Lothar Popp

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Lothar Popps passport photo from the Hamburg State Archives , probably taken in the mid-1920s.

Lothar Popp (born  February 7, 1887 in Furth im Wald , †  April 27, 1980 in Hamburg ) was a German revolutionary and a leader of the Kiel sailors and workers' uprising .

Training and joining the party

Lothar Popp was born the son of a subordinate (royal Bavarian station master). He was Catholic and later left the Church. He attended elementary school and then did an apprenticeship as an assistant in Augsburg . At sixteen he ran away from home. From 1904 to 1914 he was a worker and small trader in Hamburg. He caught up with the mother; the father died early.

In 1906 he became a member of the Monistenbund and joined the SPD in 1912 . He had learned that August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht had refused the war loans in 1870/1871.

First World War and the time in Kiel

When the SPD parliamentary group approved the war credits for the First World War on August 4, 1914 , Popp joined the German Peace Society , which was located in the Curiohaus in Hamburg.

After his mother's death, he moved to Kiel , where he was able to take over three cigarette shops. According to Otto Preßler , Lothar Popp owned a “candy shop” on Holstenstrasse and one on Elisabethstrasse. According to Gertrud Völcker , he sold sweets that were made in Bordesholm by a sympathizer.

He was drafted in 1915 and served as a soldier for 20 months. At the beginning of 1917 he was released to Kiel as unfit for service to work as a compulsory locksmith at the Germania shipyard. He initially became active within the SPD, but did not yet play an active role in the March strike in 1917. He himself commented: "I had just come there". He lived near Wilhelmplatz on Ringstrasse.

With about a thousand men he founded the “Social Democratic Association Gross Kiel - old direction”, a local organization that only existed in Kiel. The first chairman was W. Sens, who had a wooden leg and therefore could not be withdrawn. Other board members were besides Popp Palavizini and Güth. The club later became part of the USPD. The Bremen Reichstag deputy Alfred Henke became chairman of the USPD district Wasserkante .

During the January strike in Kiel in 1918, he organized the first workers' council in Germany at a large meeting on Wilhelmplatz in Kiel. He was proposed as chairman from the meeting and elected by acclamation. After the council's first meeting a day or two later, he was arrested and sentenced to two months in prison for holding a banned meeting in Neumünster . After his dismissal, he was no longer employed at the shipyard. The USPD stewards looked for a new job for him for several days until they were able to place him at the Genimb-Motorenwerke brothers. He worked there for nine days and then called in sick. Until the revolution he was no longer firmly in work, which he could afford because he was financially secure.

In November 1918, together with Karl Artelt, he was the leader of the Kiel sailors' uprising , which triggered the November Revolution . During a meeting on November 4, 1918 between trade unions, parties and the naval admirals (e.g. Wilhelm Souchon ), Popp was also present as chairman of the Kiel USPD. After Artelt had spoken as a representative of the soldiers' council, Popp made his extensive "minimum requirements" for the military and political leadership. His demands were: elimination of the crown, abolition of all monarchies in Germany, a free people's republic, fair suffrage, freedom of the press and complete release of all political prisoners. He was elected chairman of the Supreme Soldiers' Council.

Looking back in 1978, he judged the effects of his work at that time as follows: “We were not revolutionaries, because we weren't fighting for a cause, we wanted to end a crazy cause. When we suddenly had power in our hands, I wanted to do something with the collapse of the empire. In votes I was able to beat Noske - who had come to stifle everything - but in practical work my group was inferior to Noske. We got tired. The revolutionaries didn't want the revolution, they wanted the National Assembly in Berlin. ”Lothar Popp sees the shift in political responsibility from the workers 'and soldiers' councils to the political makers of the national assembly , which - as he admits - was wanted by the workers and soldiers , the "first step towards the later fall of the Weimar Republic".

Popp went back to Hamburg in early 1919. He worked as a street vendor and showman a. a. on the Hamburg Cathedral and founded the association of outpatient traders and showmen. He rejoined the SPD at the unification party conference in Halle in 1922. He was a member of the Hamburg parliament from 1924 to 1931 and ran for the Reichstag several times without success.

time of the nationalsocialism

Popp moved to Danzig around 1931/32 , where he sold toys and self-made cleaning powder.

