Theodor Bergmann (agricultural scientist)

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Theodor Bergmann gives the main address at the memorial service for the Hitler assassin Georg Elser on April 19, 2009 in Heidenheim-Schnaitheim

Theodor Bergmann ( March 7, 1916 in Berlin - June 12, 2017 in Stuttgart ) was a German agricultural scientist, author and activist of the workers' policy group . Until 1981 he was professor for international comparative agricultural policy at the University of Hohenheim .

Life

Theodor Bergmann, seventh son of the Berlin rabbi Judah Bergmann and the youngest brother of Alfred and Ernst David Bergmann, joined the Jungspartakusbund and the Socialist Student Union in 1927 . In 1929 he joined the KJVD-O , the youth organization of the newly founded KP opposition (KPO). In 1933, immediately after Hitler came to power , he was still able to do his Abitur, but had to emigrate that same year.

He initially fled via Saarland to what was then Palestine , where he a. a. worked in a kibbutz ; from there he went to the Czechoslovak Republic in 1935, where he began studying agricultural science in Tetschen . At the same time, he did anti-fascist work by producing leaflets that were then smuggled across the border into Germany. After the Munich Agreement in 1938, he fled to Sweden. Here he and his older brother Josef Bergmann, who died in 2005, managed the structures of the Communist Party opposition and was also active in the national group of German trade unionists in Sweden .

After returning to Germany in 1946, he completed a degree in agricultural science in Bonn in 1947 and received his doctorate in 1955 from the University of Hohenheim on structural change in Sweden's agriculture. From 1956 he was employed by the Hanover Chamber of Agriculture. In 1965 he became a research assistant at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart and, after completing his habilitation in 1968 and a visiting professorship from 1971 to 1972 at the University of New England in Armidale / Australia, he was appointed professor of international comparative agricultural policy in 1973.

At the University of Hohenheim around 1975 he was one of the small group of professors who stood up for Marxist students who were affected by the radical decree. So had Winfried Kretschmann and Joerg Hofmann largely thanks to his intercession to remain at the university. After his retirement in 1981, Theodor Bergmann devoted himself increasingly to the history of the labor movement in general and the history of the KPO in particular.

In the post-war period he was for many years one of the leading members of the KPO successor organization Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik (Arpo), from 1948 to 1952 he was the editor of its journal Arbeiterpolitik .

Bergmann was an active member of the initiative to network the trade union left and a member of the editorial team of the Netzwerk-Info trade union left and from 1990 a member of the PDS , for which he ran in the federal elections in 1990 and whose state association in Baden-Württemberg he headed in 1990/1991. Bergmann had been a member of Die Linke since 2007 . Bergmann was an honorary member of the Left Youth Solid Stuttgart.

He was also the author, editor and translator of 50 books on agricultural policy and the history of the international labor movement . His publications on the history of the labor movement were published by VSA-Verlag . He has published articles on the labor movement in the journal Socialism . Bergmann wrote several articles for the historical-critical dictionary of Marxism .

Bergmann last lived in Stuttgart, where he died in June 2017 at the age of 101 after a brief serious illness.

