Peter Berten

Peter Berten (born February 18, 1873 in Hinsbeck , † July 28, 1960 in Düsseldorf ) was a German social democratic politician.

Life

Berten was a carpenter or construction joiner until 1904 . In 1892 he joined the free trade unions and in 1893 the SPD . Immediately afterwards he became a member of the board of the party in Bonn . From 1897 to 1914 Berten was a member of the executive committee of the SPD in the Düsseldorf 4 Reichstag constituency. From 1903 he was a district shop steward or chairman of the party in this area with short breaks. Professionally he worked between 1905 and 1906 as a travel agent for the Düsseldorfer Volkszeitung. After that, Berten was party secretary from 1907 to 1908. During this time he also graduated from the central party school in Berlin. In the following decades until 1933, Berten was a full-time editor of the People's newspaper. This was interrupted by his participation in the First World War between 1915 and 1918.

Impressed by Rosa Luxemburg and emotionally attached to the leaders of the Spartakusbund , he still never joined the Spartakusbund, although he made it possible to print the first publication, the one-time monthly "Die Internationale" in Düsseldorf. In 1917 Berten became a member of the USPD . In 1918 and 1919 he was chairman of the Lower Rhine district and in 1922 also a member of the party council. He played an important role in the Düsseldorf Workers' Council until January 1919. During this time, under the influence of the Düsseldorf situation (cf. History of the City of Düsseldorf ), he finally broke with the Spartacus League that had become the KPD.

In 1922 Berten returned to the SPD and was a member of the central party committee until 1933. He was also co-chairman of the Niederrhein district.

Between 1919 and 1928 Berten was a city councilor in Düsseldorf for the USPD and the SPD . Between 1920 and 1921 he was a member of the Prussian state constitutional assembly and between 1924 and 1933 of the Prussian state parliament . From 1921 to 1924 he was also a member of the Prussian State Council .

During the Nazi era , Berten was imprisoned several times for short periods.

In 1945 and 1947 Berten was once again deputy chairman of the SPD in the Niederrhein district. He was also a member of the denazification committee in Düsseldorf and a member of the main board of the wood union .

In 1958, Berten published his autobiography “The Life of a Simple Man”.

literature

• CV of a simple person. Düsseldorf 1958 (one copy is available in the archive of social democracy, Bonn).
• Detlef Josczok: The development of the socialist labor movement in Düsseldorf during the 1st World War. Cologne 1980.
• Elizabeth H. Tobin: The revolution in Duesseldorf 1918-19. Ann Arbor 1985.

Web links

• Peter Berten's biography . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP) (information about the Spartacus League is wrong there!)