When the situation became increasingly critical in 1933, he went to Prague . When the Nazis marched in, he drove in a through car via Linz and Switzerland to Paris. With the occupation of France by the Nazis, he fled to Marseille. He was expatriated by the Nazis, but his name does not appear on the expatriation lists. Instead there is an Ernst Ferdinand Popp, who is probably one of his six sons. In 1941 he took the Winnipeg to Martinique. The Winnipeg had made two tours with Spain fighters to South America, a planned third tour could not take place because the north coast was blocked. Eleanor Roosevelt's organization then used the ship to get the persecuted out of Germany. Lothar Popp was able to come on board the day before leaving because he knew a sailor. Breitscheid and Everding were arrested before getting on board and were later extradited to the Nazis. The Winnipeg did not come to Martinique, but was seized by a British warship and directed to Trinidad. There the emigrants were locked in a camp. After a while, however, those who held US visas were allowed to continue their journey. Popp went to New York. The following entry can be found in the New York Passenger Lists for the period 1820–1957: Lothar Popp, 54 years old, single, businessman, born in Furth, Germany, visa issued in Marseille, France, last permanent address: France, Marseille meets on 6 June 1941 on board the SS Evangeline of Trinidad. BWI. in New York (accessible at ancestry.de). He was received by Max Brauer , Herbert Weichmann and Rudolf Katz and temporarily housed in a house rented by SPD emigrants.

Popp became an American citizen and opened the Lothar Popp Import and Export, Manufacturer of Educational Toys Microscopes and Musical Instruments store at 446 East St. 84th Street New York in New York . Together with Richard Kramer, he also founded the ELK Company at 240 East 86th Street in New York, where sweets, especially marzipan, were handcrafted and sold.

He wrote for the New People's Newspaper, published in America .

post war period

Popp came back to Germany in 1949/50, but only stayed a few months because he wanted to keep his American citizenship. He then often came to Germany for several months, the family also visited him in the USA, until he finally settled back in Hamburg. That was now possible without running the risk of losing his American citizenship. He remained an American citizen.

He became honorary chairman of the association of outpatient traders and showmen he founded. His son Werner Popp was temporarily first chairman after the war. Ernst Harberger, Lothar Popps' brother-in-law, was chairman of the specialist group for outpatient traders until his death. Harberger himself had an outpatient fruit stand in front of the monastery castle opposite the main train station.

After the death of his first wife Anna, Lothar Popp remarried in 1957 and ran a café with his new wife Martha. He was still an active member of the SPD.

He died on April 27, 1980 in Hamburg.

Appreciations

Lothar Popp was interviewed for NDR and WDR documentaries about his role in the Kiel sailors' uprising.

Publications

  • Lothar Popp with the assistance of Karl Artelt : Origin and Development of the November Revolution 1918. How the German Republic came into being. Behrens, Kiel 1919, reprint as special publication 15 of the Society for Kiel City History, Kiel 1983
  • Lothar Popp: Das Gesundheitsbrevier - Live long and happily by living sensibly. Möven-Verlag, Hamburg 1977

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Schröder: Social Democratic Parliamentarians.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ullrich: Interview notes
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Kuhl: Conversation Notes - Lothar Done.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Kuhl: Dispute.
  5. ↑ Bet: Gustav Noske , pp. 207–208
  6. ↑ Michels: We weren't revolutionaries.
  7. ↑ cf. Michael Hepp, expatriation of German citizens, Munich 1985
  8. ↑ Fittko: My way through the Pyrenees.
  9. ^ Fry: extradition on demand.
  10. ↑ For the Neue Volkszeitung see the English Wikipedia: en: Neue Volkszeitung .

More detailed information under: Sources and literature.

Sources and literature

personal data
SURNAME Popp, Lothar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German revolutionary and politician (November Revolution), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Furth in the forest
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1980
Place of death Hamburg