Marxist working school

The Marxist Workers' School (abbreviation: MASCH or MASch) was an educational institution founded in 1925 by the Berlin district leadership of the KPD , primarily for workers, which developed into an important educational institution. Co-founders were Hermann Duncker , Johann Lorenz Schmidt , Eduard Ludwig Alexander . Hermann Duncker became the head of MASCH . After they came to power, the National Socialists dissolved the Marxist workers' schools in the spring of 1933.

history

→ Main article : Worker education

The Marxist workers' school stands in the tradition of the workers' culture movement with its industrial and workers' education associations . Under the reprisals of the Socialist Law , social democratic and workers' associations were also newly founded as advanced training associations. The proletarian associations opened workers' libraries, e.g. B. 1861 in Leipzig, where August Bebel was chairman of the library commission of the local workers' association. He accordingly formulated the goal of knowledge, art and culture of the civil guardianship snatch and "the existing knowledge that can be seen, what use our own revolutionary struggle for emancipation of the working class." In addition, the supporters of the stepped association forward even then for a political formation a .

After the split in the German labor movement (the USPD split off from the SPD and the KPD was founded ), the communists, under the impression of World War I, clearly pursued the goal of a socialist revolution similar to the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. The young Soviet Union was the model. The November Revolution of 1918 in Germany and the formation of workers 'and soldiers' councils and even council republics were largely supported by the communists, giving them incentive and their historical raison d'etre.

In addition to the ideological confrontation with the SPD, the KPD also had a new confrontation with the National Socialists in the Weimar Republic , which not only took place politically and during the election campaign, but also led to open and sometimes militant street fights and street battles.

From the KPD's point of view, its supporters had to be politically and intellectually trained, aligned and hardened beyond the previous social democratic and trade union educational and social goals.

The establishment of the Marxist Workers' School in 1926 was a logical consequence.

As early as 1932, MASCH had increasingly become the target of state repression. On November 25, 1932, the central building of was Bobby and Political police busy, arrested several people, confiscated the teacher directory. House searches of lecturers followed.

aims

• MASCH saw its task in spreading communist ideas. The theoretical foundations of Marxism and the emerging Leninism were conveyed. In other words, the aim was "to create a generally accessible teaching facility in which the working population of Berlin should be given the opportunity to learn the basic doctrines of unadulterated Marxism and their application to all areas of proletarian life and struggle".

• Specifically, it was also about tools for communist agitation and propaganda in word and art. Interested lay people were trained in the design and creation of propaganda material by artists from the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists (ASSO for short, ARBKD for short).

• In addition to historical or current political content, medical topics, advances in technology and natural sciences and, of course, community issues were discussed. There were courses in shorthand , typing , Russian , English , criminal law , social and local politics, law and lectures on topics from culture, the arts, literature, film, radio, photography, theater, music, natural sciences (Einstein spoke on the topic of What der Workers must know about the theory of relativity ), medicine, sports, sexuality, children, education, the Soviet Union, foreign languages ​​(including Chinese, Japanese and Esperanto), psychoanalysis and individual psychology, rhetoric, librarianship, orthography and grammar, arithmetic and problems of women and adolescents . Fascism in its Italian and German forms was also repeatedly analyzed.

• In individual cases, MASCH supported visits abroad, such as the 1932 China trip by sociologist and sinologist Karl August Wittfogel .

• In many cases, participants in the MASCH joined the KPD under the impression of the training courses and propaganda.

• The MASCH should reach as broad a mass as possible all over Germany. In 1932 there were MASCH offshoots in 36 large German cities as well as numerous branches in small towns, including u. a. in

Teachers, lecturers and officials at MASCH (selection)

Dr. Andreas Peglau (Berlin) published a copy of the extract from the teachers' directory 1931/32.

In addition to the employees and functionaries of the KPD, lecturers , teachers and lecturers were committed politicians, artists and scientists who were open to the labor movement. Among them were u. a .:

Students, course participants at MASCH (selection)

Students and participants were recruited from different strata of society. In many cases, interested unemployed people used this time for their education. Course participants were u. a .:

Working method and results

The education took place in courses, sub- courses and the semester training courses or lectures. In addition, steamer training trips and day courses were organized, and Soviet films were shown. There were eight-day schools for officials, teacher schools, day courses for the unemployed and the like. a.

The courses for blue-collar workers only cost a few pfennigs and the teachers worked free of charge. In order to reach workers who could not take part in the courses regularly through home study, the booklets of the Marxist Workers Training (MAS) History of the International Labor Movement and Political Economy were published by Duncker, Wittfogel and Goldschmidt .

The KPD saw "the bourgeois and socialist so-called" universities "" as opponents or competitors. Apparently, the MASCH was quite successful in comparison to these, at least the universities close to the SPD were probably not used to the same extent by the Berlin population, which was negative for representatives of the Social Democrats, which were responsible for government until 1930 in Germany and until 1932 in Prussia :

“Concerned about the 'purely numerical successes' of the MASCH, Leo Friedjung recommended in the monthly journal of the Reich Committee for Socialist Educational Work,' to draw the necessary conclusions for [...] the own training of party members and those who sympathize with the movement ', because' thousands of young people Workers go through the courses of the MASCH and are trained there in accordance with the instructions of the Comintern, thousands of new propagandists are bred here. "

The Marxist Workers' School, however, evidently proceeded quite undogmatically in its practical work. Already in the subtitle it referred to itself as "The College of the Working People". It was also used extensively by members of other social groups such as the "intelligentsia" and no one was evidently excluded because they belonged to the " bourgeoisie ". In some cases even "representatives of opposing views" were specifically invited. An "internal report" from 1927/28 stated that three quarters of the listeners were non-party.

The MASCH had 1925 25 listeners 1931/1932 then 5000. The number of teachers increased to 160. Partial came 700 listeners into a single evening event. In the winter semester of 1929/30 alone, 613 evening lectures were held; in 1932 there were around 2,000 courses. Both the technical staff and the teaching staff worked free of charge (ibid., P. 76f.). Some of the lecturers were neither members of the KPD nor were they party-bound in any way. The decisive criterion for acceptance as a MASCH teacher has become more and more: "Are you against fascism too?" (Ibid., P. 154). The January 1932 issue of the MASCH magazine Der Marxist emblazoned the slogan: "Against the Nazi theories!"

More connections

• Artists like Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill supported MASCH by making their apartments available after the SA destroyed several lecture rooms in 1931.

• Einstein himself taught at the Marxist Workers' School at the suggestion of Anna Seghers until he emigrated . He was constantly in contact with other left-wing people such as John Heartfield , Egon Erwin Kisch , Jürgen Kuczynski , Willi Munzenberg , Erwin Piscator , Annie Reich and Karl August Wittfogel . He had shown sympathy for “socialist” ideas in other ways as well.

• Since 1932, a circle of friends and discussion groups made up of members of the Berlin Marxist Workers' School has gathered around the economist Arvid Harnack and his wife Mildred . These included the former Prussian minister of culture, Adolf Grimme , the locksmith Karl Behrens , the couple Greta and Adam Kuckhoff and the manufacturer Leo Skrzypczynski. Arvid Harnack wanted to train them to help build a free and socially just Germany after the end of the Nazi regime.

MASCH in Austria

In Austria, before the annexation to Nazi Germany , the KPÖ also formed a MASCH , which is also referred to as the Marxist evening school in various sources . Arnold Reisberg was one of the organizers and later head . In 1932 Egon Schönhof was elected to the board of MASCH in Vienna . The school met in a pub in the First District . Here in January 1933 he gave a first lecture against fascism and national socialism .

See also

In the tradition of MASCH there are currently (2018) schools, publishers and activities that use the abbreviation MASCH , but should not be confused with the MASCH of the 1920s. Examples:

• The Marxist Evening School Hamburg - Forum for Politics and Culture eV (short form MASCH Hamburg ) has existed since 1981 .

• Neue Impulse Verlag , founded in 1990, publishes the MASCH scripts , theoretical writings in the tradition of the Marxist working-class schools . (Authors include Willi Gerns , Robert Steigerwald , Nina Hager and Thomas Metscher ).

• The Marx-Engels Center Berlin offers MASCH courses , so u. a. 2016 the MASCH Basic Course Marxism - Part VI: The Communist Manifesto.

