Peter Tremmel

Peter Tremmel

Peter Tremmel (born October 15, 1874 in Mannheim , † January 13, 1941 in Berlin-Steglitz ) was a Christian trade union leader , politician and during the Weimar Republic a member of the Reichstag for the German Center Party .

Life and work

The eldest child of a working-class family of fifteen attended elementary school in Mannheim from 1881 to 1889 and trained as a locksmith from 1886 to 1892 . Because of harassment from his master, he had to change the apprenticeship position and finished his apprenticeship in a machine factory. Because of his union activities, Tremmel was reprimanded by the manufacturers and had to give up his job. Initially unskilled workers in a wooden warehouse, Tremmel was forced to look for new work frequently because the manufacturers put him on a “black list”. From 1895 to 1897 he completed his military service in Rastatt and finally became a worker in the port of Mannheim. At the age of 18 Tremmel joined the Mannheim Catholic workers' association , where he received an intensive school. Around 1898 he joined the specialist section for factory and manual workers of the important Catholic social association "Arbeiterwohl". In 1902 Tremmel became the first chairman of the Mannheim branch of the “Christian-Social Association of Non-Commercial Workers in Germany”. He quickly became an honorary "agitator" for the Association for Southern Germany (with the exception of Bavaria).

The active Christian trade unionist worked in Mannheim from 1906 to 1908 as the full-time trade union secretary of the “Central Association of Christian Factory and Transport Workers in Germany”, which was founded in Munich in September 1900 under the name “Christian Social Association of Non-Commercial Workers in Germany”. The association initially addressed unskilled workers in particular, but after a decade it expanded its base considerably. In 1908, Tremmel, who was responsible for the association's wage movement, moved to Aschaffenburg. Tremmel rose in 1909 to the second chairman of the association at the national level. Tremmel headed the association from 1912 to 1933 and lived as Reich Chairman of this union in Berlin-Steglitz. This was interrupted from 1914 to 1917 when he was deployed in the war. During this time the association sank to 3,300 members, with around 10,000 members being organized in it when the war broke out. After the war, this Christian trade union took off again and moved its headquarters to Berlin, but lost members again in the years of inflation and the global economic crisis. On January 1, 1931, the “ Central Association of Christian Factory and Transport Workers in Germany ”, which has been its name since 1912, headed by Tremmel, had 68,000 members.

Political activity

As a staunch Catholic , the Christian trade unionist joined the Center Party. He was a member of the Weimar National Assembly for the Catholic party from January 1919 to June 1920 , where he was elected in constituency 24 in Franconia. Since the right-wing Bavarian center split off from the Reich Party as the “ Bavarian People's Party ” (BVP) and Tremmel rejected this separation and a candidacy for the BVP, he was elected to the Reichstag for the Center Party in June 1920 in constituency 24 (Koblenz-Trier) , to which he belonged until November 1933. As a member of the Reichstag, the trade unionist mainly dealt with issues relating to housing and settlement as well as occupational health and safety. He belonged to the left wing of the center and showed programmatic proximity to the Social Democrats , from whom he differed, however, through his strong Christian orientation. For many years Tremmel was a member of the board of directors of the General Association of Christian Trade Unions in Germany and led the union of Christian factory, transport and food unions on an international level.

As a result of the dissolution of the unions by the National Socialists in 1933 due to political unreliability, Tremmel worked as a cigar dealer in Berlin during the Nazi era. He was in touch with his former party friend Jakob Kaiser , who had built up a resistance group.

literature

• Bernd Haunfelder : Member of the Reichstag of the German Center Party 1871–1933. Biographical handbook and historical photographs (= photo documents on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 4). Droste, Düsseldorf 1999, ISBN 3-7700-5223-4 , p. 365.
• Bernhard Otte: Central Association of Christian Factory and Transport Workers in Germany . In: Ludwig Heyde (Hrsg.): International dictionary of trade unions . Volume 2, Berlin 1932, pp. 2096-2097.
• Reichstag manual . VIII. Election period 1933. Ed. By the Office of the Reichstag, Berlin 1933, p. 285.
• Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. A biographical documentation (published by the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties), Düsseldorf 1991, pp. 1424–1425.
• Digital library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation ( http://library.fes.de/fulltext/bibliothek/tit00205/00205k14.htm )

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Tremmel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peter Tremmel in the database of members of the Reichstag