Socialist German workers' youth

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Basic data
Establishment date: 5th May 1968
Members: approx. 750 (as of 2017)
Chair: Lena Kreymann
Seat: eat
Alignment: Marxist-Leninist
Structure: 14 regional associations
International connections: World Federation of Democratic Youth
European connections: MECYO
Website: www.sdaj.org

The Socialist German Workers Youth (SDAJ) is a Marxist-Leninist -oriented youth organization . The association is an officially independent subsidiary organization of the German Communist Party (DKP). According to the report on the protection of the constitution from 2014, the SDAJ is formally independent, but considers itself to be a junior organization of the DKP. It is listed under the heading “ left-wing extremist efforts and suspected cases”.

Program

According to its own admission, the SDAJ represents the overall interests of working and learning youth. The political focus is the "workers youth policy", i. H. Public relations and campaigns on the situation of trainees in Germany. There are also various topics of anti-capitalist politics, including anti-fascist and anti-militarist work. The topics of internationalism , educational policy and cuts in the financing of youth work are further focal points. The SDAJ demands the comprehensive school, a class size of a maximum of 20 students and the abolition of top grades . She also advocates future-oriented, democratic and solidary higher education. It is against tuition and semester fees as well as against the numerus clausus.

organization structure

SDAJ groups in the Federal Republic of Germany (as of July 2019)

The members are between the ages of 14 and 30. The SDAJ is divided into local groups, district associations and regional associations, although the SDAJ is not represented in all federal states . The SDAJ is hardly active in the new federal states in particular. According to the 2014 report on the protection of the constitution , the SDAJ is formally independent, but regards itself as a junior organization of the DKP.

Federal chairwoman of the SDAJ

Period Surname
1968-1974 Rolf Priemer and Walter Möbius (deputies)
1974-1979 Wolfgang Gehrcke
1979-1982 Werner Stürmann and Vera Achenbach (deputy)
1982-1984 Werner Stürmann and Hans Kluthe (deputies)
1984-1989 Birgit Radow and Hans-Georg Eberhard (deputies)
1989-1994 Patrik Köbele
1994-2000 Michael Gotze
2000-2004 Tina Sanders and Jürgen Wagner
2004-2006 collective leadership
2006-2008 Michael hello
2008-2013 Bjorn Schmidt
2013-2016 Paul Rodermund
2016-2018 Jan Meier
since 2018 Lena Kreymann

history

1968 to 1977

The SDAJ was founded on May 5, 1968, the 150th birthday of Karl Marx , by youths and young members of the banned KPD - even before the DKP was reconstituted on September 25, 1968. One of the co-founders was Reinhard Junge .

The SDAJ tried, among other things, to participate in the social movements that arose as a result of the student movement in 1968 . A large number of apprentices had also become politically active in order to politically improve the quality of their training and their living conditions. The SDAJ emerged from the "apprenticeship movement", while working for a political orientation and international class solidarity. It was precisely against the authoritarian leadership that it fought through the political self-organization of working and learning youth. Since the DKP was founded, the SDAJ has been cooperating with the communist party without giving up its independence as a youth association . The SDAJ became one of the leading left youth associations in Germany and was politically perceptible to the public in many areas - for example, in campaigns against fare increases (“ Red Dot Actions ”). According to its own information, it had more than 35,000 members at times.

The association organ of the SDAJ was the magazine elan , which was sold by its members and whose publication was discontinued after the SED cut off funding. Since 1972, the association has been organizing central and decentralized Whitsun camps every year.

Action of the SDAJ at a demonstration on May 1st, 2006

1978 to 1987

The SDAJ held from 1978 to 1988 together with the Marxist Student League Spartacus (MSB) every two years in mid-May at the premises of the Dortmund exhibition , the festival of youth . Numerous artists, also internationally known, performed there; an example is the 1978 festival with artists such as u. a. Jutta Weinhold , Snowball , Udo Lindenberg , Puhdys or the Titi-Winterstein- Quintet. Political discussions were also held. According to the SDAJ, several 100,000 visitors took part.

Up until German reunification, there were close contacts between the SDAJ and the FDJ , which was viewed as a sibling organization. For example, every regional association of the SDAJ had a friendship district in the GDR, where regular trips were made to get to know life in the GDR better. In addition, some of the publicity materials and infrastructure were financed by GDR funds.

The peace movement played a major role in the 1980s .

1988 to 1997

In 1988, conflicts within the association became publicly apparent when reform positions within the DKP and SDAJ increasingly gained strength. This led to a split in the organization at the SDAJ federal congress in 1989, when the majority of the delegates spoke out in favor of a motion that wanted to keep the association as a Marxist workers' youth organization. The inferior current around the federal chairwoman Birgit Radow then left the congress. However, it did not succeed in building new nationwide structures. Many of their former leadership members found a new home in the youth structures of the PDS . A federal working committee headed by Patrik Köbele took over the leadership of the SDAJ. The SDAJ was thus preserved as a Marxist-Leninist organization over the period of German reunification .

