Richard Lipinski

Richard Lipinski (1927)

Robert Richard Lipinski (born February 6, 1867 in Danzig ; † April 18, 1936 in Bennewitz ) was a German trade unionist , politician and writer as well as publicist and resistance fighter against National Socialism , who was one of those MPs in the Reichstag due to his rejection of the Enabling Act by the Social Democrats who was persecuted, arrested and taken to various detention centers by the Nazi rulers.

Life

Today the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Museum is housed in this house

Richard Lipinski, who was born as the third of four children of the beam cutter and master modeler Heinrich Johann Lipjinski (Libginski), born April 17, 1837 in Tiegenhof / West Prussia, † April 4, 1875 in Danzig, had to contribute to the family's livelihood at an early age. The separation of the parents and the early death of the father as well as material hardship overshadowed his youth. As a child he had to work in a shipyard. A higher education beyond elementary school was out of the question. Lipinski attended the elementary school in Gdansk from 1874 to 1881.

After a short-term contract as a wage laborer in a gardening shop, at the end of 1881 an apprenticeship sales assistant in a material goods store with liquor served, which Lipinski broke off in the spring of 1882 because of mistreatment by the teacher. In April 1882 he came with his mother Christina Charlotte Henriette nee. Schröder (1832–1885), to Leipzig, where he first finished his apprenticeship in a shop in the same branch. He then found a job in a distillation business and later as an accountant in his brother's mirror and frame factory.

From September 1882 to 1894 he was a part-time reporter for the social democratic Leipzig newspaper "Der Voter". During these years he has been sentenced to fines and imprisonment several times for violating press law provisions.

In 1886 he joined the trade union and in 1890 the SPD . In the same year he was a co-founder of the "Free Association of Merchants" in Leipzig. In 1897 Lipinski was a co-founder of the Central Association of Clerks. In 1900 he was involved in founding the Association of the Workers' Press, Lipinski himself described himself as the founding father of the association. A year later he was one of the founders of the "Support Association of the Employees Standing on the Ground of the Modern Labor Movement ". From 1891 to 1901 he also worked as an editor for the Leipziger Volkszeitung .

In 1898 he founded a publishing house in Leipzig. He ran the business in the Leipzig Königstrasse, today Goldschmidtstrasse 12, as a "theater and music publisher", which gave him a relatively secure existence. He was thus able to continue writing. In addition to books and music, the flags of the Republic and the SPD, as well as political postcards, the offer also included "summer festival, joke and carnival articles". In 1922 he handed over the publishing business to his eldest son Richard.

Lipinski married his wife Selma Maria, born on December 24, 1894 in Kleinmiltitz . Böttger (1875–1960), with whom he had eight children. In 1921 his daughter Margarete married the politician Stanislaw Trabalski .

Political career

Group photograph at the end of 1919 with members of the USPD party executive and other prominent representatives of the Independent Social Democrats. Among those pictured: Arthur Crispien , Wilhelm Dittmann , Richard Lipinski, Wilhelm Bock , Alfred Henke , Curt Geyer , Fritz Zubeil , Hugo Haase , Fritz Kunert , Georg Ledebour , Arthur Stadthagen , Emanuel Wurm

SPD member of the Reichstag from Saxony; Lipinski in the top row, 2nd from the left (1903)

Lipinski at an election campaign event in Leipzig

The Leipzig agitation committee 1903; from left to right: Fritz Nüchtern, Friedrich Seger , Gustav Orbel, Karl Schrörs and Richard Lipinski

In the Leipzig labor movement he became an outstanding figure of integration and was chairman of the SPD district of Leipzig from 1907 to 1917. Lipinski achieved his first political office in 1897, during a protest election against Ernst Grenz , when he was first elected to the Leipzig agitation committee. This was a little sensation because not only the young age, but also the lack of craft training and the recent immigration from West Prussia spoke against him. In 1898 Lipinski ran for the first time for the Reichstag in the constituency of Oschatz-Grimma, a stronghold of the Conservatives, and lost the election. From 1903 to 1907 he was a member of the Reichstag . During the First World War , in 1917, he joined the USPD , which represented a position deviating from the majority social democracy on the war question. It testifies to his leadership personality that the Leipzig SPD converted almost unanimously to the USPD. In March 1918, Lipinski was brought into custody on suspicion of "attempted high treason". Before the process could begin, however, the revolution broke out. Lipinski was chairman of this party in Leipzig until 1933.

