Wilhelm Hasselmann

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Wilhelm Hasselmann before his emigration (around the end of the 1870s / beginning of the 1880s)

Wilhelm Hasselmann (born September 25, 1844 in Bremen ; died February 25, 1916 in New York , USA ) was a socialist politician in the German Empire in the 19th century and editor of various early social democratic newspapers.

As a member of the predecessor parties of the SPD - the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) and (after its merger with the Marxist SDAP ) of the Socialist Workers Party of Germany (SAP) - he was from 1874 to 1877 and between 1878 and 1880/81 deputy in the Reichstag of after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 as a nation-state German Empire . Due to social revolutionary anarchist ambitions, he was expelled from the SAP in 1880 as a dissident . This exclusion from the party and the repressions prevailing in Germany at the time against any socialist activity by the Socialist Law prompted Hasselmann to emigrate to the USA, where he initially became involved in various social revolutionary groups.

From the mid-1880s, he increasingly withdrew from his political activities. In 1888 Hasselmann was granted US citizenship .

Political biography

Hasselmann was the son of a Bremen linen dealer. He was baptized as a Protestant, but developed into an atheist as an adult and left the church.

After completing his high school education in Bremen, Wilhelm Hasselmann attended the Polytechnic School in Hanover from 1860 to 1863 . During his subsequent studies between 1864 and 1867 - first in Göttingen , then in Berlin - he came into contact with the labor movement in Prussia , for which he was involved as a journalist, and for which he gave up his studies.

Entry into politics and party career in the ADAV

In 1866 Hasselmann joined the General German Workers 'Association (ADAV), founded three years earlier on the initiative of Ferdinand Lassalle , the first party-political organization of the German workers' movement and a forerunner of the later SPD. He became editor of the party newspapers Der Social-Demokratie and Der Agitator , which were headed by Johann Baptist von Schweitzer , who was later elected to the office of party president in 1867 . With his articles, Hasselmann quickly gained influence on the development of the party line, despite his rather unadjusted attitude towards the autocratic von Schweitzer.

When von Schweitzer had to resign from the party chairmanship in 1871 after the establishment of the German Empire as a result of the disclosure of secret agreements with the Prussian government under Otto von Bismarck , and finally left the party, Hasselmann was one of the supporters of Wilhelm Hasenclever , who was under his influence in the same Year (1871) was elected the new president of the ADAV and began to restructure the party. A close political and journalistic cooperation between Hasenclever and Hasselmann followed. Both published the Socialpolitischen Blätter together . The Social Democrat and The Agitator were merged to form the new party organ, The New Social Democrat , in which Hasselmann continued to be the content editor. Hasselmann also worked for various other, partly regional, workers' newspapers, some of which he founded himself and of which he was the chief editor in charge . The ADAV grew in the following years from 5,300 members in 1871 to more than 19,000 party members by the turn of the year 1873/74. By then, the new social democrat had increased its customer base to over 11,000 subscribers . For the first time Hasselmann tried in his article " Judaism" to interpret Karl Marx 's article on the Jewish question in an anti-Semitic sense.

Reichstag mandates, radicalization, socialist law

Hasselmann was elected to the Reichstag for the first time in 1874 and was one of three members of the ADAV. During parliamentary work, the nine elected representatives of the previously competing parties of the opposition social democracy - ADAV and SDAP - came together in terms of content, not least because of the increasing pressure from the anti-socialist and anti- union efforts of Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Hasselmann's attitude towards the Prussian-conservative-dominated government policy began to radicalize in an increasingly anti-state anarchist direction under the influence of the two years younger SDAP MP Johann Most , himself a representative of the social-revolutionary left wing of the SDAP.

In 1875, after a compromise was formed between the leading protagonists of the two workers' parties, Hasenclever and Wilhelm Liebknecht , the spokesman for the SDAP, the formal unification of the ADAV and the SDAP was decided at their joint party congress in Gotha . In addition to Liebknecht, Hasselmann had a decisive influence on the development of the Gotha program of the newly constituted Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, the SAP.

Karl Marx, the ideal instigator for the founding of the former SDAP, mockingly referred to Hasselmann in his criticism of the Gotha program , which he wrote in exile in London, as the “ Berlin Marat ”. Marx had thus not only criticized the adaptation of the SDAP to the originally reformist and nation-state ideas of the ADAV under the fundamental influence of its founder Ferdinand Lassalle, but also the, in his view, equally misguided petty-bourgeois, romantic-glorified positions of the anarchist-influenced wings of both preceding parties issued a rejection.

Hasselmann's influence on the newly constituted SAP decreased in the following years.

When in 1876/77 he published the newspaper Die Rote Fahne , which was initially designed as a pamphlet and then as a revolutionary weekly paper (not to be confused with the 20th century KPD organ of the same name ), Hasselmann was in conflict with August Bebel , one of the leading SAP MPs, advised. He accused him of displacing the new party organ of the social democracy, the Vorwärts , behind the backs of the party executive (at the time known as the central election committee ) with his newspaper and thus trying to split the SAP.

In 1878 the situation worsened for the entire social democracy in Germany after two - albeit unsuccessful - assassinations of Kaiser Wilhelm I by non-party perpetrators had occurred within a few weeks . Bismarck took these attacks as an opportunity to enforce the repressive socialist law (original title: "Law against the common-dangerous aspirations of social democracy" ) with the majority of the votes of the conservatives and most of the national liberals , which - extended annually - ultimately for 12 years to ban all social democratic sub-organizations, their public relations work and thus also to the destruction of the left press in the Reich. Only in the state parliaments and in the Reichstag were the members of the SAP still able to work legally and officially.

The constituency in which Hasselmann was particularly successful: The highly industrialized Barmen around 1870; Painting by August von Wille (detail)

Although Hasselmann, with his radical positions, had a difficult time not only in conservative circles loyal to the government, but also within the party, he enjoyed great popularity among the base of his constituency of Elberfeld and Barmen (today Wuppertal ) in the Rhenish Prussian administrative district of Düsseldorf - especially in the working-class neighborhoods . Its popularity with the underprivileged classes of the population was expressed, for example, in a nursery rhyme that was widespread locally at the time: " Now let's choose the Hasselmann then eat the Brodt en Kastemann " ("Kastemann": colloquial expression for a small coin with today's value of around 0, 03 €). Wilhelm Hasselmann was re-elected to the Reichstag in 1878 for this constituency, in which he had published the regional party newspaper Bergische Volksstimme since 1876 .

In the parliamentary framework, too, he called for active resistance against the anti-socialist repression by the authorities and called for open violence against Bismarck's practice of repression, which was often referred to as the Chancellor's dictatorship , in internal party committees as well as in socialist publications that are now illegally distributed . As an example, he made positive reference to the repeated attacks by Russian Social Revolutionaries against Tsar Alexander II.

After Johann Most lost his mandate, Hasselmann was the only one in the legislative period from 1878 who openly represented positions with an anarchist tendency in the nine-member Reichstag faction of the SAP, which made him increasingly exposed to political isolation.

Exclusion from the party, emigration to the USA

Johann Most, who was also excluded from the Wyden Congress of the SAP, exerted significant political influence on Hasselmann (photograph 1879)

In August 1880 Wilhelm Hasselmann was expelled from the party at the first (exile) party congress of the SAP since the Socialist Act came into force at Castle Wyden in the Swiss canton of Zurich because of his internal opposition agitation. Together with his expulsion from the party, the one against Most, which had already been pronounced three months earlier, was formally confirmed. Most had been in exile in London since the Socialist Act came into force, where he published the magazine Freiheit , which was illegally distributed in Germany and in which not only the Bismarck system was attacked, but also increasingly critical and polemic articles against the articles in the eyes of Most and Hasselmann found the SAP leadership to be too moderate. Hasselmann had also written some articles for freedom . With the exclusion of the two best-known protagonists of anarchism in German social democracy, their leading representatives, led by Ignaz Auer , who was also able to win August Bebel for his position, hoped to get rid of the radical social revolutionary wing of the party and thus the anti-socialist propaganda of the pro-government parties and to deprive their press of the basis.

