Theodor Meentzen

Theodor Meentzen, around 1925

Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Meentzen (born November 14, 1875 in Butjadingen , † April 7, 1963 in Moritzburg ) was a German writer , publicist and editor . He belonged to the free thinker movement and made a special contribution to the popular science education of the workforce in the first half of the 20th century.

Life

To 1900

Theodor Meentzen was born in Butjadingen ( Wesermarsch ) into a long-established Frisian family. The father (1841–1882) was a hired man for a large farmer, the mother (1850–1894) also worked on the farm. Theodor had 4 siblings. He attended the one-class elementary school in Iffens , then until 1890 the school in the neighboring town of Stollhamm . The pastor there recognized Theodor's intelligence and striving for education and wanted to win him over to study as a teacher, but this was not feasible because of the poor conditions after the father's early death. Theodor Meentzen first became a small servant and began an apprenticeship as a carpenter and carpenter in 1891 (at that time a combined profession). When his master's orders were down, Meentzen worked on building bridges in the Wesermarsch. a. as " Rammsinger " (clock generator on the rams).

When Meentzen's teacher gave up his company in Butjadingen, he put Meentzen in a carpentry and joinery workshop in Wilhelmshaven . In 1894 Meentzen was registered as a carpenter journeyman. As a member of the Bremen woodworkers' association, he went on a journey . Stations were Bielefeld, Gütersloh, Beckum, Hamm and the Ruhr area, where he got to know the working and living conditions of miners. He came to Dresden via other places in 1895 and found work as a stair builder there. In Dresden he met his future wife Iphigenie geb. Eichhorn (born November 9, 1877 in Moritzburg; † May 26, 1945 in Pirna) know, daughter of a farmer from Moritzburg, who worked as a nurse in the Royal Institute for the Blind in Dresden.

In 1896 Meentzen was called up for military service as a hussar , when he was retyped in 1899, he was transferred to the infantry in Leipzig, where he served until 1900. A Leipzig joinery was looking for "army graduates with the best management", Meentzen applied successfully, completed retraining to become a model maker and worked as such in Leipzig. At this time he began his first editorial work and lecturing.

From 1900

On December 25, 1900, Theodor Meentzen and Iphigenie, geb. Squirrel. The two daughters Gertrud Meentzen (1901–1985) and Charlotte Meentzen (1904–1940) were born in Leipzig . In 1908 the Meentzen family moved into the farm of Iphigenie's parents in Moritzburg.

When the First World War broke out , Theodor Meentzen was drafted into the Landsturm on August 21, 1914 . Predominantly deployed in guard duty, he first came to the Dallwitz knight and remont property via locations in Großenhain and Königsbrück , then to Lithuania , Lida , Alsace-Lorraine and finally to Kortrijk in Flanders . He experienced the end of the First World War in Nisch in Serbia . After the collapse of the front there, Meentzen reached his home in Moritzburg in mid-November 1918. At the end of November, after consulting the competent soldiers' council in Bautzen , he obtained his discharge from military service "waiving all claims".

Theodor Meentzen, around 1938

From the earnings of his work as a writer and journalist as well as from his extensive lecturing activities, which began around 1900, Meentzen acquired residential property in the Allgäu in 1923/1924, but the family stayed in Moritzburg. In 1932 the Meentzen couple moved from Moritzburg to their country house in Steingaden , but after the death of their daughter Charlotte Meentzen († February 26, 1940) they returned to Moritzburg to take their son, born on August 31, 1939, and now orphaned grandchildren, under guardianship . Theodor Meentzen bought a house in Auer for his grandson in March 1940 , which he registered as the owner. This property became the center of life of the Meentzen family, the grandson grew up with his grandparents in Auer.

Tomb of the Meentzen family in Moritzburg. Th. Meentzen's year of birth must correctly be 1875.

At the Guardianship Court, Theodor Meentzen agreed that his daughter Gertrud married. Seltmann-Meentzen and his grandson, Gertrud's nephew, the companies "Charlotte Meentzen, Institute for Beauty Care", Prager Strasse 44 (moved to Prager Strasse 38 in 1938) and "Charlotte Meentzen, Laboratory for Natural Cosmetics", founded in 1930 by Meentzen's daughter Charlotte in Dresden "Manufacture of pharmaceutical and cosmetic products", Prager Straße 24, each took over half, under Gertrud Seltmann-Meentzens sole management.

A few days before the end of World War II and the invasion of the Red Army , the Meentzens fled to Pötzscha near Wehlen . Meentzen's wife Iphigenie died on May 26, 1945 in Pirna . Meentzen's property in the Allgäu and his house in Auer were preserved during the war. The entire company building and business premises of daughter Gertrud Seltmann-Meentzen on Prager Straße Dresden as well as the Villa Wiener Straße 36 in Dresden acquired by the company in 1942 were destroyed during the air raids on Dresden on February 13-14, 1945. His son-in-law Felix Otto Seltmann was killed.

