Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (1931)

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The Socialist Workers 'Party of Germany ( SAPD , often also known as the Socialist Workers' Party , SAP ) was a left-wing socialist , Marxist party that was founded in Berlin on October 4, 1931 and existed until 1945.

History of the SAPD

1931-1933

The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD) was a left-wing split from the SPD in autumn 1931, it came into being as six members of the SPD parliamentary group ( Kurt Rosenfeld , Max Seydewitz , August Siemsen , Heinrich Ströbel , Hans Ziegler and Andreas Portune ) because of the break in the Factional discipline were excluded . The newly founded party was joined by a minority of the left wing of the SPD (including some better-known politicians such as Anna Siemsen and Käte Frankenthal ) and the youth association SAJ , part of the KPO around Paul Frölich , Jacob Walcher , August Enderle , August Ziehl and Heinrich Galm , some groups and people from the Communist faction of the KPD such as Heinrich Stahmer , the rest of the USPD around Theodor Liebknecht , the Socialist League of Georg Ledebour , the Working Group for Left Socialist Politics around Fritz Küster , a de-Christian group of the Red Fighters around Bernhard Reichenbach (1932 excluded) as well as well-known independent Marxist intellectuals such as Fritz Sternberg .

The SAPD was largely unable to make a breakthrough at the electoral level (state parliament mandates in Hesse and city and municipal council seats in its municipal strongholds of Offenbach , Geesthacht , Breslau , Dresden , Zwickau and, above all, some smaller communities in Vogtland ; in the Vogtland village of Morgenröthe-Rautenkranz , the party received the local elections on November 13, 1932, the absolute majority of votes and seats.) It also failed to become a pole of attraction for non-party leftists or critical SPD and KPD members.

The SAPD campaigned vehemently for a united front of the SPD, KPD, trade unions and other mass organizations of the workers' movement against fascism ; which was not very successful due to the rejection of this strategy by the leading bureaucracies . Together with the KPO and the Leninbund , the SAPD carried out a series of anti-fascist rallies and discussion events at which the idea of ​​a united front was propagated.

At the beginning of 1933 factional disputes within the SAPD came to a head when the majority of the executive committee around Rosenfeld and Seydewitz advocated the dissolution of the party in favor of the SPD and KPD, the left wing opposed this and held a party congress under the conditions of illegality on which a new board was elected. Almost a tenth of the 15,600 members at the time joined the right-wing's call for dissolution. The background to this dispute was the dissatisfaction of a majority of the members with the moderate - left-wing social democratic and pacifist - course of the party leadership and former Reichstag members, the SAPD left (around the former KPO members Fröhlich and Walcher, the intellectuals Sternberg and Klaus Zweiling and the leadership des SJVD) strove to build a new revolutionary party and a new communist international . In this context it should be mentioned that the SAPD belonged to the London office , an association of left-wing socialist and independent communist parties such as the POUM , the British ILP and the Dutch RSP and OSP , and in 1934 led Leon Trotsky's merger negotiations with the International Communist League .

The SAPD published the daily newspaper Sozialistische Arbeiter Zeitung , the weekly newspaper Die Fackel , several regional newspapers such as the Kampfsignal (Berlin), the previous theoretical organ of the SPD left, Der Klassenkampf , now appeared under the editorship of the SAPD. Young members and sympathizers of the SAPD formed the Socialist Youth Association ( SJVD ), which had around 8,000 to 10,000 members (the SAPD around 25,000 at weddings). The SAPD developed a certain influence on the pacifist German Peace Society (DFG), especially since its executive chairman Fritz Küster was also a member of the SAPD board, and in various cultural organizations of the workers 'movement ( freethinkers , workers' sports movement ). The influence of the SAPD in the unions remained rather moderate.

Exile and illegality

Memorial plaque in memory of the illegal printing company of the SAPD in Hamburg-Bergedorf .

