Moritz Rittinghausen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moritz Rittinghausen, steel engraving by Otto E. Lau (1891)
Moritz Rittinghausen

Moritz Rittinghausen (born November 10, 1814 in Hückeswagen , † December 29, 1890 in Ath , Belgium ) was a German advocate and theoretician of direct democracy , formerly a socialist and politician. He lived temporarily in Belgium in the Vormärz and was already emerging there as a socio-political figure. As a democrat he took an active part in the revolution of 1848/49 . After emigrating during the Reaction Era, he returned to Germany in the course of the New Era and began to get involved in the labor movement. He was one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party and was a member of the Reichstag before he was expelled from the parliamentary group after differences.

Pre-march

He came from an influential family in Hückeswagen. The grandfather was already mayor. The grandmother came from the old, originally French family of the de Blois. The father was also mayor and actuary in Hückeswagen. Moritz Rittinghausen attended high school. There are different details about his further life. If you follow Wilhelm Heinz Schröder, he was a businessman in Cologne after graduating from high school. After Fäuster, he studied law and lived in Belgium . There he already appeared as a person who thought and acted socio-politically. In 1837 he wrote an open letter to the king denouncing the social problems in the country. He later returned to Germany.

Since the 1840s he represented socialist ideas and emerged as an author of political and economic writings. From 1846 he lived in Cologne. He took part in the Free Trade Congress in Brussels in September 1847. He acted as a defender of the protective tariff . Friedrich Engels criticized him in a post as a " German protectionist " and " generally bland fellow ."

Before 1848, Rittinghausen worked for various newspapers such as the Kölnische Zeitung , the Aachener Zeitung, the Trierer Zeitung or the Kölner Gewerbeblatt.

Revolution 1848/49

In 1848 Rittinghausen was a member of the preliminary parliament in Frankfurt and belonged there to the left. He agreed to the well-known motion by Friedrich Hecker , in which it was demanded that the pre-parliament should remain in place until the actual National Assembly convened. Instead, the liberal majority pushed through the formation of the Fifties Committee . Rittinghausen was also a member of this committee.

In Cologne Rittinghausen belonged to the Democratic Society . This developed into an influential political group in the city. The majority of the leading figures came from the educated middle class . Members of the Communist League , such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, were also involved.

During the revolution of 1848/49 he worked for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung . In doing so he came into closer contact with Marx. According to his own statements, he partly supported and partly fought his efforts during this time - depending on whether Rittinghausen thought things were sensible or wrong. Usually the latter was the case. At least once he claims to have saved Marx from expulsion.

In the spring of 1848 he took part in the development of an election program for the election to the National Assembly of the Democratic Society. He also took part in drafting addresses for the government and the king. He later wrote a petition to the National Assembly on nationality policy. In 1848 he published the text " On the organization of the state industry. " In it, among other things, he called for the nationalization of the railways.

In 1849 he was co-editor of the Westdeutsche Zeitung in Cologne, until it had to cease publication as a result of the victorious counter-revolution. After the defeat of the revolution, Rittinghausen first emigrated to Paris . Against the background of the takeover of power by the later Napoleon III. Rittinghausen moved to Brussels in 1851 , where he continued to work as a journalist.

Politicians in the labor movement

Rittinghausen returned to Germany in 1858 after the beginning of the New Era and lived as a writer in Cologne. There he was a co-founder of the democratic "Political-Sociable Association".

Rittinghausen observed the emerging labor movement with sympathy. However , he rejected the centralized organization of the ADAV . Occasionally he gave lectures in the party. In 1867 he ran in vain for the Reichstag of the North German Confederation . Together with supporters of the first International (IAA), he founded a social democratic electoral association at the beginning of 1868. In 1869 he was one of the founders of the SDAP .

He also took care of municipal affairs in the city of Cologne. So he called for the abolition of the census suffrage and pleaded for the incorporation of Deutz . He managed to collect several thousand signatures for it. Later he promoted the purchase of the defense systems surrounding Cologne from the military administration. He was also supported by MPs from other parties.

In 1869 and 1872 he was a German delegate at the IAA congresses in Basel and The Hague . Because of his language skills, he also worked as an interpreter in Basel. He was a member of a court of honor that should rule on a dispute between Bakunin and Liebknecht during the Basel Congress .

