Nikolaus Warken

Nikolaus Warken (around 1910)

Nikolaus Warken , called Eckstein (born December 26, 1851 in Hasborn ; † August 24, 1920 ibid), was a German miner, strike leader in labor disputes in the Saar area and from 1889 to 1893 chairman of the legal protection association for the mining population of the Bonn Higher Mining District .

Life

origin

Warken was the oldest of eight children of a Hasborn farmer. From March 12, 1867, he worked in the Saar district on the Helenenschacht in Friedrichsthal , a coal mine owned by the Prussian state . Warken initially transported coal from the mining area as a tug , and later, as a Hauer , he removed coal and stone. In January 1877 he married Margaretha Finkler; The marriage resulted in seven children, two of whom died shortly after birth. He did his military service with the 30th Infantry Regiment.

Up until 1891, Warken's main residence was his hometown Hasborn, where he had inherited his father's house and owned some fields that were mostly cultivated by his wife. He was a member of the Catholic St. Barbara Brotherhood in Hasborn, an association that came into being on the initiative of pastors from the miners' villages to promote a Christian and moral way of life for miners. In 1891 Warken took part in the pilgrimage to the Holy Rock in Trier. In the summer of 1889, the responsible mayor of Tholeyer described Warken's “behavior” in Hasborn as “always calm and good”; he lived “in an orderly family situation” and was “from a good family”.

As a so-called Saarganger, Warken commuted between Hasborn and Friedrichsthal, about 35 kilometers away, on weekends; During the week he stayed in the attic of a miner's house in wayside shrine . By no later than 1887, he was a lot man link between workforce and management. At the same time, he acted as a spokesman for work colleagues, in particular through numerous complaints against Steiger, and defended himself against the extension of the shift to twelve hours. Warkens nickname "Eckstein" is attributed to the fact that he should have reacted to a reprimand by a Steiger for playing cards during the shift with the words "Nix there, Eckstein is trump!"

Strike leader

The trigger for the strike in the Saar area from May 23, 1889 was the industrial action in the Ruhr area , where 81,000 miners, 77 percent of the workforce, went on strike on May 10. On May 14, Kaiser Wilhelm II received a delegation of the strikers. The news of the strike on the Ruhr met a situation in the Saar where, with the economy picking up since autumn 1887, wages stagnated, food prices rose, working hours were extended and the complaints process was increasingly curtailed by the mining administration. There was no union organization of the miners on the Saar, social democrats were hardly active in the Saar area.

On May 15th, Warken led a gathering of 3,000 miners at Bildstock, at which the "Bildstocker Protocol" was passed. Among other things, the eight-hour day , a minimum wage of four marks per day and the elimination of the "lock-up doors" at the mouth holes with which the workers in the mines were locked were required . The protocol should "follow the regular course up to Sr. Majesty the Emperor"; if the demands were rejected, the miners wanted to give notice collectively. A second meeting on May 22nd with 15,000 participants concluded the strike; Meeting leader Warken had unsuccessfully suggested an extended cooling off period. From May 23, 11,500 miners went on strike under the slogan “One for all, all for one”. Warken was a member of the strike committee and a three-person delegation that was on its way to Berlin when Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to receive the delegates. This contributed to the end of the strike on June 3rd. Warken was fired on June 15 "for excellent agitational activity"; He was refused a concession as a peddler as this would make further agitation easier for him. In addition, Warken was shadowed by mountain officials .

On July 28th, the “Legal Protection Association for the Mining Population of the Bonn District Mining Authority” was founded; Warken became the first chairman. According to Warken, "the strike [...] was the creator of the organization"; On the advice of the Catholic journalist Friedrich Dasbach, the statute was taken over verbatim by the Dortmund Legal Protection Association, which was co-founded in 1883 by Johannes Fusangel . By August 1, 1891, 20,139 miners had joined the legal protection association, a level of organization of 68 percent. In October, Warken traveled to the Ruhr area, Saxony and Silesia to get in touch with miners' organizations there.

In December, Warken was sentenced to six months in prison along with three other officials from the legal protection association. The reason was a remark by Warken in a pub in a drunken state that one could take action against the coal supplies with petroleum during the next strike. The prosecutor charged Warken that he was demoralizing the miners' estate. During the trial, Warken drew attention to a system of bribery that was widespread in the Saar district, in which he himself was involved. The system generated additional income for the risers and took some of the competitive pressure off the miners. In exchange for money or in kind attended Steiger that miners hired house could bid on more favorable mining conditions.

A second strike in December 1889 was partially successful, as mining captain Hermann Brassert enforced the required reinstatement of the functionaries of the legal protection association against the will of the mine management in the Saar area. At the same time, trust in Kaiser Wilhelm II increased among the miners, who announced in February 1890 that he wanted to develop the state mines "into model institutions with regard to the welfare of the workers". Warken appeared to many miners as the “loyal paladin” of the “caring ruler”. The Holzer miner Johann Meiser (1855–1918) described Warken's popularity and its consequences in his memoirs, written between 1911 and 1918:

“Now our cornerstone became the foundation of our redemption and liberation, the hero of the day. He was celebrated and titled in all keys. Immediately the traders, shopkeepers and inventors seized the new situation, and now there were corner stone pipes, cigarettes, caps, tobacco, sausages, cough suppressants, appetizing and stool-promoting corner stone pills and pills. "

In the Reichstag election on February 20, 1890 , Warken ran as an "independent worker candidate" in the Saarbrücken constituency. He received 6,823 votes, a share of 33.8 percent; in several mining communities, the majority of voters voted for him. The mandate was retained by the national liberal Gustav Pfaehler , a senior official in the mining administration who claimed in the election campaign that Warken was “not just a social democrat, but an anarchist”.

