Paul Lange (politician)

Paul Lange (born January 5, 1880 in Leipzig-Plagwitz , † June 14, 1951 in Leipzig ) was a German trade unionist , publicist and politician .

resume

Until the First World War

Paul Lange came in his social-democratic oriented parental home early with the Social Democrats in touch. His father was a bookbinder. After graduating from elementary school, he first worked as a clerk for a lawyer. There then followed frequent changes of position, among other things he worked in 1897/1898 as an assistant in the Leipzig publishing house of the "Zentralblattes für das deutsche Gastwirtgewerbe". In 1896 he joined the “Free Association of Merchants”, which through Richard Lipinski sought connection to the labor movement . In 1897 he was a delegate of the Free Merchants who attended the "Free Conference of the clerks standing on the ground of the German trade unions", at which the "Central Association of clerks" was decided. This association sought to join the general commission of the trade unions in Germany. In 1898, Lange joined the SPD .

In 1903 he became a freelancer in the editorial team of the Leipziger Volkszeitung and was employed there as a permanent local reporter on January 2, 1904. In July 1904 he took over the editing as the person responsible. As a result of an article published on September 6, 1904 about the cooperation of German postal organs with tsarist Russian groups, he was sentenced by the Leipzig Regional Court to a nine-month prison sentence, which he began on October 16, 1905 at Hoheneck Castle in the Ore Mountains . In September 1906 he was given the task of editing the body of the "Central Association of Commercial Clerks" of the correspondence sheet of the General Commission of the Trade Unions . He then moved to Hamburg . From October 1, 1907, he was not only active as an editor, but also as a social politician and author and editor of numerous agitation papers. On lecture tours, he promoted the economic and socio-political demands of the free trade union employees. In addition, he was involved in the theoretical organ of the social democracy Die Neue Zeit .

He became a delegate at the 2nd international conference of clerk organizations, which met on August 21, 1907 in Stuttgart on the sidelines of the International Socialist Congress. On April 2, 1908, Paul Lange was sent as a delegate to the Hamburg trade union cartel and re-elected on April 1, 1909. At the 6th General Assembly on June 8 and 9, 1909 in Munich, he was elected to the union's executive committee as editor and re-elected in 1910. After the resignation of the previous chairman of the Central Association Max Josephson , Paul Lange took over the chairmanship until the 1912 General Assembly. During this time he successfully negotiated a merger with the “Association of Storage Holders”. At the same time he strove to relocate the association's headquarters from Hamburg to Berlin . At the general assembly in May 1912, a corresponding amendment to the statutes was just approved and Lange was re-elected to the board as editor.

First World War and Weimar Republic

After the outbreak of the First World War , Paul Lange joined the internal party anti-war opposition and in 1915 built the central association into a stronghold of internal union opposition to the policy of the General Commission. He worked with Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring on the publication of the first edition of the magazine Die Internationale . He was called up in December 1915. After being injured, he resumed union activities in 1917. He later joined the USPD and the Spartacus League . He was elected as a member of the headquarters when the Spartakusbund was founded on November 11, 1918. At the founding party congress of the KPD , Paul Lange was then also elected as a member of the headquarters. At the party congresses in October 1919, February 1920 and April 1920 he was only elected as a deputy member of the headquarters. In 1920 he stood in vain for election as a member of the Reichstag for the KPD . He worked as an employee for the Red Flag and the Communist Council Correspondence .

In 1919 there were serious disputes in his union, especially with Karl Giebel and Paul Lange. As part of a compromise on the 10th day of the association from June 17 to 21, 1919, he was elected editor, but no longer elected to the internal board. He came under further pressure through the fundamental resolutions of the Second Communist International from July 23 to August 7, 1920 on dealing with trade unions. Finally, with the help of Lange, an incompatibility resolution was passed that forbade paid union employees from membership in Communist parties. Lange himself left the KPD in November 1920 and rejoined the USPD (in 1922, when the remaining USPD was dissolved, he rejoined the SPD bei), whereby the KPD lost its most prominent union member at the time. After leaving the KPD, he was co-opted into the board of what is now the “Central Association of Employees” and re-elected as editor and voting member of the board at the association days of 1921, 1924 and 1927. Lange now went over to attacking communist trade union policy. At the general assembly of his union from May 18 to 20, 1930 in Stuttgart, he said goodbye as the longest-serving member of the "Central Association of Employees".

In 1933 he was dismissed from his remaining offices primarily as an editor and returned to Leipzig in 1938 and devoted himself to literary and historical studies in the Leipzig city library.

After the Second World War

On July 1, 1945 Paul Lange rejoined the KPD ( member of the SED from 1946 after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD ). From October 10, 1945 he was a member of the editorial team of the Leipziger Volkszeitung and from May 19, 1946 deputy editor-in-chief of this newspaper. In this position he defended the lenization of the SED and attacked the West German Social Democrats and contributed to the development of the SED into the so-called “New Type Party”.

bibliography

• Clerks' movement and social policy , Hamburg 1908,
• The way to improve the economic situation of the clerks , Hamburg 1909,
• The law of the clerks , Hamburg 1909,
• On the criticism of the clerk movement and its literature , Hamburg 1909,
• The collective agreements of the Central Association of Clerks , Berlin 1912
• The employment agency for clerks , Berlin 1913
• The competition clause , Berlin 1913,
• Sunday rest in offices and shops , Berlin 1913
• Wage labor and capital during the war , Leipzig 1917
• Reorientation of the trade unions , Leipzig 1917

literature

• Long, Paul . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

• Biographical lexicon of the ÖTV and its predecessor organizations : in detail on life and work