Robert Danneberg

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Robert Danneberg (born July 23, 1885 in Vienna ; † officially December 12, 1942 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a social democratic politician and lawyer of the First Republic in Austria .

Life

Robert Danneberg around 1905

He was the son of Jacob Dannenberg, editor of joke sheet Pschütt caricatures born and attended the Academic High School , where he with distinction graduated . He then studied at the University of Vienna Law and became the Dr. jur. PhD.

In 1903 he joined the Association of Young Workers and began his political activities. In particular, he took care of education. His role model was the upholsterer and Reichsrat MP Leopold Winarsky , whose employee Danneberg soon became. He also became an editor at the Jugend Arbeiter , the youth organ of the Social Democratic Labor Party .

The Socialist Youth International was founded in 1907 , and Danneberg became its general secretary the following year. As a result, he published his articles mainly in the newly founded journal Bildungsarbeit .

Since 1914, during the First World War , he was one of the few to oppose the war-supportive policies of the Social Democrats. He came into conflict with the party leadership and the party organ Arbeiter-Zeitung , which also led to anti-Semitic accusations from Engelbert Pernerstorfer , which Danneberg's political opponents later gladly cited. However, he himself had resigned from the Jewish religious community in 1909 . The split in the party was prevented.

In addition, Danneberg said that the work for the youth international was pointless in the war, and hung a sign on the office door that read Because of the World War, the office will be temporarily closed . The social democratic youth associations of the neutral countries did not agree, so Danneberg passed the chairmanship to Willi Munzenberg , whom he continued to advise.

In 1918 Danneberg became the founding secretary of the Socialist Education Center. From 1918 to 1934 he was a member of the Vienna City Council, from 1920 to 1932 he was President of the State Parliament. (He was the first president of the state parliament in the history of Vienna.) In 1919/20 he was also a member of the National Assembly and from 1920 to 1934 a member of the National Council .

Danneberg was a co-author of the democratic Viennese city constitution (which essentially applies to this day). It came into being in 1920 when the Federal Constitutional Act made Vienna a federal state. He was also co-author of a new service law for the employees of the city administration and the city companies.

In 1920/1921 he was part of the Vienna negotiating team for the separation law for the separation of ownership of Vienna from Lower Austria . With Finance Councilor Hugo Breitner , he designed the tax system for Red Vienna . For example, the housing tax , with the income from which the numerous community buildings were built, is most likely due to him. Danneberg was in charge of planning the Viennese housing programs in 1923 and 1927.

Danneberg also continued to take care of the further training of the workers, especially the training of the social democratic shop stewards. The economic crisis and the increasing discrimination against Vienna by the federal government, which were mainly reflected in changes to the Tax Sharing Act and the planned deterioration in tenant protection , made Danneberg's work difficult because he was Vienna's main negotiator. In 1932 he succeeded Hugo Breitner as City Councilor for Finance.

In 1933, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss switched to an authoritarian, dictatorial system of government without a parliament, but the state parliaments were still active. On February 9, 1934, Danneberg supported the appeal of the Christian Socialist Leopold Kunschak in the Vienna City Council to bundle all democratic forces to combat National Socialism. Kunschak was sidelined by his party, Danneberg was arrested like many other social democratic politicians after the outbreak of the February fighting on February 12, 1934. He was released after nine months, but under strict conditions such as a ban on telephoning and reporting to the police twice a week .

In contrast to other former SDAPÖ politicians, he was also active in the illegal party organization and had contacts with the Revolutionary Socialists .

Urn memorial for Tandler, Danneberg and Breitner at the fire hall of the city of Vienna
Memorial stone in Arenbergpark ( Dannebergplatz )

In the course of the annexation of Austria by the National Socialist German Reich , Danneberg was refused entry when attempting to travel to Czechoslovakia late . On his return to Vienna, he was in the North Station of the Gestapo arrested and on April 1, 1938, the so-called celebrities transport in the Dachau concentration camp brought.

He was later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp . Since the Reich Security Main Office wanted to get the Reich territory “ free of Jews ” in 1942 , he was transferred to Auschwitz in October and murdered there around December 12, 1942.

Afterlife

In his honor in 1949 in Vienna near his home address Reisnerstraße in the 3rd district of Dannebergplatz the edge of the Arenberg park named after him.

On the basis of a city senate resolution of November 6, 1950, a joint urn memorial for Robert Danneberg, Hugo Breitner and Julius Tandler was erected at the Simmering fire hall of the City of Vienna (Department ML, Group 1, Number 1A). This facility is one of the honorary grave sites of the City of Vienna . Since Danneberg's ashes have been lost in Auschwitz, an empty urn was symbolically buried for him.

In 1992 a Danneberg memorial stone was placed in the Arenberg Park. The Vienna SPÖ has been awarding the Robert Danneberg Prize to volunteers every year since 2010 .

literature

  • Leon Kane: Robert Danneberg. A pragmatic idealist. (= Series of publications by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History of the Labor Movement 11). Preface by Bruno Kreisky , Europaverlag, Vienna et al. 1980, ISBN 3-203-50743-9 .
  • Ernst Federn : Together with Robert Danneberg in the concentration camp. In: Roland Kaufhold (Ed.): Attempts on the psychology of terror. Material on the life and work of Ernst Federn. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 1998, ISBN 3-932133-47-1 ( Edition psychosozial ), pp. 98-104.
  • Roland Pacher: Robert Danneberg. A political biography. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-631-62786-0 ; at the same time dissertation at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt 2010 ( digital copy , PDF, 3 MB).
  • Danneberg, Robert. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 5: Carmo – Donat. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-22685-3 , pp. 299-305.

Web links

Wikisource: Robert Danneberg  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Robert Danneberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Stimmer: Danneberg - the guide to the upswing in Vienna. In: Wien aktuell. Press and Information Service of the City of Vienna, No. 1/2008, p. 24.
  2. ↑ Honorary and historical grave sites in the cemetery Feuerhalle Simmering on friedhoefewien.at (PDF)
  3. ↑ a b Robert Danneberg. In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
personal data
SURNAME Danneberg, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Social democratic politician and lawyer of the First Republic in Austria
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1942
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp