waldenburg coal mining district was one of the poorest areas in Central Europe in the 1920s . This led to the impoverishment of large sections of the population, which could not be remedied with state economic and social policy.
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke met the Waldenburg District Administrator Karl Franz in autumn 1926 and was shocked by the catastrophic living conditions there. That is why he planned an aid campaign for the region and brought journalists from abroad to Waldenburg to bring the grievances to the public.
On September 18, 1927, the university professors Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz , Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Hans Peters and the students Helmuth James von Moltke, Carl Dietrich von Trotha and Horst von Einsiedel met in Kreisau . They founded the Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaft , which performed scientific, educational and journalistic tasks. She wanted to bring people of all generations, denominations and social strata together to solve economic problems.
The first action was a colloquium in the Löwenberg Boberhaus in October 1927 , in which 70 people from different social groups took part. These included manufacturers, landowners, pastors, teachers, miners, union secretaries, professors and administrative officials. Committees were formed to invite workers, peasants and students to a labor camp.
The Löwenberg labor camp
The first Löwenberg labor camp took place from March 14th to April 1st, 1928 in the Boberhaus. It was organized by the Silesian Young Team of the Bundische Deutschen Freischar . Students, young workers and young farmers from all political camps gathered to work together to find a solution to the economic problems in the Waldenburg emergency area. Among other things, the topics "Worker performance and workers' income", "Consumption habits" and "Transport issue in terms of the impact on price formation" were dealt with.
Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg , Horst von Einsiedel, Carl-Dietrich von Trotha , Theodor Steltzer , Adolf Reichwein and Helmuth James von Moltke met under the direction of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy . Rosenstock-Huessy wanted professors and students from all walks of life to come together in order to develop concrete solutions to the problems at hand through joint reflection.
Only men took part in the first camp, in 1930 women also joined. The daily routine was as follows: It began with a run in the forest, followed by a speech by Rosenstock-Huessy on topics that concerned everyday work and the lives of young people and which was intended to promote spiritual cohesion. After breakfast, physical work was on the agenda. In the afternoons there were lectures and discussions. The participants had the opportunity to describe their life situation and thus improve mutual understanding for one another. Cultural events were offered in the evening. In the course of the first camp, 70 people from the older generation from leading positions were added to the 100 young participants. At these so-called leaders ' meetings, professors, high government officials, church representatives and union leaders came to lectures and debates in the Boberhaus.
A letter from Moltke's mother gives an impression of this labor camp: “Our Löwenberg excursion was a great success. Opinions of all shades were represented, from landowners to communists. And all had to express their opinions freely, whatever they did; so, so to speak, a friendly opposition came about. Helmuth sat at dinner next to a worker, an enthusiastic socialist trade unionist from the Zeiss works in Jena, and they got on so well that the worker finally gave him a book about the founder of the Zeiss works with a nice little dedication. Everyone was the same there (no titles like Professor or Bishop, etc., which Germans love so much). All opinions should be expressed, all equally strong. ”Looking back, Rosenstock-Huessy wrote in 1965:“ The example ran like wildfire through the countryside ... Our Silesian pattern proved irresistible ... The unemployed suffer from their outsourcing. ... Unemployed people have to 'belong' despite the lack of work, have to be able to find friends. But the workers have to stick their noses out of their division of labor, doctors as good as lathe operators, pastors as good as alpine farmers; Every evening and Sunday face must be taken out of it. Only those who alternate between the two faces, at work and at the party, become our fellow human beings! ... Without the entry of the non-unemployed, the unemployed could not and cannot make their peace with society and not even offer peace to one another. One hundred unemployed in their segregated camp ... are more a corps of revenge than a peace corps because they have to keep to themselves. "
At Moltke's request, the center deputy Heinrich Brüning obtained high financial support for the camp from the Reich President .
The labor camps were carried out twice more in 1929 and 1930. They met with an enthusiastic response and had a strong impact at home and abroad. They were imitated in every country in Germany. After 1930, there were disagreements in the Silesian group, which subsequently lost the support of socialist, church and industrial circles. After the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the movement lost its leading light: Rosenstock-Huessy was of Jewish origin and emigrated in 1933 to the United States. The ongoing global economic crisis ended the work of the Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaft.
With its personal composition and ideological character, the Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaft can be seen as the nucleus and forerunner of the Kreisau Circle .
The Silesian labor camps must be strictly distinguished from the Voluntary Labor Service (FAD), which was founded by the Brüning government in 1931, and the Reich Labor Service (RAD) introduced in 1935 in the National Socialist German Reich .
Known participants
- Horst von Einsiedel - member of the Kreisau Circle
- Helmuth James Graf von Moltke - lawyer and founder of the Kreisau Circle
- Hans Poeschel - District President in Liegnitz
- Adolf Reichwein - educator, economist, politician and member of the Kreisau Circle
- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy - legal historian and sociologist
- Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz - politician of the DDP
- Theodor Steltzer - politician
- Wilhelm Teichmann - manor owner in Brodelwitz
- Carl-Dietrich von Trotha - university professor and member of the Kreisau Circle
- Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg - lawyer and member of the Kreisau Circle
literature
- Peter Dudek: Education through work. Labor camp movement and voluntary labor service 1920–1935 . Leske & Budrich, Opladen 1988.
- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: The labor camp for young workers, young farmers and young academics in Löwenberg from 14.-31. March 1928 . Freie Volksbildung (new series of the archive for adult education) 3, 1928, pp. 217–224.
- Eugen Rosenstock and Carl Dietrich von Trotha (eds.): The labor camp. Reports from Silesia by workers, peasants, students . Eugen Diederichs, Jena 1931, pp. 87–116.
- Adolf Reichwein: A labor camp. In: Volkshochschulblätter für Thüringen, 10, 1928–29, No. 1, pp. 14–19.
- Johann Georg Keil, Hans Dehmel and others: The advance of the labor camp movement. History and experience of the "labor camp movement for workers, peasants, students 1925–1932". Edited by the German Student Union. Series: Studentenwerk-Schriften Vol. 6, de Gruyter, Berlin 1932.
- Ullrich Amlung, Nicole Hoffmann, Bettina I. Reimers (eds.), Adolf Reichwein and Fritz Klatt. A study and source volume on adult education and reform pedagogy in the Weimar Republic , 2007, ISBN 978-3-7799-1619-2 , pp. 79–85.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Andreas Möckel : Kreisau and the tradition of voluntary services. Retrieved March 4, 2011 .
- ↑ Günter Brakelmann : Die Kreisauer: momentous encounters. Biographical sketches for Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Carlo Mierendorff and Theodor Haubach . Publication series of the Research Association July 20, 1944 eV, Volume 4, p. 187.
- ↑ Detlef Graf von Schwerin : Then it's the best minds you have. The young generation in the German resistance. Piper, Munich 1991.
- ^ Andreas Möckel: Kreisau and the tradition of voluntary services. Retrieved March 4, 2011 .
- ^ Andreas Möckel: Kreisau and the tradition of voluntary services. Retrieved March 4, 2011 .
- ↑ Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: Service on the planet. W. Kohlhammer Verlag Stuttgart Berlin Cologne Mainz, 1965, pp. 48-52.