From 1933 its members worked illegally against National Socialism . Over half of the membership took part in the anti-fascist resistance, a much higher percentage than in the mass parties SPD and KPD. In Berlin there was close cooperation between members of the SAPD and the left-wing socialist Red Shock Troop , which at that time had up to 500 members. This resulted in an official "combat alliance", which was announced on July 18, 1933 in the SAPD leaflet "Information from Politics and Economy". Both groups planned together to "renew the workers' movement on the basis of revolutionary principles". The alliance became largely ineffective in late 1933 / early 1934 due to mass arrests in Berlin resistance circles. Many SAPD members, v. a. Those known to the public who emigrated, of those who remained in Germany, many were imprisoned in prisons or concentration camps , some like Ernst Eckstein and Franz Bobzien were murdered. After most of the SAPD structures had been smashed in 1937/38, there were only smaller groups and circles that continued to be active (in some cases until the end of the war in 1945). In exile (the exile executive was in Paris), the SAPD participated in the Lutetia district , an attempt to found a German popular front ; during the Spanish civil war , members of the party fought in the workers' militias of the POUM , the Rovira militia unit . A relief fund , the Ernst Eckstein Fund, was set up to support troubled or imprisoned comrades . In 1937 a group of members around Erwin Ackerknecht , Walter Fabian and Peter Blachstein was expelled from the party after it had criticized the SAPD's uncritical attitude towards the KPD and the Moscow trials , and the expelled formed the Neuer Weg group . In 1939 the contacts between exile and underground groups largely collapsed due to the outbreak of war, the exile structures themselves showed tendencies towards disintegration (among other things, the exile leadership broke up into rival groups around Walcher and Frölich), the groups still active in Sweden (which still have individual contacts with members in northern Germany Space entertaining) and Great Britain (which had already joined the Union of German Socialist Organizations in Great Britain in 1941 ) again approached the SPD.

After 1945

After the end of the National Socialist dictatorship, most of the members of the SAPD in the western zones joined forces in 1945 after a conversation between the later SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher , who was from the office of Dr. Schumacher acted from, and Otto Brenner, who acted as the SAPD representative, joined the SPD , while others, especially in the Soviet zone, also joined the KPD or later the SED , such as Klaus Zweiling , Jacob Walcher , Max Seydewitz and Edith Baumann . Attempts to re-establish a decidedly left-wing socialist party at the local level, such as under Heinrich Galm in Offenbach ( Workers' Party  - AP) or under August Ziehl in Geesthacht (there under the name SAP) failed. Some former SAPD members like Fritz Lamm played an important role in the independent radical left in the 1950s and 1960s, others joined in the tradition of the KPD-O -standing group labor policy at.

Willy Brandt and the SAPD

In Mein Weg nach Berlin , the autobiography of Willy Brandt , the later SPD party chairman (1964–1987) and Federal Chancellor (1969–1974), it says:

“In the autumn of 1931, the Nazis and the German Nationalists, SA and Stahlhelm joined forces in the ' Harzburg Front ' ... It was precisely at this point in time, as a result of organizational and disciplinary measures by the party leadership, that the left wing of the Social Democrats split off. A few members of the Reichstag, a number of active party groups - especially in Saxony  - but not least a large part of the socialist youth followed those who called for the establishment of a Socialist Workers' Party (SAP). "

Willy Brandt (at the time still under his maiden name Herbert Frahm) joined the SAP as a 17-year-old youth in his hometown Lübeck against the advice of his mentor Julius Leber , was a member of the local board and chairman of the local SJVD. As a result of the National Socialists coming to power in Germany , he emigrated to Norwegian exile, where he - from now on under his "battle name" Willy Brandt - headed the SAPD office and the central contact point of the SJVD in Oslo, and from February 1934 to autumn 1937 he also represented the SJVD at the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations .

Subsidiary and apron organizations

  • Socialist Youth Association of Germany (SJVD)
  • Socialist student association (SStV, when it was founded in 1931 approx. 80 members)
  • Socialist Protection Association (SSB)
  • Marxist book community
  • Ernst Eckstein Fund

Membership numbers

  • 1931: approx. 25,000
  • March 1933: approx.15,600
  • End of 1933: approx. 13,000-14,000 members, more than 100 in exile
  • Beginning of 1935: approx. 10,000, of which approx. 5,000 are active and approx. 180 in exile
  • January 1937: approx. 1,000 illegally working members in Germany

Party leader of the SAPD

Voter turnouts

Reichstag elections

State elections

  • Hesse, November 15, 1931 - 8,170 votes (1.0%) - 0 seats
  • Prussia, April 24, 1932 - 80,392 votes (0.4%) - 0 seats (loss of the three seats obtained by converting from the SPD ( Käte Frankenthal , Hans Marckwald ) and KPO ( Hermann Gebhardt ))
  • Bavaria, April 24, 1932 - 13,437 votes (0.3%) - 0 seats
  • Anhalt, April 24, 1932 - 806 votes (0.4%) - 0 seats
  • Hamburg, April 24, 1932 - 2,302 votes (0.3%) - 0 seats
  • Oldenburg, May 29, 1932 - 1,469 votes (0.5%) - 0 seats
  • Mecklenburg-Schwerin, June 5, 1932 - 957 (0.3%) - 0 seats
  • Hesse, June 19, 1932 - 11,689 votes (1.6%) - 1 mandate ( Heinrich Galm ) (transfer from the KPO) was able to keep his seat, Fritz Ohlhof (transfer from the SPD, lost his seat)
  • Thuringia, July 31, 1932 - 2,067 (0.2%) - 0 mandates

See also

literature

  • Helmut Arndt , Heinz Niemann: Lost? On the history of the Socialist Workers' Party. Two contributions to left socialism in Germany. Dietz, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-320-01699-7 .
  • Jörg Bremer : The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP). Underground and Exile 1933–1945 (= Campus Research. Vol. 35). Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1978, ISBN 3-593-32329-X (At the same time: Heidelberg, University, dissertation, 1977: The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP) underground and in exile from nineteen thirty-three to nineteen hundred and forty-five. ).
  • Klaus Dagenbach, Markus Rupp: The Pforzheimer SAPD in the resistance. Presentation and documentation (= Pforzheim City Archives. Materials on City History. 6). City archive, Pforzheim 1995, ISBN 3-9803529-9-4 .
  • Hanno Drechsler : The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). A contribution to the history of the German labor movement at the end of the Weimar Republic (= Marburg treatises on political science. Vol. 2, ISSN  0542-6480 ). Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1965.
  • Einhart Lorenz: More than Willy Brandt. The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP) in Scandinavian exile. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-631-31428-0 .
  • Dagmar Schlünder: The press of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany in exile 1933-1939. An analytical bibliography (= special publications of the German Library. No. 8). With a foreword by Walter Fabian . Hanser, Munich et al. 1981, ISBN 3-446-12980-4 .
  • Florian Wilde: "Show the masses hungry for hope, socialism as the only possible rescue from the crisis." The development of the SPD left from the class struggle group to the Socialist Workers' Party (SAP). In: Marcel Bois, Bernd Hüttner (Ed.): Contributions to the history of a pluralist left. Issue 1: Theories and Movements before 1968. Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Berlin 2010, pp. 22–26, (PDF; 276 kB).

Web links

Commons : Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (1931)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hanno Drechsler: The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). A contribution to the history of the German labor movement at the end of the Weimar Republic. 1965, p. 286.
  2. ↑ Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: The Red Assault Troop. An early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism . Lukas Verlag for Art and Spiritual History, Berlin 2018, pp. 87ff.
  3. ↑ Originally six seats, Heinrich Ströbel had already left the party in early 1932