In September 1890, delegates from the legal protection association took part in the German Miners' Day in Halle (Saale), when the Association of German Miners was founded. In April 1891, Warken and other delegates took part in the international miners' congress in Paris. This met with incomprehension among many workers in the Saar district against the background of the Franco-German War of 1870/71 . At the beginning of April 1891, Warken moved into a house in wayside shrine that had been bought with donations from the association's members.

A strike in May 1891 failed because of the low turnout. Warken had warned against a careless strike, but on the other hand issued the often-taken slogan "If a strike is to be effective, it must break in like a thief in the night". After the strike, there was a break between the legal protection association and the Catholic clergy. Friedrich Dasbach called the club a "strike club" which he no longer wanted to support; Warken explained: "They say: In the other world you get your wages, but we want to have it here already".

In the appeal “To the comrades” in August 1891, Warken formulated the idea of ​​a unified union ; the legal protection association must be open to miners regardless of party and denomination. The statutes of the legal protection association were changed accordingly in November. Since the authorities often forbade meetings in the open air, the association built the legal protection room in Bildstock between May 1891 and September 1892 .

Warken distinguished himself from the SPD and emphasized in May 1891 that the aim of the legal protection association was not efforts to overthrow, but self-help. Since the miners were often warned about the social democrats and the functionaries of the legal protection association were suspected of being social democrats, interest in the previously insignificant party in the Saar area grew among the workers. In late 1891, Joseph Emmel was the first full-time SPD functionary since the 1870s to work in the Saar area; he managed to win followers even among miners. On March 27, 1892, Warken took part in an SPD meeting in St. Ingbert and, since he approved a corresponding resolution, "very likely" became a member of the party without later being active for the SPD.

The rapprochement with the SPD met with reservations within the legal protection association and led to tensions within the association. The tensions were exacerbated by the course of the club organ "mallets and irons", which was determined by a social democratic editor. There were also financial problems; Warken had bought a printing company at inflated prices, which was seized after failure to pay installments, which contributed to the failure of the newspaper project. In addition, there were problems with the cash management, rumors of embezzlement by board members and the failure of the strike in May 1891. Nevertheless, on November 20, 1892, Warken was re-elected chairman of the legal protection association with a large majority.

The poor economic situation from the summer of 1892 onwards led to attempts by the mine management to reduce wages. A new work order presented in November contained substantial deteriorations for the workers. At the end of December 1892, the legal protection association decided to go on strike, although the Social Democrats had also warned that a strike was hopeless given the current poor coal sales. “We have been petitioning for 3 years, but have not achieved anything. What we gained in 1889 has been taken from us again. They say miner help yourself, God will help you, ”said Warken in the call for a strike. On January 2, 1893, 83 percent of the Saar miners went on strike, which was much more militant compared to the previous labor disputes. Some of the miners were in possession of “ legal protection revolvers ”, small-caliber pistols that had been sold since the early summer of 1892 and were also used to intimidate strikers in industrial action . About 2,500 miners were fired on January 10; especially activists of the legal protection association. The strike collapsed a few days later; by March 1893 over 10,000 miners had left the legal protection association. Warken, who was blamed for the defeat, was voted out of office on March 15; on June 30, 1893 he resigned from the board. The legal protection association ceased its activities a little later and limited itself to winding up the association's assets until its dissolution in August 1896.

Retirement

On July 17, 1893, Warken moved back to Hasborn. There he ran the small farm he had taken over from his father until his death; He also sold photographs and picture frames as a peddler. As a result of the strikes, two of his sons were also dismissed, one was reinstated in 1897 and the other found work in Luxembourg . Warken was close to the emphatically Catholic union of Christian miners ; So in 1911 he took part as a speaker at a demonstration party organized by the trade union against the SPD. In July 1914 he was the guest of honor at the inauguration of the Saarbrücken administration building of the trade union. Warken died in poor circumstances in August 1920, according to his pastor as a staunch Catholic.

reviews

Friedrich Engels wrote a letter to August Bebel on June 20, 1892 about Warken and the miners' movement in the German Empire:

“With a movement as young as that of the miners, one always has to think twice about whether it is not better to let insecure fellows like Schröder and Warken ruin themselves for a while, at least until one can find positive tangible facts against them has in hand. And then it's an old story that wherever the movement emerges, the first leaders to push themselves are often enough nerds and rags ”.