He ran for the SDAP in 1877 for the constituency of Solingen for the Reichstag . Because Rittinghausen also received the votes of the Catholic voters from the south of the constituency, he was able to win the constituency. After the Reichstag was dissolved in the wake of the attacks on Wilhelm I , Rittinghausen lost his seat in the Reichstag to the conservative District Administrator Melbeck , because this time the Catholics voted for the District Administrator. After the new Reichstag passed the Socialist Law , the institutions of the Social Democrats were also smashed in the Bergisches Land. Only the parliamentary group could legally continue to work. Social democrats could also run for elections. Rittinghausen prevailed against the candidate of the center in the runoff election in the Reichstag election in 1881 and entered the Reichstag again. In the Reichstag, he spoke on topics such as the state's obligation to care for the poor, the right to work and campaigned for the Polish language in the Polish-influenced parts of Prussia. He belonged to the very moderate wing of the Reichstag faction, which was sharply criticized by August Bebel , for example .

Rittinghausen evidently went his own way in the party and parliamentary group. He had not taken part in either the secret meetings in Wyden Castle or in Copenhagen and had announced that he would not support all of the resolutions. The last decisive point for the break was that in 1883 he had not voted with his parliamentary group in a vote in the Reichstag together with a few other "deviants". The dispute over a trade agreement with Spain escalated because Rittinghausen did not want to submit to parliamentary group discipline because he saw the contract as beneficial to the economy, especially in his constituency. He was then expelled from the parliamentary group.

Bebel also agitated against Rittinghausen in the Solingen area. Georg Schumacher ran as a Social Democratic candidate in the Solingen constituency. An attempt to enter the Reichstag as an independent candidate failed. After the election he fell seriously ill and moved to live with his daughter in Ath, Belgium .

Rittinghausen was criticized a lot, including by Friedrich Engels , Wilhelm Blos and Karl Kautsky - they had different political views. Kautsky went into detail on Rittinghausen's ideas in an essay on parliamentarism.

Moritz Rittinghausen is an important figure in the Cologne labor movement in the founding phase of the ADAV, the IAA and the "Eisenachern" from 1869. When he was buried in the Melatenfriedhof on January 5, 1891, not only comrades from Solingen and Cologne took part, but also delegations from Belgium and France. The Kölnische Volkszeitung , which is close to the center, honored him as one of the most respected democrats. His competitor in Solingen, Schumacher, also dedicated a benevolent obituary to him, without concealing the differences.

Theorists of direct democracy

Rittinghausen is considered to be one of the theoretical founders of the idea of ​​direct popular legislation. He developed his ideas independently of Julius Froebel , but they were similar. His work "Direct Legislation by the People" was the first systematic attempt to portray a direct democratic system . Among other things, he called for popular initiatives , referendums and referendums . He made suggestions for implementation and dealt critically with the principle of representative democracy . MPs elected in this way are mediocre, corruptible and their decisions are dependent on the nobility and the property bourgeoisie . According to his ideas, the people should be divided into "sections" of about 1000 voters each. They should then elect a chairman. The sections should have sole legislative power. An overarching college of ministers should be the result of direct elections.

In 1850 he published essays on direct democracy in Paris. These essays appeared collected and supplemented several times in France, England and Belgium, before they could appear much later in Germany. The script was controversial in France. Among the proponents was Victor Hugo . However, Louis Blanc or Pierre-Joseph Proudhon rejected them. Against the background of the takeover of power by the later Napoleon III. left Rittinghausen France. He then lived in Belgium, where he continued to work as a journalist.

For Marx and Engels, Rittinghausen's ideas only played a subordinate role. However, Rittinghausen's ideas were definitely important in early social democracy. As a demand for legislation by the people, they were included in the Eisenach program , the Gotha program and the Erfurt program .

His ideas were particularly well received in Switzerland . Karl Bürkli in particular was heavily influenced by Rittinghaus. Against this background , a political movement in Zurich in the years 1867/68 led to the incorporation of three-stage popular legislation into the cantonal constitution. Rittinghausen intervened in the discussion within Switzerland and advocated that other cantons should also follow the Zurich example.

