Viktor Agartz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Viktor Agartz (born November 15, 1897 in Remscheid , † December 9, 1964 in Marienheide near Cologne ) was a German socialist economist and trade unionist .

Life

The son of a metalworker came into contact with socialist ideas while studying economics , law and politics at the universities of Marburg and Cologne . Agartz joined the SPD , where he belonged to the left wing. In 1920 he took part in the general strike and resistance to the Kapp Putsch . After graduating as Dr. rer. pole. In 1924 ( the practical behavior of the workers towards the implementation of industrial safety ) he worked as a scientific assistant and later as a board member at the Cologne consumer cooperative and was active in the educational work of the free trade unions .

After the National Socialists came to power , Agartz was dismissed from his position in the consumer cooperatives after the takeover by the German Labor Front for political reasons, worked as an auditor and participated in the resistance against National Socialism within social democratic groups . In his professional position, according to his own account in his memoirs, he was able to betray and sell the assets of various Catholic associations ( Kolping Society , PAX - Association of Catholic Clerics and Steyler Missionaries ) from the attack of the National Socialist regime. After July 20, 1944 , an arrest warrant was issued against him, which he escaped by going into hiding with friends.

After the liberation from National Socialism in May 1945, Agartz took an active part in rebuilding the trade unions and the SPD . On March 9, 1946, he was appointed Secretary General of the German Economic Council in the British Zone , which had been set up on October 20, 1945 by the British military government to advise the economic department of the British Control Commission in Minden . From May 9 to 11, 1946, the first party congress of the SPD after the end of the war took place in Hanover in a Hanomag hall , at which Agartz was elected to the board. After Kurt Schumacher's programmatic speech about the tasks and goals of German social democracy , Viktor Agartz spoke about a socialist economic policy. In July 1946 he was delegated to the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia for the SPD .

At the end of April 1946, after he had previously turned down the office of Lord Mayor of Cologne after Konrad Adenauer's dismissal , Agartz also became head of the Central Office for Economic Affairs in the British zone in Minden , which had emerged from the secretariat of the Economic Council. In this office he worked actively against the Allied dismantling policy and was able to prevent some dismantling. After the formation of the bizone , he offered to resign because of unclear competencies. After his release, he traveled to London with Kurt Schumacher to campaign for the relaxation of economic restrictions and the release of German prisoners of war. From December 19, 1946 to April 19, 1947 he was a member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.

As head of the new bizonal administrative office for economy (VAW) in Minden , the independent economically liberal Rudolf Müller from Hessen was initially elected with the votes of the southern German states. However, after the economics ministers were appointed by the SPD in all the bizone countries and had a seat and vote in the economic council , Müller was recalled and on January 16, 1947 Agartz was again appointed head of the VAW in Minden without a dissenting vote. However, his demand for a planned economy quickly led to violent political opposition. In May 1947 he resigned from office due to illness due to chronic malnutrition and on July 11, 1947 finally resigned from his position as chairman of the board of directors and head of the VAW.

He was a member of both the Zone Council for the British Zone of Occupation and the Economic Council for the Bizone . From 1948 to 1955 he headed the Economic Institute of the German Trade Union Federation (WWI) and, as a member of the SPD, was a member of the advisory board of the Federal Ministry of Economics. Agartz developed the concept of the "expansionary wage policy ", according to which collective bargaining is also seen as a means of redistribution . High wage demands should be an incentive for rationalization . Within the DGB , however, Agartz's radical Marxist line, after he had initially co-authored the basic program of 1949 and the action program of 1954, could not prevail. After his resignation from the management of WWI in 1955 as a result of internal trade union disputes, he published the left-wing socialist- oriented correspondence for economics and social sciences - WISO . From October 1956 he was the chairman of the German section of the short-lived International Society for Socialist Studies .

In 1957, Agartz was accused of establishing treasonous relationships and brought to court, before which Gustav Heinemann defended him. The Federal Court of Justice acquitted Agartz of the charge of having criminal relations with the SED and the FDGB (the latter had taken a certain number of WISO subscriptions, which the Agartz referred to as "Eastern financing" in the critical press) in the GDR . In 1958 he was expelled from the SPD and DGB for behavior that was harmful to the party. He then became a leading representative of the Association of Independent Socialists (VUS), an association of left-wing socialists who had either been excluded or left the SPD. Since he did not want to see their rapprochement with the newly founded DFU , he resigned in April 1961. In the same year he had to stop the WISO for financial reasons and bitterly withdrew from the public.

In December 1964 he died of a lung disease.

On his 110th birthday in 2007, the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia paid tribute to Viktor Agartz's historical significance.

Quote

“I reject political justice . I am not expecting the judgment of my political position from this court. I leave the judgment of me to the German working class. "(During the 1957 trial before the Federal Court of Justice)

Fonts (excerpt)

  • Socialist economic policy Karlsruhe 1946.
  • Law 75 and Ruhr Statute. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1950 (together with Heinrich Deist )
  • Betrayed and sold. A settlement Fulda 1958 (under the pseudonym Hans G. Hermann). Again: az Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1983, ISBN 3-923440-05-7
  • Trade union and working class: The ideological and sociological changes in the West German labor movement, Trikont-Verlag, Munich 1971 ISBN 3-920385-32-2
  • Economy, wages, trade union: selected writings Berlin 1982 ISBN 3-88114-226-6
  • Party, trade union and cooperative Frankfurt / Main 1985 ISBN 3-923440-09-X
  • Economic and tax policy, expansive wage policy Berlin 1986 ISBN 3-88107-048-6

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Heimann: Against the party by Stalin's grace . In: Vorwärts 05/2011, p. 32.
  2. ↑ www.landtag.nrw.de
  3. ↑ Kristan Kossack: Viktor Agartz and the "Central Office for Economy" in Minden. Economic policy initiatives in the first post-war years. Messages of the Mindener Geschichtsverein, year 65 (1993), pp. 95–119.
  4. ↑ bundesarchiv.de
  5. ↑ Der Spiegel 51/1964: Died
  6. ↑ Economic democracy and expansive wage policy
personal data
SURNAME Agartz, Viktor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Marxist economist and politician (SPD), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Remscheid
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 1964
Place of death Marienheide near Cologne