Bebel, who had given a speech in the Bildstocker Rechtsschutzsaal in September 1892 , named in a letter to Engels Warken and his deputy Mathias Bachmann “undelicate boys who abuse their position; Unfortunately, no suitable replacement has yet been found, otherwise both would have flown. ”The trade unionist and SPD politician Otto Hue described Warken as a“ confusionary and gossip ”. He and other leading members of the legal protection association had spoken "a wonderful mixture of radical, religious and - humble phrases"; "They cheered the emperor and the pope in one breath and went against the penal laws". For the Christian trade unionist and center politician Heinrich Imbusch , Warken was "used to ducking and being radically to the bone as a result of the treatment". Because of “the lack of any economic training”, Warken lacked “the necessary insight into economic conditions”.

In 1981, the historian Klaus-Michael Mallmann referred to Warken's “collective admiration”, who had “definitely had traits of veneration of saints” and made him a “cult figure of the revolt”. Warken was "a social rebel archaic type, a Michael Kohlhaas , a fiery head with an exceptionally strong sense of justice". His spontaneous radicalism has drawn "its legitimation as much from the norms of Catholic social ethics [...] as from a transfiguration of the vanished miner class". Even if Warken had failed, he and the period of strike he had shaped remained alive in stories and reports and at the beginning of the 20th century formed the background for the final union breakout in the Saar area, said Mallmann.

Warken himself declared in July 1914 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the May strike of 1889:

“Despite some disappointments that I have experienced, and the one-sided criticism of the leaders of the 1889 movement that has been popularized in some newspapers even in the last few weeks, I declare that today, in my old days, I am particularly concerned I was very happy to have put all my strength into the service of the movement of that time. [...] And if we did not achieve what we hoped for, we fought honestly and with all our might for our descendants, so we did our duty. "

Aftermath

Memorial plaque for Warken at the legal protection room in wayside shrine.

Warken is mentioned in several union pamphlets published in the early 20th century, which mostly served to legitimize their own organization. The Saarland writer Liesbet Dill also described the strike of 1889 in her novel Virago , published in 1913 ; Warken appears under the name "Bickel"; Eckstein becomes "haddock".

The Hasborn branch of IG Bergbau und Energie published a commemorative publication in 1970 on the 50th anniversary of Warken's death, which included a biographical sketch written by his grandson Bernhard Besch. The Saarland author Gerhard Bungert wrote a folk play about Warken together with Klaus-Michael Mallmann , which premiered on April 23, 1977 at the Saarland State Theater under the title "Eckstein ist Trumpf". The play was later released in a radio play version.

In August 1989 a corner stone monument was inaugurated in Hasborn; There is also a corner stone street in the community. The Warken-Eckstein-Weg runs from Hasborn to Bildstock; the 35-kilometer hiking trail leads from the Eckstein monument along old miners ' paths that Warken may have used to the legal protection hall, on which a plaque for Warken has been located since 1951.

literature

• Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. In: Saarland pictures of life. Volume 1, Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken 1982, ISBN 3-921646-41-3 , pp. 127–152.

Web links

• Joachim Conrad: Nikolaus Warken called Eckstein in the Saarland biographies
• Literature about Nikolaus Warken in the Saarland Bibliography
• Saarland Lexicon

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Horst Steffens: reward of effort. History of the miners on the Saar. CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-33988-3 , p. 52.
2. ↑ Quoted in Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 130.
3. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 131.
4. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 132.
5. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 134 f.
6. ↑ Quoted by Horst Steffens: "One would have expected the sky to collapse ..." The great strike period 1889–1893. In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Ed.): We were never really at home. Voyages of discovery in the Saar region 1815–1955. 2nd Edition. JHW Dietz Successor, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-8012-0124-4 , pp. 71-76, here p. 72.
7. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. Pp. 131, 136. For corruption in the pits, see also Mallmann, Steffens: Lohn. 1989, p. 62.
8. ↑ This assessment by Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 138.
9. ↑ Karl Ludwig Jüngst: "I thank God for that too" Memoirs of the Holzer miner Johann Meiser. In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Ed.): We were never really at home. Voyages of discovery in the Saar region 1815–1955. 2nd Edition. JHW Dietz Successor, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-8012-0124-4 , pp. 43-47, here p. 47.
10. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, pp. 138f; Steffens: »Collapse«. 1988, p. 73.
11. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, pp. 130, 139 f.
12. ^ Mallmann, Steffens: wages. 1989, p. 85.
13. ↑ Quoted in Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 142.
14. ↑ This assessment by Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 144.
15. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, pp. 144f; Mallmann, Steffens: wages. 1989, p. 86.
16. ↑ Quoted in Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 146.
17. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. P. 146f; Mallmann, Steffens: wages. 1989, p. 92 f.
18. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 149.
19. ↑ Quoted in Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 127 f.
20. ↑ ^{a b} Quoted in Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 128.
21. ↑ Quoted in Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 150.
22. ^ Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 150 f.
23. ↑ Quoted in Mallmann: Nikolaus Warken. 1982, p. 149.
24. ↑ Overview in Mallmann, Nikolaus Warken, p. 152 f.
25. ^ Literature from the world of work and workers' literature on the Saar (from 1850 to the present); Annotated bibliography and typology: II. Bibliography. (Accessed July 21, 2010)