Theodor Kotzur

Theodor Kotzur

Theodor Kotzur (born January 20, 1883 in Cottbus , † 1953 in Berlin ) was a German trade unionist and socialist politician.

Life

From 1897 to 1900, Kotzur completed an apprenticeship as a cloth maker or master textile worker. He then worked in this profession until 1909. In 1900, after completing his apprenticeship, he joined the textile workers' association , which belonged to the free trade unions . In 1903 he organized himself in the SPD . Between 1909 and 1917 Kotzur was the full-time managing director of the textile workers' association in Neumünster . From 1909 to 1916 he was also chairman of the local SPD. Between 1916 and 1917 Kotzur was employed by the Prussian-Hessian state railway .

Kotzur was one of the founders of the German Railway Union in 1917 . Initially he was a member from 1919 and a short time later also the third chairman of the main board of the union. His area of ​​responsibility was to look after the railway officials. From 1922 Kotzur was for a short time chairman of the civil service center of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB). From 1922 to 1933 he was a member of the main board of the General German Civil Service Association (ADB), whose deputy chair he took over from 1925. In addition, from 1917 to 1919, Kotzur took on the role of editor in charge of the union newspaper Weckruf / Deutscher Eisenbahner . Even afterwards he remained active as a journalist for the free trade union press.

In addition, Kotzur was part of the expanded SPD district executive committee of Berlin and the civil servants' advisory board of the party. He was also a member of the Weimar National Assembly in 1919 and, after the new elections in 1920 and 1921, of the German Reichstag . After that he was temporarily a member of the Reich Economic Council.

At the beginning of the Nazi era , Kotzur lost his political and trade union offices. He was involved in saving part of the ADGB's assets from access by the Nazi regime by transferring it to “Beamtenhilfe” publishing house GmbH. Kotzur took an active part in the resistance struggle against the Nazi regime, but he largely escaped severe reprisals from the Nazi regime.

After the liberation from National Socialism, Kotzur initially rejoined the SPD and in 1946 supported the forced unification with the KPD to form the SED . Since 1945 he has been a board member of the Association for Railway, Post and Telecommunications of Greater Berlin, which was established after the war. Since 1946 he was a member of the board of the FDGB of Greater Berlin. Between June 1946 and February 1949 he was chairman of the central board of IG Eisenbahn in the federal board of the FDGB. Due to conflicts with the SED, he was forced to resign from this union function. Before that, Kotzur was a member of the German People's Council in 1948/49 as a member of the FDGB . There he was a member of the constitutional committee.

literature

• Martin Broszat , Hermann Weber (Ed.): SBZ manual. State administrations, parties, social organizations and their executives in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany 1945–1949. 2nd edition, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-55262-7 ( digitized version ).
• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 7). Metropol, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 124, 345 ff., 350 ff., 355, 368, 548-549 (short biography), 688.
• Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .

Web links

• Biography of Theodor Kotzur . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
• Entry in the FDGB lexicon
• Theodor Kotzur in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Biography of Theodor Kotzur . In: Heinrich Best and Wilhelm H. Schröder : Database of Members of the National Assembly and the German Reichstag 1919–1933 (Biorab – Weimar)