Richard Härtel

Bernhard Richard Härtel (born December 9, 1835 in Altenburg , † September 26, 1903 in Leipzig ) was a co-founder and long-time chairman of the Association of German Book Printers . The successor organization is now ver.di . As such, in 1873 he was primarily responsible for the conclusion of the first general collective agreement for a trade in Germany.

Life

He learned the typesetting trade with CG Naumann in Leipzig from 1849. In the following years he also worked for various companies in the book printing industry in Leipzig. He was married twice and had a son.

In 1863 he founded the advanced training association for book printers and type founders in Leipzig, which he headed until 1868. With his assistance, a newspaper was founded with the correspondent in 1863 to represent the interests of book printers, which not least promoted a supra-local merger. During the Threepenny Strike in 1865, Härtel and his club had to be officially neutral in order to prevent a club ban. The strike in 1866 led to the convening of a German Book Printers' Day and the founding of the Book Printers Association. Härtel took over the management of the correspondent who had been appointed to the association journal. As a salaried editor, he gave up the profession of typesetter. In 1867 he then took over the chairmanship of the book printers' association. In 1868 he was President of the Second Printing Day.

He headed the association purely as a union. He stayed out of the political dispute between ADAV and SDAP . In 1873, he declared that, as president of the association, he considered it best not to formally join any party. Personally, however, he tended towards the Eisenach direction around August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht .

Under his leadership the association had experienced a major boom. Last but not least, as negotiator for the employees' side, he was primarily responsible for the first uniform collective wage for the printing industry in 1873.

In the course of the socialist law , the book printer association had to dissolve. The Association of German Book Printers was founded immediately, but Härtel, who had been interrogated several times, resigned the chairmanship to facilitate the start of the new association. Härtel did not take part in the change of the association's headquarters to Stuttgart.

But he remained editor of the correspondent. In 1889 he gave up his position as managing editor of the association magazine for reasons of age, but wrote for the paper until the end of his life. He belonged to the Association for Social Policy .

In 1905 a memorial was dedicated to Härtel by the book printers' association at the Südfriedhof in Leipzig.

literature

• Obituary Richard Härtel. In: Tyographic Yearbooks. Booklet XI, year 1903 II-VI.
• Härtel, Bernhard Richard. In: Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , p. 62 ( online , PDF; 2.2 MB).
• Constanze Lindemann: Richard Härtel. In: From the printing association to the unified union. 150 years of verdi. Berlin 2016, p. 52 f.
• Rüdiger Zimmermann : The actual founder of the association: Richard Härtel (1835-1866). In: thought leaders and strategists. The trade union press in the graphic industry and its editors since 1863. Berlin 2016, pp. 61–92.