Wilhelm Bock
Friedrich Louis Wilhelm Bock (born April 28, 1846 in Großbreitenbach , † June 22, 1931 in Bad Sulzbach [now Lautenbach municipality (Ortenaukreis) ]) was a German social democratic politician and trade unionist.
Life
Bock was the illegitimate son of a worker and a day laborer and attended elementary school in Großbreitenbach. This was followed by an apprenticeship as a shoemaker in Arnstadt from 1860–1864 and a journeyman's journey through Germany from 1865–1869. In 1866 he became a member of the Hamburg workers ' education association and in 1867 the general German workers' association . He worked as a journeyman until 1869 and then became self-employed as a master craftsman in Gotha (until 1873). In 1870 Bock married Ernestine, who was 19 years old, who was 20 years his junior.
Political work until the end of the Socialist Law
Already during his journeyman migration he came into contact with the labor movement in Hamburg and began to be politically active. In 1866 he joined the Hamburg workers ' education association and a year later the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) of Ferdinand Lassalle . In August 1869 he took part in the Eisenach party congress as a delegate of his local group and thus became a founding member of the SDAP of August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht . In the following years Bock became one of the most active and successful agitators of the new party and was arrested several times for political reasons.
He was also a union member. From June 1873 he was president of the international shoemaker trade association based in Gotha. He was also the editor of the association journal Der Wecker . In 1875 he was a member of the program commission in preparation for the unification of ADAV and SDAP to form the Socialist Workers' Party at the Gotha Party Congress. Bock was heavily involved in the creation of this merger.
In connection with the Socialist Law , the shoemaker's association and its newspaper were banned in 1878. The same thing happened with the Gothaer Volksblatt founded by Bock in 1878 . Bock was then from 1878 to 1920 editor of the new newspaper Der Schuhmacher (or since 1887 Schuhmacher-Fachblatt ). Since 1887 he was chairman of the central association committee of the shoemaker's association.
Since the time of the Socialist Law he was a leading social democratic functionary in Thuringia . During this time he organized eight illegal national conferences of the party. Due to the immunity of his political mandates, Bock was relatively protected from political persecution. From 1884 to 1887 he was a member of the Reichstag for the constituency of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha.
Bock and the emergence of a social democratic milieu
Bock contributed significantly to the fact that in Gotha, after the end of the Socialist Law, an almost ideal-typical social-democratic milieu, grouped around party, trade unions, Volkshaus, social-democratic-oriented associations and local party newspaper, could emerge. He founded the Gothaische Volksblatt , which was produced in its own printing house and was published until 1933. On the initiative of Bock, the party bought the former Gasthaus zum Mohren in Gotha, which, as the Volkshaus zum Mohren, became the meeting place for the workers' movement. By 1913 the party had around 1,000 members and the free trade unions around 4,000. The SPD received 34.8% of the vote in the 1912 Reichstag election . Even after the end of the Socialist Law, Bock was a member of the Reichstag from 1890 to 1907 and from 1912 to 1918 . In addition, Bock was a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha from 1893 to 1907 . Bock took a less revolutionary course. This made it easier to work with the city's liberal bourgeois politicians. One expression of this was his election as vice-president of the state parliament (1903 to 1907) and his membership in the administrative court of the duchy. It was unique in Germany that the state supported the workers' secretariat in Gotha with tax revenues. In addition, the city administration promoted the work of the free religious community , in which Bock was also active.
A generation change began within the local party even before the First World War. The leading party members, like Bock, were born in the middle of the 19th century. In 1910, Otto Geithner (1876–1948) from Berlin, a theoretically trained man, joined the editorial team of the Volksblatt , who was soon to be regarded as a leading young politician in Gotha. The latter considered himself part of the left wing of the party, but avoided everything in order to come into conflict with Bock.
First World War and November Revolution
The beginning of the First World War brought about a profound change within the local party. With the expansion of the armaments industry, numerous new workers came to the city who had nothing in common with the local pre-war social democracy and its leading representatives. In addition, conflicts between Bock and Geithner soon became apparent. Both were determined opponents of the war. The local party newspaper expressed itself in this sense. However, Bock, heavily criticized by Geithner, made concessions to the party leadership and the government in order to save the paper. This turned out to be in vain as the newspaper was banned as early as 1914. The internal conflicts of the party were initially postponed by Geithner's summoning. As an opponent of the war credits, Bock joined the Social Democratic Working Group around Hugo Haase in 1916 and the USPD in 1917 . The founding event of the new party took place in Gotha in the Volkshaus zum Mohren . In the new party, too, he was a member of the control commission and belonged more to the right wing of the USPD.
The local party took part in the move to the USPD. However, it only succeeded to a limited extent in integrating the new workers. The party and trade unions increasingly lost control of the workforce, which was expressed, among other things, in politically motivated strikes. The November Revolution was initially peaceful under the leadership of Bock. A workers and soldiers council dominated by the USPD took power. In this function he declared Duke Carl Eduard of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to be deposed on November 9th . As a provisional government, the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council set up a council of people's representatives . These included Bock, Adolf Schauder and Emil Grabow . In the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council, too, the more radical forces, which in particular refused to cooperate with the bourgeoisie, began to gain the upper hand. The council's commitment to the “socialist republic” ultimately led to permanent alienation between the labor movement and the bourgeoisie in Gotha.
Within the labor movement in the city and country Gotha did not happen only to conflicts of USPD with the few supporters of the MSPD , but also to disputes within the USPD itself. A more radical and younger wing to Geithner pleaded for a soviet republic as an instrument to enforce the dictatorship of Proletariat . A moderate trend around Bock and the young Hermann Brill also had a socialist society as its goal, but continued to advocate democratic and peaceful forms of political debate. In addition to most of the leaders of the pre-war party, this direction was also supported by the local leadership of the trade unions. This direction was entirely in the tradition of pre-war social democracy, but suffered a considerable loss of confidence during the war due to its willingness to compromise with the authorities. The radical wing soon had a majority in the Council of People's Representatives, which is why Bock resigned from the government at the beginning of February 1919. His successor as People's Representative was Albin Tenner . There were military preparations against the meeting of the National Assembly in Weimar . The result was the occupation of the city by military units by General Maercker on February 18, 1919 . The labor movement responded with a general strike, which in turn sparked a citizens' strike. In these events and the further radicalization that led to civil war-like clashes with more than 100 dead in connection with the Kapp Putsch , Bock himself no longer had a recognizable role.
Bock in the Weimar Republic
How great the distance was to the new leadership of the labor movement in Gotha is shown by the acceptance of the election as a member of the National Assembly. Bock then belonged again to the Reichstag from 1920 . The left wing of the USPD and with it a considerable part of the Gotha labor movement went over to the KPD towards the end of 1920 . Bock did not take this step. Its moderate wing had clearly lost the power struggle with the left, since almost all positions worth mentioning in the trade unions, the party newspaper and the workers' associations were now occupied by supporters of the KPD. The rest of the USPD around Brill and Bock relied only on a weak base from the old party leadership, while the majority of the workforce in the factories supported the KPD. Nevertheless, the radicalization of the labor movement in Gotha as a whole has hurt. By 1922, the “Marxist party” camp had shrunk to about half its pre-war level.
Bock himself remained a member of the Reichstag until 1930. In 1922 he returned to the SPD and was the age president of the Reichstag in 1924 and 1928 .
The grave of Wilhelm and Ernestine Bock and their two children Otto (1880–1963) and Lene (1881–1965) is located in the main cemetery in Gotha .
Fonts
- In the service of freedom: joys and sorrows from six decades of struggle and ascent. Dietz, Berlin 1927.
Honors
The city of Gotha named Wilhelm-Bock-Strasse after its citizen in the Dichterviertel in the north of the city and annually awards the “Wilhelm-Bock-Preis” to celebrities. In 2018 the winner was the former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski .
literature
- Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1867-1933. Biographies, chronicles, election documentation. A handbook (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 7). Droste, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-7700-5192-0 , pp. 375-376.
- Helge Matthiesen : Two radicalizations - the bourgeoisie and the workers' movement in Gotha 1918-1923. In: History and Society. No. 1, 1995. pp. 32-62.
- Wilhelm Bock: In the service of freedom. The joys and sorrows of six decades of struggle and ascent. Education unites. Gotha 2018. ISBN 978-3-00-059913-2
Web links
- Literature by and about Wilhelm Bock in the catalog of the German National Library
- Bock, Friedrich Louis Wilhelm in the database of members of the Reichstag
- Biography of Wilhelm Bock . In: Heinrich Best : database of the members of the Reichstag of the Empire 1867/71 to 1918 (Biorab - Kaiserreich)
- 125 years of social democracy contains a biography of Bock
- Short biography
- Gotha: Events 1918–1920
.svg)
Heinrich Rieke (SPD) | Wilhelm Bock (SPD) | Carl Herold (center) | Clara Zetkin (KPD) | Karl Litzmann (NSDAP)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bock, Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bock, Friedrich Louis Wilhelm (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German politician (SDAP), MdR and trade unionist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 28, 1846 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Großbreitenbach |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 22, 1931 |
| Place of death | Bad Sulza |