With the turnaround and the peaceful revolution in the GDR and German reunification, the crisis in the SDAJ came to a head. Just like the DKP, it experienced a rapid decline in membership due to resignations. After the end of funding from the GDR, newspapers and vacation properties had to be given up and full-time employees dismissed. Until about 1993 the SDAJ remained virtually “headless”, so that the federal headquarters, with its constantly changing line-up, was often only able to watch the dissolution of district associations, local groups and district / state associations. In 1994, the reorganization and reactivation of district and local associations and the reconstruction of state structures began, although numerous setbacks were inevitable.

With the position , a central theory and debate body of the association soon emerged, which at the same time represents a great financial challenge. Acquiring new subscribers soon became a central theme of many SDAJ campaigns. After all, from the end of the 1990s it was possible to stabilize many local groups and to establish new ones, for example in Leipzig , Dresden , Gera , Potsdam , Rostock , Gadebusch and Berlin , so that the number of members was able to consolidate over the course of these years.

There are only limited contacts with today's FDJ.

1998 until today

In 2004, the former SDAJ activist Johanna Scheringer-Wright entered the Thuringian state parliament on the PDS list . In the same year the former SDAJ federal chairman Wolfgang Gehrcke won a direct mandate for the Brandenburg state parliament and in 2005 a parliamentary mandate, as did the former SDAJ member Gert Winkelmeier (both Die Linke ).

According to the SDAJ and internal sources from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, membership development has been showing a slight upward trend for several years. The BfV publishes an assessment of the number of members of the SDAJ in its annual reports for the protection of the constitution. For 2007 the BfV stated around 300 members nationwide, for 2015 already 500 members and for 2016 750 members.

Due to the slight increase in membership, the Youth Festival has been taking place every two years since 2008 after a twenty-year break , alternating with the regional Whitsun camps in the Cologne Youth Park. The SDAJ has been organizing four regional Whitsun camps in north, east, south and west of Germany since 2011. This was seen as the result of the strengthening of the association in East Germany, as no East Camp could be offered in 2009.

In 2009 the SDAJ was involved in the organization and implementation of the nationwide educational strikes and was involved in student policy, such as the establishment of LSV (state student representatives) and BSV ( national student representatives ) .

At the end of February 2010 the Syrian immigrant Aram A. was refused naturalization because he was a member of the SDAJ .

In October 2011 the SDAJ held its 20th Federal Congress in Hanover. In addition to the election of a 33-member federal executive board, of which Björn Schmidt was still a member as chairman, the anti-fascist campaign »Nazi-free zones« was also decided. As part of this campaign, which ran until June 2012, "Nazi-free zones" were created primarily in schools and companies in cooperation with local alliances, student representatives and the youth union. The SDAJ's future paper , the programmatic basis, was adopted at the 2nd meeting of the federal congress at the end of September 2012 in Nuremberg.

In response to the hooligans' appearance against Salafists , the SDAJ Cologne organized a demonstration "against neo-Nazis , right-wing hooligans and racism " on November 2, 2014 , in which, according to their own statements, 3,400 people took part.

Memberships and cooperations

The SDAJ is a member of the World Federation of Democratic Youth and takes part in the World Festival of Youth and Students it organizes . In Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt the SDAJ cooperates with ['solid] and the Red Table . In some other federal states, such as North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg, there are coordination meetings with ['solid]. At group and state level, the SDAJ works together with the respective regional political organizations and groups that represent comparable points of view in the specific area of ​​action, e.g. B. in different union youth groups. In Hamburg , the SDAJ is an associated member of the State Youth Association .

Publications

In addition to the nationwide magazine Position, there are other newspapers and campaign newspapers of the SDAJ groups in large cities and regions, such as Basta! in Berlin, Likedeeler in Hamburg, DenkbieL in Kiel, the Comandante in Marburg, the Red Hercules in Kassel, the outcry in Rostock, the perspective! in Solingen, Movimiento in Cologne, Your Voice - Your Choice in Düsseldorf or Venceremos in Thuringia. With a growing number of members in southern Germany, a youth newspaper was also founded in Bavaria . The cons! has been published every two months since 2004 with a circulation of approx. 5000 copies and is distributed in 16 Bavarian cities and municipalities (as of January 2007); Following this example, the Baschda appears in Baden-Württemberg . The SDAJ publishes themed newspapers, for example apprentice information , school start -up newspaper or the anti-militarist information .

