Otto Brenner

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Otto Brenner

Otto Brenner (born November 8, 1907 in Hanover , † April 15, 1972 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German trade unionist , politician and chairman of IG Metall . The Otto Brenner Foundation , an IG Metall foundation for the purpose of promoting science and research, and the Otto Brenner Prize , an annual award for critical journalism, are named after him.

Life

Brenner, who grew up in Hanover , was a trained industrial electrician. From 1920 he was a member of the (Socialist) Workers' Youth , in 1922 of the German Metal Workers' Association , from 1926 a member of the SPD and from 1928 of the Workers' Abstinents Association . He has participated in several adult education courses and lecture series by Theodor Lessing . As an electrician, he was dismissed from Hanomag in Hannover-Linden in 1931; after that he was unemployed. In 1931 he joined the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD), which was in opposition to the SPD . He led a SAP with his brother Kurt resistance group in Hannover, which works closely with the Committee for Proletarian unit to Eduard Wald worked. He was arrested in 1933 and sentenced in 1935 to two years in prison by the Hamm Higher Regional Court. Until 1945 he was employed as a civil engineering worker in Frankfurt . Towards the end of the Second World War he lived again in Hanover, where he witnessed the bombing of the city. Brenner joined the SPD in 1945 and helped build the unions in Lower Saxony.

In 1947, Brenner became the district manager of the metal division in the general trade union in Lower Saxony. He attracted national attention when he organized the first post-war strike with the Bode Panzer strike . The aim of the strike was to enforce codetermination .

In the early 1950s Otto Brenner was a member of the "Circle of Ten". It was an informal group of important decision-makers at IG Metall and the DGB who met regularly "in secret" and had a strong influence behind the scenes on the selection of personnel and programmatic decisions of the unions. In the mid-1950s, the circle disintegrated due to divergent socio-political concepts.

Brenner was also an SPD councilor in Hanover between 1946 and 1953 and a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament from May 6, 1951 to February 15, 1954 during the second electoral term . From June 14, 1951 to February 9, 1953, he was chairman of the committee for social affairs .

In 1952, Brenner first came second and in 1956, as successor to Hans Brümmer, was first chairman of IG Metall and in 1961 president of the International Metalworkers' Union .

Under his leadership, IG Metall acted on the one hand pragmatically in terms of short-term goals, but based on the DGB's program of action and thus on the other hand it was programmatically consolidated. A certain amount of utopian surplus therefore shaped the course of IG Metall. The goal of reorganization, as the DGB's Munich program of 1949 aimed at, was by no means abandoned, but was not seen as feasible in the short term. In contrast to IG Bau-Steine-Erden under Georg Lebers leadership, IG Metall developed a "conflict partnership course".

Grave site in the Frankfurt main cemetery
Otto Brenner School in Hanover with a poster for the 100th birthday on November 8, 2007

In view of Brenner's programmatic firmness and based on his experiences between 1933 and 1945, Brenner resolutely defended fundamental democratic rights. IG Metall took part in the protests against rearmament, the installation of nuclear weapons, demonstrated against the German government at the time of the Spiegel affair and finally stood on the side of the APO during the emergency legislation .

In this context, Otto Brenner wrote a quote from 1968: "The first civic duty is not calm, not submission to the authorities, but criticism and constant democratic vigilance."

Brenner, who had trained his intellect as an autodidact , was a programmatic head of the German trade unions for around two decades. The action program of 1956 and the DGB basic program of 1963 were significantly shaped by his thinking. The Otto Brenner School, the largest vocational school for metal technology • electrical engineering in the Hanover region (bbs | me) bears his name. The Otto Brenner Foundation was established in 1972 . It is the science foundation of IG Metall and resides in Frankfurt am Main.

Honors

literature

  • Klaus Ullrich: Otto Brenner. November 8, 1907 - April 15, 1972. In: Claus Hinrich Casdorff (Ed.): Democrats, Profiles of our Republic. Athenaeum, Königstein 1983, ISBN 3-7610-8263-0 , pp. 79-87.
  • Klaus Mlynek : in: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , pp. 71-72.
  • Rainer Kalbitz: The Otto Brenner era in IG Metall. (Series of publications by the Otto Brenner Foundation 77), Otto Brenner Foundation, Frankfurt am Main 2001.
  • Jens Becker and Harald Jentsch: “There must never be another 1933!” Otto Brenner's union self-image in the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Karl Lauschke (ed.): The trade union elite of the post-war period. Character - function - mission statement. Essen 2006. Bulletin of the Institute for Social Movements 35; Pages 59–73.
  • Jens Becker and Harald Jentsch: Otto Brenner. A biography. Letters 1933–1945. Selected speeches 1946–1971. 3 volumes, Steidl Verlag , Göttingen 2007.
  • Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996, p. 53.

Web links

Commons : Otto Brenner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On its website it says: "The price for critical journalism is based on the political legacy of Otto Brenner, who made moral courage the measure of his actions and also demanded this from others."
  2. ↑ Jörg Wollenberg : "The great time of lies": 100 years First World War - 75 years Second World War, Bremen 2014, p. 29
  3. ^ Stefan Müller: Trade unionist, socialist and educational worker - Heinz Dürrbeck 1912-2001 . Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0201-5 , pp. 163-165.
  4. ↑ Barbara Simon: MPs in Lower Saxony 1946–1994: biographical manual, 1996, p. 53
  5. ^ Helmut Zimmermann : Otto-Brenner-Strasse. In: The street names of the state capital Hanover , Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung , Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7752-6120-6 , p. 189
personal data
SURNAME Brenner, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade unionists and politicians (SPD), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1972
Place of death Frankfurt am Main