Richard Woldt

Richard Woldt (born March 24, 1878 in Berlin , † August 5, 1952 in Dresden ) was a German university professor and socialist politician.

Live and act

After his apprenticeship and studies, Woldt worked as a technical employee between 1899 and 1905 at Siemens & Halske and at Siemens-Schuckert in Nuremberg . In 1901 he joined the SPD . From 1905 he lived as a freelance writer and employee of the party and trade union press in Berlin, namely as a permanent author in the "Correspondenzblatt" of the general commission of the trade unions and in the social democratic theory magazine " Die Neue Zeit ". He also held trade union education courses and worked as a traveling teacher.

Between 1914 and 1916 Woldt worked as a works manager and administrative engineer in the armaments industry. He then took on an assistant position at the chair for factory organization at TH Berlin . In 1917/18 he was editor of the " Free Press " in Elberfeld and then until 1919 editor of the "Niederrheinische Volksstimme" in Düsseldorf . During the November Revolution he became a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Elberfeld and in 1919 an advisory board for trade union issues and demobilization at the regional council in Düsseldorf . Between 1919 and 1921 he was a member of the Prussian State Constituent Assembly .

Between 1920 and 1932 Woldt was initially a consultant for workers' education , later a government councilor and finally a ministerial councilor in the Prussian Ministry of Education. Part-time he taught between 1919 and 1928 as a lecturer and from 1928 to 1933 as honorary professor for workers' issues, trade unionism and social management studies at the University of Münster . Together with the social and Caritas scientist Heinrich Weber, he led the seminar for trade unionism at the Institute for Economics and Social Sciences. Woldt had lectureships at numerous other universities, such as the TH Berlin and the University of Politics in Berlin.

During the time of National Socialism Richard Woldt was dismissed from civil service and as a university lecturer for political reasons, but was able to publish his work on the technocracy teaching of Howard Scott , whose supporter he was, until 1940 . He was active in the resistance and was in contact with emigrants such as Fritz Tarnow . Woldt is said to have played an important role in the resistance group around Wilhelm Leuschner . For a longer period of time he was affected by surveillance measures by the Gestapo. He was arrested and interrogated several times. Among other things, Woldt was imprisoned in 1944 as part of the Grid Action . His son Helmut Woldt was active in illegal communist structures in Berlin in 1934/35.

After the Second World War , Woldt was appointed Minister (Vice President) for Labor, Economics and Transport in Saxony in July 1945 . However, he only held the office until September 1945, after which he taught until his retirement in 1948 as a professor of social work science at the TH Dresden . He played a key role in the university anchoring of the history of technology .

In addition to his teaching activities, Woldt published numerous papers in the field of technology and economics. His work on social management was important.

Works

• The large industrial company. An introduction to the organization of modern factory operations. Stuttgart 1911, digitized edition of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung library
• The working world of technology. The book circle , Berlin 1926.
• The world of the industrial worker (= Münster economic and social science treatises, edited by Werner Friedrich Bruck, Friedrich Hoffmann and Heinrich Weber, volume 1) Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1926.
• Heinrich Weber and Richard Woldt (eds.): Labor and social policy. Series of publications of the seminar for trade unionism at the Institute for Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Münster in 3 volumes, Quelle and Meyer, Leipzig 1930.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Woldt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Richard Woldt's biography . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
• Hall talks with Richard Woldt from the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster on flurrechner.de

literature

• Dietmar Haubfleisch: Scharfenberg Island School Farm . Microanalysis of the educational reality of reform pedagogy in a democratic experimental school in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2001, ISBN 3-631-34724-3 ( Studies on educational reform 40), (At the same time: Marburg, Univ., Diss., 1998), [Hidden biography of Richard Woldt, s. esp. Volume 1, pp. 338-340 and Volume 2, pp. 927, pp. 1163 and pp. 1331f.].
• Klaus Mauersberger: The social scientist Richard Woldt as the founder of the history of technology at the Technical University of Dresden. In: Johannes Rohbeck , Hans-Ulrich Wöhler (Hrsg.): On the way to the university. Cultural Studies in Dresden 1871–1945. Thelem, Dresden 2001, ISBN 3-933592-28-3 , pp. 357-367.
• Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique. Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920–1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , pp. 337-343.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In 2000, the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster published a declaration according to which the dismissals made between 1933 and 1945 for racist and political reasons are null and void. Declaration by the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster on measures taken by the university during the Nazi tyranny
2. ↑ History of technology at the TU Dresden ( Memento from September 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive )