Leo Arons
Martin Leo Arons (born February 15, 1860 in Berlin ; † October 10, 1919 there ) was a physicist and social democratic politician . The Lex Arons was named after him, which ruled out an activity at a Prussian university with simultaneous membership in the SPD .
Live and act
Leo Arons came from a wealthy Jewish banking family in Berlin. His parents were Albert Arons (1826-1897), partner in the prestigious private banking house Gebrüder Arons , and Clara Goldschmidt (1837-1867). In 1887 Leo Arons married Johanna Bleichröder (1861–1938), a daughter of the banker Julius Bleichröder (1828–1907). His brother, the banker Paul Arons (1861–1932), married her sister Gertrud Bleichröder (1865–1917) a few years later.
After graduating from high school, Leo Arons studied chemistry and physics. As a scientist, he dealt with experimental physics . He also developed a mercury vapor lamp (also called Arons tube), which was later sold by the AEG under the name “Dr. Arons mercury vapor lamp ”was marketed. In 1890 he became a private lecturer at the Berlin Friedrich Wilhelms University . A year later he became the first assistant at the physical institute, but left this position in 1893. Since then he has been a private lecturer again.
Through the land reform movement , Arons came into contact with social democracy. Despite many doubts, especially about the strategy of the class struggle , he joined the SPD in the early 1890s. In doing so, he was helped by the commitment of the Social Democrats to only legally enforce their goals. Arons tried since the 1890s to bring together bourgeois social reformers and social democrats in a regular and relaxed group ("Schmalzstullenclub"). After 1900 Leo Arons, Albert Südekum , Josef Block and Wilhelm Kolb were among the influential anti-Marxists in the SPD.
With that Arons stood within the SPD on the side of the revisionists around Eduard Bernstein . In articles that Arons wrote for the party press after joining the party, he therefore called for the SPD to participate in the Prussian state elections. In doing so, he developed into an expert in three-tier voting rights . He played a leading role in the conception of the election campaign for the Reichstag election of 1903 . The press sometimes even referred to him as “the party's chief of staff for the election campaign”.
From 1904 to 1914 Arons was a member of the Berlin city council . His candidacy for a post on the city council failed, however. In addition to the SPD, Arons also supported the free trade unions and the "Ideal" building cooperative founded in 1907.
Arons largely financed the first specially built trade union building in Berlin from his own assets, as well as, together with Ideal, small apartments for workers. From 1908, Arons had to withdraw increasingly from political life for health reasons.
He was a member of parliament in the Neukölln district of Berlin . There, Aronsstrasse was named after him in 1973 (1926 to 1934 Leo-Arons-Strasse, 1934 to 1973 Sackführerdamm).
The Lex Arons
Soon after Aron's entry into the party, the Prussian authorities tried to remove him from his teaching post. The philosophical faculty responsible for the procedure opposed these attempts several times, since the faculty members are convinced that every university teacher is free in his political convictions and, moreover, a private lecturer is not an official who is bound by instructions. In 1897 , after Arons had spoken at a party congress of the SPD , Kaiser Wilhelm II said: "I do not tolerate socialists among (...) the teachers of our youth at the royal universities."
Not least through this expression of will, Wilhelm II instructed the Prussian government and Friedrich Althoff , the civil servant responsible for higher education , to find a solution against his reluctance. Since the government had no direct right to intervene in the employment of private lecturers, a law was passed in 1898 that now also made private lecturers subject to state disciplinary authority. Since this law was especially tailored to Arons, it was called "Lex Arons". This law was closely related to attempts by the emperor in the 1890s to prevent the Social Democrats from advancing further with the aid of exceptional laws. The Lex Arons was the only one of these exceptional laws that passed the parliamentary hurdle of the Prussian House of Representatives . The submission or prison bill brought in at the emperor's instigation , however, failed because of the majority in the Reichstag . Arons was suspended on the basis of this law. Due to the feared disputes with the affected faculties, Arons remained the only case to which the law was applied.
The case, and ultimately the law, sparked debates about the freedom of science in the public and especially in the scientific community . Immediately after the November Revolution, Arons was rehabilitated by the new government shortly before his death.
literature
- Leo Arons . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, pp. 11-12.
- Friedrich Klemm: Arons, Martin Leo. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 398 ( digitized version ).
- Thomas Nipperdey : German History 1866-1918. Volume I: The world of work and civic spirit. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44038-X , p. 575.
- Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society. Volume 3: From the German double revolution to the beginning of the First World War. Munich 1995, pp. 1221f.
- Hans-A. Black: Leo Arons - politician between the bourgeoisie and the labor movement. In: Union monthly journal . Volume 51, Issue 5, 2000, ISSN 0016-9447 , pp. 285-296., Fes.de (PDF; 129 kB)
- Stefan L. Wolff: Leo Arons - physicist and socialist. In: Centaurus. 41, 1999, pp. 183-212.
- Stefan L. Wolff: Leo Arons' mercury vapor lamp. In: Oskar Blumtritt, Ulf Hashagen , Helmuth Trischler (eds.): Circa 1903. Scientific and technical artefacts when the Deutsches Museum was founded. Munich 2003, pp. 329-348.
- Kurt Beutler : Friedrich Paulsen and the "case" of Leo Arons. Documents for the discussion about the “freedom of research and teaching” after the repeal of the Socialist Law (1890). Schroedel, Hanover 1977.
Web links
- Literature by and about Leo Arons in the catalog of the German National Library
- Press release from Humboldt University
- Rüdiger vom Bruch : Privy Councilors and Mandarins. On the political culture of the Berlin University in the late German Empire
Individual evidence
- ^ Stefan Berger: Reception of Marxism as a generation experience in the Empire . In: Klaus Schönhoven, Bernd Braun (ed.): Generations in the labor movement . Oldenbourg, Munich 2005, pp. 193-209, here p. 203.
- ↑ Aronsstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
- ↑ Quoted from Thomas Nipperdey : Arbeitswelt und Bürgergeist , p. 575
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Arons, Leo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Arons, Martin Leo |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 15, 1860 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 10, 1919 |
| Place of death | Berlin |