Later his thoughts in favor of the parliamentary system in the SPD lost importance. In 1884, the party executive even qualified Rittinghausen's ideas as a quirk. Karl Bürkli initiated another debate on the subject in Vorwärts in 1892 . Karl Kautsky rejected Rittinghausen's ideas of a complete decentralization of Germany into sovereign “sections” because this would lead to “chaos”. After all, Rittinghausen was not completely forgotten and some elements such as referendums or plebiscites were included in the state constitutions and the imperial constitution of the Weimar Republic . The person of Rittinghausen was largely forgotten in the SPD. It was not until 1926 that he was remembered again in connection with the popular initiative to expropriate princes in Vorwärts .

Fonts

  • About the organization of state industry . Bachem, Cologne 1848.
  • Direct legislation by the people . Paris 1850.
  • La législation directe par le peuple ou la véritable démocratie . Librairie Phalanstérienne, Paris 1851 Digitized at: books.google.de.
  • La législation directe par le peuple et ses adversaires . Lebégue, Bruxelles 1852 Bavarian State Library digital .
  • Le système protecteur et le libre échange devant le Congrès des Économistes de 1847 . Bruxelles 1856 (from: Revue Trimestrielle , Vol. XII).
  • The philosophy of history . Self-published, Cologne 1868 ( Social-Democratic Treatises , Issue 1).
  • On the necessity of direct legislation by the people . Self-published, Cologne 1869 ( Social-Democratic Treatises , Issue 2).
  • The untenable foundations of the representative system . Self-published, Cologne 1869 ( Social-Democratic Treatises , Book 3) Bavarian State Library digital .
  • On the organization of direct legislation by the people . Self-published, Cologne 1870 ( Social-Democratic Treatises , Issue 4) Bavarian State Library digital .
  • Refutation of the objections directed against direct legislation by the people . Self-published, Cologne 1872 ( Social-Democratic Treatises , Issue 5).
  • The fortress works of communal origin of the former Free Imperial City of Cologne. A question of ownership . Self-published, Cologne 1877.
  • Direct legislation by the people . 4th edition, self-published, Cologne 1877.
  • La législation directe par le peuple et ses adversaires . Nouv. éd., augm. d'une notice biographique. Lebègue, Bruxelles 1892.
  • Direct legislation by the people . 5th edition. Commission publisher of the bookstore des Schweiz. Grütlivereins, Zurich 1893.

literature

  • (Obituary). In: Menschenthum . February 1891 No. 6, p. 24
  • W [ilhelm] B [los] : Moritz Rittinghausen . In: The True Jacob . No. 191 of February 14, 1892, p. 952 digitized
  • Karl Kautsky : Direct legislation by the people and the class struggle . In: The new time. Review of intellectual and public life . 11.1892-93, Volume 2 (1893), Issue 44, pp. 516-527 FES online
  • Edmund Bernatzik: Rittinghausen, Moriz: The direct legislation by the people. 5th edition, Zurich 1893 . In: Yearbook for Legislation, Administration and Economics in the German Empire, ed. by Gustav Schmoller . Vol. 21. Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 1090-1096 ISSN  1619-6260
  • Rolf Schaberg: Rittinghausen, a pure democrat. In: The homeland, supplement to the Solinger Tageblatt, bulletin of the Bergisches Geschichtsverein, Solingen department. Volume 24, No. 8, August 1958, pp. 29–30.
  • Moritz Rittinghausen . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, p. 250.
  • Günter Bergmann: The socialist law in the industrial area on the right bank of the Rhine. A contribution to the dispute between the state and social democracy in Wuppertal and in the Bergisches Land 1878–1890 (= series of the research institute of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, volume 77), Hanover 1970, p. 50 ff.
  • Wolfgang Mantl: Setting the course early between parliamentarism and direct democracy. Kautsky's argument with Rittinghausen in 1893 . In: Manfred Funke (Ed.): Democracy and dictatorship. Spirit and shape of political rule in Germany and Europe. Festschrift for Karl Dietrich Bracher . Droste, Düsseldorf 1987, ISBN 3-7700-0730-1 , pp. 534-553
  • Francois Melis: Moritz Rittinghausen (1814-1833) - protagonist of direct legislation by the people . In: Axel Weipert (Ed.): Democratization of Economy and State - Studies on the Relationship between Economy, State and Democracy from the 19th Century to the Present , NoRa Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86557-331-5 , pp. 73-80.
  • Ulrike Fäuster: Moritz Rittinghausen (1814–1890). Politics for Cologne and Solingen. In: Ralf Rogge and Horst Sassin (eds.): The home, contributions to the history of Solingen and the Bergisches Land . New episode. Issue 25, 2009/2010, pp. 53-69 ISBN 978-3-925626-35-7
  • Ulrike Fäuster / Francois Melis: Moritz Rittinghausen (1814-1890). A forty-eight champion for direct popular legislation. In: Walter Schmidt (Hrsg.), Actors of a Change. Men and women of the revolution of 1848/49, Vol. 4, Berlin 2013, pp. 451–497. ISBN 978-3- 931363-18-5.
  • Philipp Erbentraut: Moritz Rittinghausen - a German Rousseau? Comparative considerations on the idea of ​​direct legislation by the people , in: Luise Güth et al. (Ed.): Where's the Enlightenment? Enlightenment Discourses in Postmodernism. Festschrift for Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann (= supplements of the Ranke Society , vol. 86). Stuttgart 2013, pp. 119-138.
  • Thomas Mergel : Moritz Rittinghausen (1814–1890). Citizen, Cologne patriot and theoretician of direct democracy . In: Werner Eck (Ed.): For Cologne. Life for the city. Festschrift for Hanns Schaefer . Greven Verlag, Cologne 2014, pp. 139–153.