In 1946 Theodor Meentzen met his second wife Agatha geb. Kennerknecht (born August 26, 1886, † April 13, 1974) know, his grandson remained with his grandparents in Auer.

Theodor Meentzen died in Moritzburg in 1963. He is buried in the family grave in the Moritzburg cemetery.

Act

Until 1914

In Wilhelmshaven, Meentzen became a member of the " Deutscher Holzarbeiterverband " union founded on July 2, 1893, while he was still an apprentice carpenter and carpenter . In 1894 he was registered as a carpenter journeyman and, after registering and de-registering with his union in Bremen, went on a wandering tour . In addition to the reporting points set up for the documentation of the journey in the journeyman's books, the journeymen met in addition to the hostels, increasingly also trade union houses and party bars, which more and more developed into places of communication, especially places of proletarian-socialist workers' education . Meentzen's observations and analyzes of social conditions, in particular the situation of the workers in the Ruhr area, the role of the churches and his experience during the four-year service in the German Army , promoted his development as an active social democrat and free thinker. In February 1901 Meentzen became a member of the SPD , in which a wide-ranging social democratic association had established itself , starting with the workers' education associations , through workers' choirs, clubs of workers' gymnasts and cyclists, and on to free-thinker clubs. Meentzen took advantage of the diverse educational opportunities offered by the union and the SPD and found his ideological home here. In addition to his work as a model maker in Leipzig, he began in 1901 with the journalistic work in the editorial office of the Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ) . Here he learned u. a. Know Hermann Duncker . In 1903 Meentzen became secretary and librarian of the Leipzig SPD organization. He started his own lecture series and published his first own writings. When the second volume of the sensational work The Caricature of the European Peoples from 1848 to the Present by Eduard Fuchs appeared in 1903 , Meentzen prepared several slide shows on behalf of the party executive for the Workers' Education Association and with the consent of Fuchs and its publisher, the first of this series it held on January 25, 1905 in Leipzig in front of 1,300 visitors. Further lecture series on this topic followed in Leipzig and Hamburg. Meentzen was dismissed as a model carpenter in 1905 because of his increasingly intensive and time-consuming lecturing and speaking activities, also outside of Leipzig, as well as because of his journalistic work at the LVZ. Financial reasons forced him to work again as a model maker in another company, where he fell seriously ill.

After his recovery, Meentzen intensified his lecturing activities from 1906 to up to 200 lectures a year. On the part of the workers, it was mainly engaged by workers 'organizations, workers' education associations, education committees, social democratic associations and trade unions, and on the part of the bourgeoisie by scientific associations, trade and craft associations. His lecture to over 2000 members of the Friedrich Krupp AG workforce on the subject of “German women's life through the ages” met with great interest . As part of the youth consecration movement, but also on other occasions, Meentzen also gave many lectures to children and young people. The great public interest in his lectures was also promoted by his intensive use of the then relatively new “ photo projection ”. Until he was called up for the Landsturm in 1914, Meentzen worked full-time as a lecturer in the German Empire, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine. In addition to a large number of current topics, Meentzen had 15 scientific lectures with 1500 photographs (including associated pamphlets) in his repertoire and achieved a secure income from them.

1918 to 1933

Immediately after his discharge from military service at the end of 1918, Meentzen was elected as an active social democrat in the municipal council and in the school board of Moritzburg. At the beginning of 1919, the SPD-led municipal council ensured that a garden was built on a piece of land belonging to the Wettins in the north-east of Moritzburg, in which every family that did not have their own garden could receive a piece of approx. 800 m² of land.

When the promotion of education, including adult education centers (VHS) , was enshrined in law for the first time in early 1919 on the basis of Article 148 of the Reich Constitution of 1919 , Meentzen was recruited as a proven and experienced speaker and publicist for scientific and ideological topics. At the beginning of 1919 he was hired to teach at the VHS Auerbach for 6 weeks . Topics were u. a. “From primeval fog to people”, “2000 years of German cultural history” and a.

Meentzen's friend and supporter Gustav Hennig, professor at the Thuringian State University and founder of the Tinz folk high school in what was then Reuss , appointed him to this new adult education center as a teacher in 1920. This was followed by lecture tours in Switzerland, Austria, etc. from 1921. a. in the largest hall of Innsbruck - the city hall , and lecture series in Silesia . The chairman of the Free Thinkers Association of the Free City of Gdansk , Wilhelm Beister, brought Meentzen to Gdansk at the end of 1923 for a topic "From primeval fog to people", which has meanwhile been expanded into a lecture series.

