Leonhard von Bonhorst

Leonhard von Bonhorst, excerpt from the chain picture (1870)

Leonhard von Bonhorst (born June 20, 1840 in Kaub , † April 30, 1915 in Ravensburg ) was a member of the early social democratic movement and first party secretary of the SDAP . As a party executive he worked alongside Samuel Spier and Wilhelm Bracke for the party until he retired from politics in early 1871 after the first socialist trials in the newly founded Reich.

Life

The "chain picture" shows Bonhorst with other actors of the early social democratic party. The picture came into circulation after their arrest in 1870.

Bonhorst was the son of Franz von Bonhorst, an officer in Nassau's service . He himself was a mechanical engineer and designer by profession. Since the mid-1860s he gave polytechnical courses for mechanical engineers in Kaub. He also ran a machine agency and traded in melting pots but also in feather beds and other goods for the needs of craftsmen. He also made technical drawings and built machine and architectural models.

Since the 1860s he was active in the workers' education association of Wiesbaden and tried to steer it in a social democratic direction. In the spring of 1867 he came into contact with the Central Committee of the IAA in Geneva .

He had taken part in the establishment of productive cooperatives and included his own business in the financing. The cooperative was already insolvent in 1868/69 and Bonhorst lost all of his assets. He then devoted his entire existence to politics and the labor movement.

He was largely responsible for the merger of the workers 'associations from Frankfurt am Main , Wiesbaden, Offenbach am Main and Biebrich to form the Central Rhine Workers' Union. He came into contact with an already existing ADAV group and shortly afterwards became an authorized representative of the ADAV in Wiesbaden. In 1869 he undertook extensive agitation trips in central and southern Germany. In the same year he was involved in the successful strike of the tailors in Wiesbaden. There were repeated arguments with the party leadership about the expenses he had made, who was meanwhile without professional income. There were also different ideas about the party organization.

For these reasons, too, he joined the "ADAV rebels" around Spier and Bracke, who met on June 22, 1869 in Magdeburg together with Julius Bremer and Theodor Yorck , as well as the leaders of the Saxon People's Party , Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel who had prepared the founding of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party a few weeks later in Eisenach . Bonhorst was one of the co-initiators of the new party and took part in the Eisenach Congress .

In the same year (1869) a local association of the party was founded in Wiesbaden. Bonhorst's SDAP supporters remained in the minority in the Rhine-Main area, since the ADAV continued to dominate there until the unification in 1875.

In autumn 1869 he moved to Braunschweig , where he became the first and only full-time secretary of the new party. However, the remuneration was low and irregular. For this reason he temporarily worked as an accountant in the company of Wilhelm Bracke , the elected treasurer of the party executive and, alongside Samuel Spier, the leading head.

On the other hand, Bonhorst undertook long agitation trips as party secretary as far as Magdeburg and also induced August Bebel and Theodor Yorck to go on agitation trips of similar size, although both of these two pursued a civil profession. Bonhorst, on the other hand, was completely absorbed in party life and expected the same from others.

As an agitator, he was uncompromising and a rabid agent. As a result, he was quickly targeted by the authorities, which mainly put him at a distance from Spier. Since the spring of 1870 he has been arrested several times during ongoing meetings. During the Franco-Prussian War , the Brunswick Committee issued a manifesto after the Battle of Sedan against the continuation of the war, against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and for an honorable peace with France. The manifesto was drafted by Bonhorst essentially in the spirit of Karl Marx, who gave his original opinion ("The French need beating") after the capture of Napoléon III. changed and supported by Bracke and Spier.

Five days later, Bonhorst and the other committee members were arrested, chained and taken to the Boyen Fortress in East Prussia. They were held there for months without trial. At the beginning of 1871 Bonhorst was one of the accused in the Braunschweig high treason trial, the first socialist trial in the newly founded German Reich. Bonhorst, Bracke and Spier were initially sentenced to more than a year in prison. However, these sentences were reduced significantly after a review process and all of the defendants were released on parole.

Bonhorst withdrew from politics after his release.

literature

• Leonhard von Bonhorst: Explanation . In: Democratic weekly paper . No. 27 of July 3, 1869.
• [Obituary]: In: Vossische Zeitung of November 18, 1915.
• [Obituary]: In: Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung , Kiel, November 4, 1915.
• Georg Eckert : The correspondence between Leonhard von Bonhorst and Johann Philipp Becker. In: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch . Volume 43, 1962, pp. 131-172.
• Jutta Seidel : Bonhorst, Leonhard von . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, p. 54.
• Thomas Welskopp: Struggle for existence to be affordable. Professional politician in the German social democracy up to the Socialist Law. In: Lothar Gall (Ed.): Government, Parliament and the Public in the Age of Bismarck. Paderborn u. a., 2003 pp. 207-212 digitized
• C. [arl] Koch [public prosecutor]): The trial against the committee of the social-democratic workers' party. 1.) the businessman W. Bracke jun. in Braunschweig, 2.) the technician Leonhard von Bonhorst from Caub, 3.) the former teacher in Wolfenbüttel, Samuel Spier, now in Frankfurt a. M., 4.) the tailor journeyman Joh. Aug. Carl Kühn from Leipzig [...] on 23rd, 24th and 24th. Nov. 25, 1871. Represented by records. Braunschweig 1871. MDZ Reader

Web links

• History of the Wiesbaden SPD