Probably no other regional party leader in the history of German social democracy has been confirmed in his office so often. Between 1917 and 1922 he was a member of the party's central advisory council.

After the Free State of Saxony was proclaimed by Hermann Fleißner in the Sarrasani circus in Dresden at the end of the First World War on November 10, 1918 , Lipinski was People's Representative and Chairman of the Council of People's Representatives in Saxony from November 15, 1918 to January 16, 1919 . One of his first goals was to introduce universal, equal, direct and secret proportional representation for men and women over the age of 21. He introduced this on November 28, 1918. During the November Revolution, Lipinski slowed down the actions of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Leipzig and represented the “treacherous” role of Ebert , Scheidemann and Noske . In the days of the Kapp Putsch , he betrayed the fighting workers in Leipzig by concluding an armistice agreement (similar to the " Bielefeld Severing Agreement ") with the commander of the counterrevolutionary troops without their knowledge and consent , which ultimately led to the fighting being broken off. In December 1918 he was a delegate at the Reich Council Congress . From 1919 to 1920 he was a member of the Saxon People's Chamber , where he was chairman of the USPD parliamentary group and deputy president. From December 11, 1920 to February 2, 1923, Lipinski was Minister of the Interior under Wilhelm Buck . In 1922 he rejoined the SPD. Since then, as between 1912 and 1916, he has been a member of the central party committee of the SPD. In Leipzig he was again chairman of the SPD until 1933. Between 1920 and 1933 Lipinski was a member of the Reichstag , first for the USPD and then for the SPD. On February 22, 1924 he was a co-founder and member of the Central Association of Employees and the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold . On March 23, 1933, he voted in the Reichstag against the “Law to Eliminate the Needs of the People and the Reich”, the so-called Enabling Act for Adolf Hitler, despite the immediate physical distress from the National Socialists in and in front of the meeting room.

As a prominent social democrat and former Saxon interior minister, Lipinski was imprisoned under the Nazi regime in 1933 and from 1934 to 1935; he died of the consequences of imprisonment in 1936. Around a thousand people gathered under the eyes of the Gestapo to pay their final respects to him. Erich Schilling and August Kroneberg , among others , were identified in photos from surveillance cameras . Lipinski's grave is located in the Leipzig South Cemetery .

Honors

Lipinskistraße in Leipzig

Stumbling block in front of Lipinski's house in Leipzig

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag

Since 1992 one of the 96 memorial plaques for members of the Reichstag murdered by the National Socialists has been commemorating Lipinski in the Tiergarten district of Berlin on the corner of Scheidemannstrasse and Platz der Republik . In the vestibule of the SPD parliamentary committee room in the German Bundestag, a text plaque pays tribute to the resistance of the social democratic parliamentarians to the National Socialists' enabling law on March 23, 1933.

Since November 6, 1996, the traditional SPD house in Leipzig at Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 19-21 has been called Richard-Lipinski-Haus. The renovated office, commercial and residential building was inaugurated by Inge Wettig-Danielmeier in memory of the leading Leipzig and Saxon social democrats. In 1945 part of today's Käthe-Kollwitz-Straße was named after Richard Lipinski. But in 1962 the street name disappeared again. In July 2000 the Leipzig city council decided to rename Ethel- and Julius-Rosenberg-Straße in the Großzschocher district to Lipinskistraße. On February 6, 2006, the SPD honored the first democratic head of government in Saxony on the occasion of his 140th birthday at his grave in Leipzig's southern cemetery. On September 9, 2014, a stumbling block was laid by the artist Gunter Demnig in his memory at Goldschmidtstrasse 12 in Leipzig, in front of his former residential and commercial building, in today's Felix-Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Museum .

Publications / works

Documents on the Socialist Law

In parallel to his journalistic activities, his writing activity developed. Social policy issues (labor law, etc.) were initially in the foreground. Lipinski was the author of numerous political and socio-political writings, such as:

• Peace on Earth, 1893 (play)
• The commercial employment contract, 1894
• The rights and obligations of the tenant, 1900
• The nine o'clock shop closing, 1900
• The employment contract of the clerks, the law and the judicial process of the clerks, 1904
• The law and legal recourse of the clerks, 1904
• The Reich Association Act, 1908
• The police in Saxony, 1909
• Social democracy from its beginnings to 1913.
• The primary school law in Saxony, 1919
• Out of the Church, 1919
• The general elementary school and religious instruction in the Republic of Saxony, 1919
• The struggle for political power in Saxony, 1926
• Documents on the Socialist Law , October 1928
• Social democracy from its beginnings to the present (2 vols., 1926–1929)
• as well as from 1899 to 1933 publisher of the annual: "Der Arbeiterführer für Leipzig".

Quote

“ ... And finally a personal note. When you talk about the party movement in Leipzig outside, it always has a strange aftertaste. The people of Leipzig are always a bit disreputable in the German labor movement. That is because we in Leipzig have so far tried to pursue a fundamental policy. We have done everything we can to achieve this goal and, of course, we have often spoiled it for many. But after you've come here, after you've got to know the people of Leipzig personally, and not just by hearing, you will find that they are really nice guys with whom you can get along. ... "

- Richard Lipinski, opening speech at the SPD party congress in 1909 in Leipzig

literature

• Manfred Hötzel, Karsten Rudolph: Richard Lipinski (1867-1936). Democratic socialist and organizer of political power. In: Helga Grebing , Hans Mommsen, Karsten Rudolph (eds.): Democracy and emancipation between the Elbe and the Saale. Contributions to the history of the social democratic labor movement until 1933. Essen 1993, pp. 237–262.
• Michael Rudloff, Thomas Adam (with the assistance of Jürgen Schlimper): Leipzig. Cradle of German social democracy. Leipzig 1996, p. 72 ff.
• Mike Schmeitzner , Michael Rudloff: History of Social Democracy in the Saxon State Parliament. Representation and documentation 1877–1997. P. 204 f.
• Jesko Vogel: The social democratic party district Leipzig in the Weimar Republic. Saxony's democratic tradition. 2 volumes. Hamburg 2006.
• Wolfgang Starke:  Lipinski, Richard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 643 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Lipinski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Richard Lipinski in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Richard Lipinski's biography . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
• Richard Lipinski's biography . In: Heinrich Best : database of the members of the Reichstag of the Empire 1867/71 to 1918 (Biorab - Kaiserreich)
• Richard Lipinski's biography . In: Heinrich Best and Wilhelm H. Schröder : Database of Members of the National Assembly and the German Reichstag 1919–1933 (Biorab – Weimar)
• The Saxon interior ministers at a glance
• Minutes of the SPD party congress from 12.-18. Nov. 1909 (PDF file; 44.69 MB)
• Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Archive of Social Democracy

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Saxon State Archives, Leipzig. File 21079, serial no. No. 125
2. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Stärcke:  Lipinski, Richard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 643 f. ( Digitized version ).
3. ^ Information from Doris Lipinski, a granddaughter of Richard.
4. ^ Michael Rudloff, Thomas Adam (with the assistance of Jürgen Schlimper): Leipzig. Cradle of German social democracy. Leipzig 1996, p. 74.
5. ↑ Saxony yesterday and today ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ http://www.smi.sachsen.de/515.htm
7. ^ Michael Rudloff, Thomas Adam (with the assistance of Jürgen Schlimper): Leipzig. Cradle of German social democracy. Leipzig 1996, p. 158.
8. ↑ Minutes of the negotiations at the SPD party congress in Leipzig from December 12th to 18th November 1909