• There is a Marxist evening school in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg , which is run by the Marxist Workers' School Association and offers a wide range of training courses.
• The "Marxist Evening School - Forum for Politics and Culture" has existed in Bremen since 1983. The events take place in the Villa Ichon .

literature

• Literature by and about Duncker:
  • Hermann Duncker: Introductions to Marxism . Vol. 1. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1958, Vol. 2 Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1959.
  • The Marxist. Marxist workers school. Training magazine . Responsible Ed .: Hermann Duncker. (Reprint of the 1931 edition, No. 1–3, 1932, No. 1–5.) Politladen, Erlangen 1971. (= Politladen-Reprint 11) ISBN 3920531183 ; ISBN 9783920531182 .
  • Hermann Duncker: Selected writings and speeches from six decades . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1984.
  • G. Griep, A. Förster, H. Siegel: Hermann Duncker - teacher of three generations . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1976.

• So far, the new ISP Verlag in Karlsruhe has published:
  • MASCH Course History Volume 1 and Course Political Economy Volume 1
  • Hermann Duncker: Basic economic terms

• Gabriele Gerhard-Sonnenberg: Marxist workers' education in the Weimar period (MASCH) . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1976. ISBN 3-7609-0245-6 . contents
• Klaus Kinner , Dieter Müller: Marxist Workers' School (eV) (MASCH) . In: Simone Barck , Silvia Schlenstedt , Tanja Bürgel, Volker Giel and Dieter Schiller (eds.): Lexicon of socialist literature. Your story in Germany until 1945 . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart / Weimar 1994. ISBN 3-476-01237-9 , pp. 322-325.
• Lars Wächter: The Influence of Marxism on the Person of Bertolt Brecht and His Dramatic Work With special consideration of his didactic pieces and the "Measure", Chapter IV. "Therefore into Marxist studies. Marxist knowledge shows the way! - Brecht and the Marxist workers' school (MASCH) ", diploma thesis 2003, 109 pages, grade: 1.0 in Grin.com , accessed January 31, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Online article by the Berlin Institute for Critical Theory , accessed January 31, 2018.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad} Dr. Andreas Peglau: The Marxist Workers' School MASCH (excerpt 2 from “Unpolitical Science?”) In Andreas Peglau Psychoanalysis called January 25, 2018.
3. ^ Horst Gebauer: Workers' Libraries in Leipzig. In: Lending Libraries, Workers' Libraries, Bookhalls . Ed .: City and District Library Leipzig 1989, ISSN  0863-2049 , ISBN 3-86061-001-5 , p. 31.
4. ↑ Dr. Johann Schmidt: Five Years of Marxist Workers' School in Trend online newspaper 09/2016 , accessed January 31, 2018.
5. ↑ Ursula Hermann: From the everyday life of a workers 'association 1891 to 1901. The social democratic workers' association of Lichtenberg-Friedrichsberg in minutes and reports. FIDE Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-931363-17-8 .
6. ^ Reichskriminalpolizeiblatt of April 12, 1934 in Albert Rosenfelder , accessed January 25, 2018
7. ↑ http://www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd0916/t050916.html
8. ↑ Nick Brauns online , accessed January 31, 2018.
9. ↑ Glaessner 1989, p. 267,131 in Peglau Psychoanalysis  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed January 25, 2018  
10. ^ Gabriele Gerhard-Sonnenberg 1976: Marxist Workers Education in the Weimar Period (MASCH) . Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag , Cologne, ISBN 978-3-7609-0245-6 , pp. 81, 154
11. ^ Gabriele Gerhard-Sonnenberg 1976: Marxist Workers Education in the Weimar Period (MASCH) . Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag , Cologne, ISBN 978-3-7609-0245-6
12. ↑ Siegfried Grundmann 1998: Einstein's files: Einstein's years in Germany from the perspective of German politics , Springer, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-540-63197-2
13. ↑ MASCH Hamburg online , accessed January 31, 2018
14. ↑ MEZ Berlin online ( Memento of the original dated February 1, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 31, 2018 
15. ^ Marxist Evening School Hamburg online , accessed January 31, 2018
16. ↑ Marxist Evening School - Forum for Politics and Culture Bremen online , accessed September 30, 2019