Manfred Scharrer

Manfred Scharrer (* 1945 in Hersbruck , Franconia ) is a German historian and freelance author .

Life

Scharrer did an apprenticeship at Siemens-Schuckert in Nuremberg (1959–1963) and then worked until 1965 as a toolmaker at Siemens in Nuremberg and Berlin. In 1969 he graduated from the Berlin-Kolleg and then studied education, sociology and history at the Free University of Berlin . In 1967 he joined the union student community (GSG) and the Socialist German Student Union (SDS). 1969 worked as a consultant in trade union education work and in 1975 earned a diploma in educational science with a thesis on the history of German social democracy.

In 1969/70 he was a founding member of the KPD / AO (Communist Party of Germany / structural organization), which he left after a few months. Then he and others founded the newspaper “ The Long March - Newspaper for a New Left ” in 1972 , which appeared in 47 editions up to 1980 - with numerous articles by him, initially without naming him - and was primarily against the Maoist and “ revisionist “ Currents (SED / SEW / DKP) turned and fought the terrorism of the RAF and other groups. From 1975 to 1980 Scharrer was a research assistant at the Institute for Sociology at the Free University of Berlin, then did his doctorate in 1981 under Theo Pirker and Ossip K. Flechtheim with a thesis on the historical breakup of the SPD. He worked on the DFG research project “Political, Economic and Cultural Workers' Organizations 1918–1933” (1984/85) and was in charge of the DGB project “History from Below” (1885–1988). He also joined the Hans Böckler Foundation's publication project "Curriculum History of the Trade Unions" (1988–1990).

From 1990 to 1994 he worked in the education and training department of the ÖTV headquarters, office of the main board in Berlin. During the establishment of the ÖTV in the new federal states, he was concerned with the qualification of newly hired employees. He then headed the training and further education department of the ÖTV head office (1994–1996) and the ÖTV educational institution Mosbach (1996–2006). Since then Manfred Scharrer has lived as a freelance author in Berlin.

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In addition to several books, Scharrer also wrote numerous reviews and essays on the labor and trade union movement. Scharrer's central theme is the democratic history of and the totalitarian failure of a section of the labor movement , especially the German, in a critical examination of its misrepresentations and misleading intentions. Typical of this is his review of the book by Frank Deppe , Georg Fülberth a . a., History of the German Trade Union Movement , (Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-7609-0988-4 ) in which the Stalinist reading of the SED for the Federal Republic, especially its trade unions, was prepared. This critical-methodical approach and controversial character of his work also characterizes his dissertation on the division of the labor movement and the founding of the KPD and is evident in many smaller and larger publications on the theory and history of the labor movement, but above all in the book from 2002: “Freedom is always ... ”The legend of Rosa & Karl , which sheds light on the political position of the two KPD founders, their special relationship to democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat and then the way in which these were instrumentalized by the KPD and SED. The work The Reader's Letters Writer , the political crime story (not a detective novel) about a person who lived in the GDR and who wrote anonymous letters to the editor against the untruth of the SED propaganda and who was persecuted by the Stasi, finally caught and imprisoned, still belongs to them Context. In 2011 he presented a study and documentation on the establishment of free trade unions in the GDR in 1989/90. Using the example of the ÖTV and the FDGB trade unions, the conflict-laden struggle for the shape of future trade unions in united Germany is shown.

Fonts

• Labor movement in the authoritarian state. Rotbuchverlag, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-88022-161-8 .
• The split in the German labor movement. Ed. Cordelier, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-922836-18-6 .
• Adaptation to the bitter end: The free trade unions 1933. In: Manfred Scharrer (Hrsg.): Surrender without a fight: Workers' movement 1933. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, ISBN 3-499-15236-3 .
• Make History From Below: Local Union History Guide. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7663-3140-X .
• Workers and the idea of ​​workers: 1848 to 1869 (= trade unions in Germany. Vol. 1). Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7663-2158-7 .
• Organization and fatherland: trade unions before the First World War (= trade unions in Germany. Vol. 2). Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7663-2206-0 .
• The emergence of the free trade union umbrella organization. Reprint of the minutes of the negotiations of the first congress of the trade unions in Germany. Held in Halberstadt from March 14th to 18th, 1892. Edited and introduced by Manfred Scharrer. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7663-2196-X .
• "Freedom is always ..." The legend of Rosa & Karl. Transitverlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-88747-172-5 .
• The letter writer. The murder weapon "Erika". Berlin 2005, Transitverlag, ISBN 3-88747-207-1 .
• In search of the revolutionary workers' party. In: Aesthetics & Communication , issue 140/141, 2008, ISSN  0341-7212 .
• The establishment of a free trade union in the GDR 1989/90: ÖTV and FDGB trade unions in the German unification process. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-025432-7 .
• The myth and specter of the Bolshevik October Revolution in the German Social Democracy (Spartakusbund and USPD). Journal of the SED State Research Association, No. 41, 2017, Dreilinden Verlag Berlin, ISSN  0948-9878 .
• The "suppressed" report. In: Journal of the Research Association SED-State , No. 43, 2019, Dreilinden Verlag Berlin, ISSN  0948-9878 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Manfred Scharrer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Manfred Scharrer at perlentaucher.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://geschichte.verdi.de/stichworte/1968/zeitzeugen/scharrer
2. ↑ The review can be read in the Frankfurter Rundschau, No. 1 of January 2, 1979, documentation: Learning from history through half-truths