Reichsgesetzblatt Part I No. 26, page 185, of May 4, 1932. See also following page 186.

With the decree of the Reich President on the dissolution of the communist godless organizations of May 3, 1932, the communist free-thinker organizations and all associated associations as well as the publishing companies were dissolved, and all printed matter had to be confiscated. Since Meentzen had published the majority of his works mainly in the publishing house of proletarian freethinkers in Leipzig , the distribution of his publications was no longer possible. In addition, he had his own publishing house Theodor Meentzen Moritzburg b. Dresden published several books. As an avowed free thinker and social democrat, that was no longer possible for him either. Lecturing activities also had to be stopped; Meentzen gave his last lecture in February 1933. He was deprived of any basis for work. The Meentzen couple left Moritzburg at the end of 1932 and moved to their country house in Steingaden.

With his lecture cycles, his varied publications and his literary work, Meentzen belonged to the ranks of those authors who, like z. B. Wilhelm Bölsche , their own research and scientific work as well as parts of the knowledge of their time in popular form imparted to the non-academically educated citizens. Meentzen's range of topics is varied, it ranges from works for the "Verlagsanstalt proletarischer Freethinker" in the context of the freethinker lectures, to ideological questions, scientific topics, socially critical writings (e.g. the witch craze and the church or women's life in the change of German culture ) to works like The Globe in the Course of Millions of Years .

literature

• Theodor Meentzen: Biography From the life of a socialist and free thinker , Moritzburg 1963. Unpublished manuscript in private ownership

Works (selection)

Publications in the publishing house proletarian freethinkers Leipzig

• Becoming and passing away in space: Zugl. e. Development d. human Mental powers from Hamurabi to Einstein. 1923. OCLC 72620055
• 2000 years of blood and iron. 1923. OCLC 699583208
• The victory path of life. OCLC 47994879
• Under the crown and crook: a millennium of class rule, class oppression, class struggle. 1924. OCLC 985591192
• Freethinkers: The Relation of Freethinking to the Social Question and Other Contributions. Without a year. OCLC 929521040
• Freethinkers. The Church as an opponent of the trade unions. OCLC 929521733
• Freethinkers. We don't need God: did Jesus live among other things; an educational pamphlet for the people. 1926. OCLC 929521653

Publications by the publishing house Theodor Meentzen Moritzburg b. Dresden

• Women's life in the change of German culture. 1922. OCLC 918325088
• Star Run and Earth Life: Conversations with children for teachers and learners. 1927. OCLC 916122103
• 2000 years of workbench u. Vice: at the same time a development of classes and class struggles. 1929. OCLC 915294672
• Heretic persecution, the old and the new. 1926. OCLC 1068699447
• Motherhood and motherly love: women as mothers through the ages, peoples and classes. 1925. OCLC 916122100
• The witch craze and the church. 1926. OCLC 1072875766
• The globe in the course of millions of years. 1930. OCLC 970010310

Publications in the publishing house Freigeistige Vereinigung der Schweiz

• Natural technology and human technology 1st part. Bern, March 31, 1929. OCLC 915313886 . Online resource .

2nd part and conclusion. Bern, April 15, 1929. OCLC 915313890 . Online resource .

• Cell state and human state. Bern, July 31, 1928. OCLC 915313786 . Online resource .

Web links

Commons : Theodor Meentzen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Bibliographical references

Individual evidence

1. ^ Renate Schönfuß-Krause: Charlotte Meentzen and Gertrude Seltmann. 2-part series. In: the Radeberger . Year 30, No. 08. Heimatzeitung Verlags-GmbH, Radeberg February 28, 2020 ( Online [PDF; 6.4 MB ; accessed on March 10, 2020]).
2. ↑ Main State Archives Dresden: File 11384 No. 4524. State Government of Saxony, Ministry of Economics
3. ^ Address books SLUB Dresden. Online resource
4. ^ Eduard Fuchs: The caricature of the European peoples from ancient times to modern times. Volume 1, 1901 online resource . OCLC 1134982490 ; The caricature of the European peoples from 1848 to the present . Volume 2, 1903 online resource . OCLC 313086491 ; Hofmann publishing house, Berlin
5. ↑ Felicitas Marwinski: Gustav-Hennig (1868-1949) . In: SCRBD. Online resource
6. ^ Reichsgesetzblatt Part I No. 26 of May 4, 1932; Page 185 and page 186

Remarks

1. ↑ The year of birth on the family tombstone is incorrectly stated as 1874.
2. ↑ Contrary to many publications and sources, the correct first name is not Gertrude, but Gertrud (see Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Dresden, file 11384, no. 4524)