Letters

  • Letter from Rittinghausen to Georg Gottfried Gervinus July 30, 1860. Heidelberg University Library Signature Heid. Hs. 2528
  • Letter from Rittinghausen to JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung in Stuttgart October 14, 1858. German Literature Archive Marbach, Neckar. Signature Cotta $ Br.
  • Letter from Rittinghausen to Friedrich Albert Lange . In: Georg Eckert Ed .: Friedrich Albert Lange. About politics and philosophy. Letters and editorials 1862 to 1875 . In. Duisburg research. Booklet . Verlag für Wirtschaft und Kultur W. Renckhoff, Duisburg-Ruhrort 1968, pp. 140–146 ( series for history and local history of Duisburg )
  • Letter from Rittinghausen to Sybille Hess dated August 2, 1880. IISG Amsterdam Moses Hess estate E 38

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Blos: The German Revolution. JHW Dietz, Stuttgart 1891, p. 177.
  2. ↑ So far, research was based on November 12, 1814 as the date of birth. According to the Hückeswagen City Archives, however, according to the birth certificate, it is November 10th. See Ulrike Fäuster, p. 53
  3. ↑ Ulrike Fäuster, p. 53
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Ulrike Fäuster, p. 54
  5. ^ Friedrich Engels: The free trade congress in Brussels . In: The Northern Star October 9, 1847, quoted from Marx-Engels-Werke Vol. 4, p. 300.
  6. ↑ a b c d Ulrike Fäuster, p. 55
  7. ↑ a b c d Ulrike Fäuster, p. 56.
  8. ↑ Ulrike Fäuster, p. 56 f.
  9. ↑ Edmund Silberner : Moses Hess and the International Workers' Association. In: Archive for Social History Vol. 5/1965 P. 128
  10. ↑ Ulrike Fäuster, pp. 59–61.
  11. ^ Angela Graf: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz . Publisher of the Social Democrats. Biographical approach to political life. 1996 ( digitized version )
  12. ^ Angela Graf: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz. 1996 ( digitized version )
  13. ^ Karl Kautsky: Direct legislation by the people and the class struggle.
  14. ↑ Ulrike Fäuster, p. 62 f.
  15. ^ Wolfgang Durner : Anti-parliamentarianism in Germany. Würzburg, 1997 p. 45
  16. ^ Hanns-Jürgen Wiegand: Direct democratic elements in the German constitutional history. BWV Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3830512104 , p. 35 ( digitized version )
  17. ↑ cf. on the history of the impact: Wolfgang Durner: Antiparlamentarismus in Deutschland . Würzburg, 1997 p. 44 f.
  18. ↑ Klaus von Beyme: Political Theories in the Age of Ideologies. VS Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3531138758 , p. 793 ( digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Rittinghausen, Moritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theorist of direct democracy, and politician (SPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Hückeswagen
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1890
Place of death Ath , Belgium