Proletarian Health Service

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The Proletarian Health Service ( PGD ) was a proletarian medical service that existed from 1921 to 1926 .

founding

The Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund Deutschland (ASB), founded in 1909, was an amalgamation of the proletarian medical services that had been in existence since 1888. After the November Revolution of 1918 and the establishment of the Weimar Republic , a split arose in the ASB between the majority and an opposition that saw itself as revolutionary. The reformist majority, under pressure from the German Red Cross and the General German Trade Union Federation , strove for political neutrality. The revolutionary opposition, supported by the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany , understood itself politically. In 1921, the opposition created an organization called Proletarischer Gesundheitsdienst which, like the majority, also relied on the tradition of the German labor movement .

tasks

The PGD dealt with practical areas such as home and nursing care, first aid and accident prevention as part of the workers' sports movement. In addition, he dealt with overarching problems of social hygiene and welfare for the working, especially proletarian, population in the economic crisis of the early Weimar Republic. The main focus of his membership was on industrialized and urban areas of Germany with a high degree of socialist and later communist organization, such as Berlin's working-class districts and other regional centers.

In contrast to other medical services, the PGD refused paid auxiliary work for civil, especially military-related organizations. Initially, his policy was dominated by a grassroots democratic orientation among its members, which included workers, socialist doctors such as Leo Klauber , Fritz Fränkel and Georg Benjamin , who took on important functions in the federal executive committee based in Berlin and promoted greater centralization.

Inner conflict and resolution

In the strongholds of the proletarian workers' movement, especially the Berlin districts of Neukölln and Wedding with the largest number of members , internal divisions soon arose between the forces oriented towards the KPD and the strong ultra-left, Soviet-critical faction under Bruno Lieske . Both were subject to a strong state mistrust, especially in the police apparatus of the social democratic government of Prussia. The internal gap widened due to the strategy of the KPD-affiliated members of the PGD, which aimed at the unity of the communist and social-democratic columns of the workers' health movement, since 1924. This unified policy resulted in the transfer of individuals and groups of the PGD to the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund responded by banning many non-compliant members. Nevertheless, most of the columns of the PGD disbanded in 1926 when they joined the ASB. In it they formed an internal left opposition close to the KPD with their own journalistic organs.

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