Hasselmann, who was not present at the party congress himself, gave up his parliamentary mandate, which was formally valid until 1881. A few weeks after being expelled from the party, he emigrated to the USA and settled in New York. There, too, he tried to gain a political foothold by founding various revolutionary-socialist associations, but was ultimately unsuccessful. After the " American Workers' Newspaper " founded by Hasselmann failed, he stopped his public political activities from 1885/86. In 1888 he received American citizenship. Among other things, he was able to secure his livelihood by running a beer bar in New York.

Wilhelm Hasselmann died in 1916 - unnoticed by the public - at the age of 71.

Works

  • Social-political papers for entertainment and instruction for the German workers . Ihring, Berlin 1873–1874 (Born 1. 1873, Lieferg 1. Jg. 2. 1874, Lieferg 12, No. 3. Ed. And red. By W. Hasenclever; W. Hasselmann)
  • The government of the German Reich and the German Reichstag in their position on social democracy. The speeches of the Prussian Minister Eulenburg and the MPs Hasselmann and Bamberger in the Reichstag session on January 29, 1876 . Publishing house of the cooperative book printing company, Leipzig 1876
  • The Fritzsche-Hasselmann affair before the German Reichstag. Stenographic report on the session of the Reichstag on February 19, 1879 . Publishing house of the cooperative book printing company, Leipzig 1879
  • The Fritzsche-Hasselmann affair before the German Reichstag on February 23, 1880. Application by Member of Parliament Wilhelm Hasenclever . Publishing house of the cooperative book printing company, Leipzig 1880

literature

  • Wilhelm Hasselmann . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, p. 115.
  • Eberhard Hackethal: Hasselmann, Wilhelm . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 189–190
  • Günter Bers: Wilhelm Hasselmann. 1844-1916. Social revolutionary agitator and member of the German Reichstag. Einhorn-Presse, Cologne 1973 contains selected speeches and leading articles
  • Volkhard Schellin: Has anarchism been a real alternative for the German socialist workers' movement under the Socialist Law? An investigation using the example of Johann Most and Wilhelm Hasselmann . 1976
  • Götz Langkau: Johann Most and Wilhelm Hasselmann - unequal comrades. In: International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement. Volume 41, Berlin, 2005, No. 1-2, pp. 93-104

See also

History of the German Social Democracy

Web links

Individual references / comments

  1. ↑ New Social Democrat . Berlin, September 20, 1872, No. 112, p. 3.
  2. ↑ Edmund Silberner : Socialists on the Jewish question , Berlin 1962, pp. 107–159 based on Hasselmann.
  3. ^ Bert Andréas : Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels. The end of classical German philosophy. Trier 1983 ( writings from the Karl-Marx-Haus Trier 28) p. 25.
  4. ↑ Karl Marx: Critique of the Gothaer Program on ml-werke.de: based on program item 4: “Liberation of Work”: ( Memento from October 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) “ In the above paragraph, his wisdom is now on the hair used without any connection with the corrupted quotation from the Statute of the International . So here it is simply an impertinence, and by no means disapproving of Mr. Bismarck, one of those cheap boorishments in which the Berlin Marat makes. "(Reference to Hasselmann highlighted in bold)
  5. ↑ From the memories of August Bebel: “ From my life ”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www2.cddc.vt.edu  
  6. ↑ 140 years of the SPD in Wuppertal (PDF file), page 9 ( Memento from July 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Franz Osterroth, Dieter Schuster: Chronicle of the German Social Democracy. Volume 1: Until the end of the First World War. second, revised and expanded edition, 1975; Online extract due date: 20./23. August 1880 - on the digital library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (fes-library)
personal data
SURNAME Hasselmann, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (ADAV, SPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1916
Place of death New York , USA