In 2007 the SDAJ released a “ red schoolyard CD ” “Together against the Right”, which contains songs by the partisans of the 1940s, the Free German Youth (FDJ) and anti-militarist songs. The action was intended as a counter-campaign to the distribution of CDs with right-wing extremist songs. The October Revolution is highlighted as a positive event on the CD .

For the 50th anniversary of the association in 2018, the federal board of the SDAJ published a book entitled One World to Win - Karl Marx, Today's Capitalism and Us . The declared aim of the 200th birthday of Karl Marx was to encourage people to "form their own picture of the world and to deal more deeply with Marx's findings." Contributions by Dietmar Dath , Georg Fülberth , Patrik Köbele , Arnold Schölzel and Lucas Zeise , among others, address "the life and knowledge of Karl Marx, a Marxist interpretation of the contradictions of our time and an overview of class struggles of the 20th century" .

See also

Web links

Commons : Socialist German Workers' Youth  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report . (PDF) Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, p. 144 , accessed on July 24, 2018 .
  2. ^ The 23rd SDAJ Federal Congress. In: Our time . March 29, 2018. Retrieved March 29, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Imprint. SDAJ, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b regional associations. SDAJ, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  5. ^ The "German Communist Party" (DKP). Federal Agency for Civic Education , August 26, 2014, accessed on April 9, 2017 .
  6. ↑ a b c report on the protection of the constitution. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, p. 134 , accessed on January 17, 2018 .
  7. ^ Constitutional Protection Report Lower Saxony 2009. Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior, Sport and Integration, p. 233 , accessed on January 17, 2018 .
  8. ↑ AGs. SDAJ, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  9. ↑ International solidarity
  10. ↑ Student policy
  11. ↑ University policy
  12. ↑ 40 years of SDAJ - the foundation. DKP Wuppertal, archived from the original on April 3, 2013 ; Retrieved April 9, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Communists. Guitar under my arm . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , Aug. 16, 1971 ( online [accessed April 9, 2017]).
  14. ^ Protocol of VI. Federal Congress of the SADJ
  15. ^ New Germany, October 13, 1981 and March 8, 1982
  16. ^ Protocol of the VII Federal Congress of the SDAJ
  17. ^ Protocols of VIII. And IX. Federal Congress of the SDAJ
  18. ↑ Roland Kirbach: DKP: Left by the comrades. The SED stops providing financial aid to West German offshoots. In: Die Zeit December 22, 1989
  19. ↑ Christian Klemm: Split, quarreled and almost bankrupt. Neues Deutschland , October 26, 2009, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  20. ↑ a b Report on the Protection of the Constitution 2007. (PDF) Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , p. 160 , archived from the original on September 20, 2008 ; Retrieved April 9, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report . (PDF) Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, p. 135 , accessed on September 10, 2017 .
  22. ↑ https://www.sdaj.org/2016/04/07/pfingsten-da-war-doch-was-auf-zum-pfingstcamp-2016/
  23. ↑ https://www.sdaj.org/2011/06/17/sdaj-ost-pfingstcamp-voll-eruis/
  24. ↑ https://www.sdaj.org/2011/06/13/hunderte-jugendliche-bei-den-regionalen-pfingstcamps-der-sdaj/
  25. ↑ https://wilde-13.blogspot.com/2009/05/sdaj-pfingstcamp-vom-2905-1062009.html
  26. ↑ Stefan Reinecke: Also too left for a German passport. taz , February 24, 2010, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  27. ↑ Wera Richter: SDAJ decides on anti-fascist campaign. Junge Welt , October 4, 2011, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  28. ^ Sepp Aigner: 45 years of the DKP: The communists before their 20th party congress. trend, February 2013, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  29. ↑ Future paper. SDAJ, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Markus Bernhardt: SDAJ mobilizes to protests against the brown mob. Junge Welt, November 4, 2014, accessed April 9, 2017 .
  31. ↑ http://weltfestspiele.de/category/2017/
  32. ^ Socialist German Workers' Youth (SDAJ). Landesjugendring Hamburg , accessed on April 9, 2017 .
  33. ↑ Contents “Together against the Right”. ( JPEG ) SDAJ OWL, archived from the original on February 22, 2015 ; Retrieved April 9, 2017 .
  34. ↑ https://shop.papyrossa.de/Kreymann/Rodermund-Hg-Eine-Welt-zu-gewinnen
  35. ↑ https://www.amazon.de/Eine-Welt-gewinnen-Kapitalismus-Bibliothek/dp/3894386746
  36. ↑ https://www.sdaj.org/2018/05/11/buchprojekt-eine-welt-zu-gewinnen-marxismus-einfuehrung-der-sdaj/