Publications

  • Changes in the farm structure in Sweden. Berlin 1956
  • Re-splitting after the land consolidation in Lower Franconia. Bielefeld 1958 (with Ludwig Neckermann)
  • The agricultural population in the social security system. An international comparison. Goettingen 1960
  • State and forms of mechanization of agriculture in Asian countries. Part 2. South Asia. Stuttgart 1966
  • Functions and limits of action of production cooperatives in developing countries. Frankfurt 1967
  • The cooperative movement in India . History, achievements, tasks. Frankfurt 1971.
  • 50 years KPD (opposition): December 30, 1928 - December 30, 1978; the contribution of the KPO to Marxist theory and to the history of the German labor movement. Attempt at a critical appraisal. Hanover 1978 ISBN 3-88209-009-X .
  • Agricultural policy and agriculture in socialist countries. 2nd over Edition Saarbrücken 1979. ISBN 3-88156-115-3 .
  • Socialist agricultural policy. Cologne 1984. (together with Peter Gey and Wolfgang Quaisser) ISBN 3-7663-0892-0 .
  • The Thalheimer siblings . Sketches of their life and politics. Mainz 1993 (with Wolfgang Haible) ISBN 3-929455-12-9 .
  • From utopia to criticism. Friedrich Engels - a classic after 100 years. Hamburg 1996 (Ed., Together with Mario Keßler, Joost Kircz and Gert Schäfer) ISBN 3-87975-688-0 .
  • with Wolfgang Haible Ed .: Reform, Demokratie, Revolution. On the topicality of Rosa Luxemburg . Supplement to socialism (journal) H. 5, Hamburg 1997 ISBN 3-87975-921-9 .
  • The reflection of the Russian Revolution. A critical look back at 1917 and the aftermath. Hamburg 1997. (Ed., Together with Wladislaw Hedeler , Mario Keßler and Gert Schäfer ) ISBN 3-87975-704-6 .
  • Friedrich Westmeyer . From social democracy to the Spartakusbund. A political biography. Hamburg 1998. (with Wolfgang Haible and Galina Iwanowa) ISBN 3-87975-719-4 .
  • Heretic in communism. 23 biographical essays. Hamburg 2000 (Ed., Together with Mario Keßler)
  • In the century of disasters. Autobiography of a critical communist. Hamburg 2000 ISBN 3-87975-784-4 . (3rd, updated and supplemented edition 2016, ISBN 978-3-89965-688-6 .)
  • Against the current. The history of the KPD (opposition). Hamburg 2001 ISBN 3-87975-836-0 .
  • History is made. Social Drivers and the International Labor Movement in the 21st Century. Hamburg 2002. (Ed., Together with Wolfgang Haible and Gert Schäfer) ISBN 3-87975-888-3 .
  • The crisis and future of the kibbutz . Weinheim 2002. (together with Ludwig Liegle) ISBN 3-7799-1020-9 .
  • The Thalheimers. History of a family of undogmatic Marxists. Hamburg 2004. ISBN 3-89965-059-X .
  • Red China in the 21st century. Hamburg 2004. ISBN 3-89965-098-0 .
  • China discovers Rosa Luxemburg. Berlin 2007. ISBN 3-320-02101-X .
  • "Class Struggle & Solidarity". History of the Stuttgart metal workers. Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89965-236-9 .
  • Internationalism in the 21st Century. Learning from failure - for a new international solidarity. Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89965-354-0 .
  • Internationalists on the anti-fascist fronts. Spain , China , Vietnam Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89965-367-0 .
  • Companions. Interlocutor - teacher - friends - helpers of a critical communist. Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89965-443-1 .
  • The 100 Years War for Israel. An internationalist position on the Middle East conflict . Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89965-460-8 (new edition with a current foreword 2017, ISBN 978-3-89965-784-5 ).
  • Structural problems of the communist movement. Wrong paths - criticism - renewal. Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-89965-492-9 .
  • Socialists Zionists Communists: The Bergmann-Rosenzweig family - a militant generation in the 20th century. Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-89965-615-2 .

A detailed bibliography can be found in the booklet Theodor Bergmann: The Tradition of Critical Solidarity from Luxemburg to Gorbachev. Pankower lectures, issue 200, ed. v. Helle Panke, Berlin 2016, pp. 24–60.

literature

Movie

  • “Then we'll start over.” A film about Theodor Bergmann - (About) life of a critical communist in the 20th century . Documentary by Thorsten Fuchshuber, Julia Preuschel, Gabriele Reitermann and Danièle Weber, D 2006, 80 min.
  • Against the current - an encounter with Theodor Bergmann (KPD opposition) . Video documentation by Jürgen Enders, D 2014, 51 min.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tom Strohschneider : Theodor Bergmann is dead . Neues Deutschland , June 13, 2017, accessed on June 13, 2017.
  2. ↑ List of authors HKWM
  3. ↑ Viviane Thill, Michel Pauly: "Then let's start from the beginning" . Interview with the filmmaker Danièle Weber in: forum 263, February 2007, pp. 53–55 (pdf, 971 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Bergmann, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German agricultural scientist and author
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 2017
Place of death Stuttgart