Oskar George

Oskar George (born October 23, 1920 in Braunschweig , † January 1, 1981 in Hofheim am Taunus ) was a German trade union official .

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George was born in Braunschweig and was the son of a shoemaker. He attended elementary school in his hometown from 1927 to 1935 . He then did a commercial apprenticeship at the Kirchhoff company , which then took him over. In 1939 he went to Hamburg, where he was recruited for military service in September of the same year. American soldiers arrested him in July 1943. Released from captivity, he returned to Hamburg in May 1946. The general association of traffic and community workers employed him here on September 1, 1946. At this point he also joined the SPD .

George took over responsibility for the youth department in the Hamburg Association and in 1947 for the works councils. He also participated in the local committee of the DGB . In August 1946, the General Association of Transport and Community Workers announced at the State Youth Welfare Office that they wanted to found a union youth group , which George also belonged to. As the only trade unionist in Hamburg and delegate of the youth group, he traveled to Frankfurt am Main from April 1947 to February 1948 . Here he took the first post-war course at the Academy of Labor . George, who was promoted and trusted by Adolph K Bäumenuss , took part in the 1949 Association Day of the Public Service, Transportation and Traffic Unions. There he was elected head of the youth secretariat by trade union representatives from the British zone of occupation. He also received a seat on the main board of the ÖTV . From April 1, 1949, George headed the youth secretariat in Stuttgart . In the fall of 1949, those attending the first union youth conference of union members under 25 formed a union youth committee and appointed George youth secretary.

The areas of training and education fell into the remit of the executive board member Karl Müller, who left office in 1950. These departments were formally taken over by Adolph K Bäumenuss; In fact, however, it was headed by Oskar George, who was also responsible for youth work. George campaigned for improvements to the Youth Welfare Act and was able to achieve that apprentices were included in the unemployment insurance. He ensured special provisions in the Youth Protection Act for employees who worked in the sea and inland shipping. He also obtained appropriate training regulations in the hairdressing trade, in the petrol station trade and for travel agencies. In December 1951, George resigned from the office of youth secretary at the Union's second youth conference.

As a member of the main board of ÖTV, George continued to work in the areas of schools, education, youth and the advertising department (publication of speaker and other advertising materials). In the program commission of the DGB he represented Kummeruss and brought some of his own concepts such as the decentralization of trade union education work, which were implemented. In 1955, George took over a newly founded department that was supposed to develop arguments for dealing with the changing world of work due to automation and rationalization. In addition, theses against anti-union efforts should be formulated here. This department produced an initial study of the relationship between union members and their lobbying group.

In 1955 George was re-elected as a member of the executive board and confirmed in office in 1958. Since 1955 he has also been responsible for the archive and the main department “Local public transport and non-federal railways”. In December 1955 he was one of the partners in the newly founded Courier Verlag . At a congress in Vienna , the assembly of the International Transport Workers' Federation elected him as a deputy member of the General Council and confirmed the election in 1958. After Kammernuss left office as ÖTV chairman, George was considered his potential successor. However, on September 30, 1959, he submitted his resignation “for personal reasons”.

Since May 1956, George was a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for Labor and Economics . This merged with five other union banks to form the Bank für Gemeinwirtschaft (BfG), with George playing an important role as a member of the supervisory board. At the end of February 1959 he took over the supervisory board of the BfG and headed the advertising department of this bank from 1960. In March 1973 George became a member of the board of directors of the Bank für Sparanlagen und Vermögensbildung , which was a subsidiary of BfG. In particular, George advocated “one-stop mortgage lending” and the letter loans and pension savings bonds offered by the bank. He left the bank's board in May 1980 and received the Federal Cross of Merit five months later .

Oskar George died a few months after the end of his professional career on New Year's Day 1981.

literature

• Angela Graf: George, Oskar . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 129-131 .