Wilhelm Wedge

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Wilhelm Wedge

Wilhelm Keil (born July 24, 1870 in Helsa , Kurhessen ; † April 5, 1968 in Ludwigsburg ) was a German wood turner , editor and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) .

Life and work

After attending primary school in Helsa , Keil completed an apprenticeship as a wood turner in Kassel from 1884 to 1887 . As a journeyman, he went rolling through northern Germany, England and Belgium from 1888 .

The first destination of his wandering was Hanover. There he met Carl Legien (1861-1920, from 1893 to 1898 and from 1903 to 1920 member of the Reichstag), who spoke at a meeting about the grievances in the woodworking trade. After this encounter, Keil became a member of the recently founded 'Association of German Turners' (Hanover Paying Agency). This association was dedicated to professional development and the discussion of union policy issues. From Hanover he emigrated via Hamburg and London to Cologne. There he met Paul Umbreit , whose father was a friend of August Bebel. Umbreit brought Keil into contact with the world of thought of socialism. Keil moved via Koblenz to Elberfeld, where he and Paul Umbreit, in addition to his work as a wood turner, increasingly took on political and trade union tasks. Here he followed the secret society trial at the end of 1889, the main defendant of which was August Bebel. Reading the transcripts of this treason trial impressed him more than the writings of scientific socialism. In Mannheim, the next destination of his wandering, Keil began his “political apprenticeship” and he himself began to become politically active.

In 1892, Keil was drafted into a military exercise for a period of ten weeks. During this time he met Wilhelm Liebknecht , who, after his return from the French Socialist Congress, spoke at a public meeting in Mannheim. There he was introduced to Keil as a "young soldier of the revolution". The encounters with leading social democrats (he later also met Ignaz Auer , Paul Singer and Georg von Vollmar ; Keil named them in an essay in 1952, "The great old people who tied me up") strengthened his political commitment. Although there was a more liberal political climate in Baden than in what was then Prussia, Keil was reprimanded as a wood turner journeyman and blacklisted, which meant unemployment. After his dismissal in 1893, Keil found short-term work as a temporary worker with the 'Volksstimme' in Mannheim. He then took on temporary work for the main board of the woodworkers' association and traveled to southwest Germany on its behalf as an agitation speaker. During these years he got to know Theodor Leipart better and also met Karl Kautsky and Clara Zetkin. During this time as an employee of the local health insurance fund Mannheim from the end of 1894 to the beginning of 1896, he began to write articles for party and trade union newspapers on current political issues. a. for the "Equality" published by Clara Zetkin. Bruno Schoenlank made him a permanent employee of the Leipziger Volkszeitung for the Baden region. In 1896 the state board of the Württemberg Social Democrats brought him to the editorial office of the Swabian Tagwacht , whose political leadership he was given in 1902.

After the takeover of the Nazis Keil pulled back into private life and wrote his memoirs , which appeared 1947/1948. After the Second World War he was a member of numerous boards and committees, including a. Chairman of the Working Group for Prisoner of War Issues and since 1949 member of the German Council of the European Movement. For a time he was chairman of the supervisory board of Bausparkasse Wüstenrot .

Political party

In 1887 Keil became a member of the SAP, the predecessor party of the SPD. During his wandering he made the acquaintance of various executives of the SAP and SPD, etc. a. 1888 in Hanover with Carl Legien , who convinced him with a speech about the grievances in the wood turning trade . In 1896 the state board of the Württemberg Social Democrats brought him to the editorial office of the social democratic Swabian Tagwacht in Stuttgart , whose political leadership he was given in 1902. During his time as editor-in-chief, Keil remained controversial. This was due to the fact that Keil very quickly advanced to become one of the leaders of the rather moderate reformist wing of the party. The wing battles escalated with the outbreak of the First World War and the civil peace policy , which the large majority of the SPD parliamentary group also joined and which expressed their approval of the war credits, which in the international socialist movement as well as by representatives of the left party as a betrayal of socialist ones Basic principles was interpreted. The Swabian Tagwacht editors Arthur Crispien , Edwin Hörnle and Jakob Walcher also stuck to their oppositional stance on this issue and made this position heard by sending messages, even if an openly negative stance had become impossible due to martial law made targeted choices, gave clues between the lines and refrained from reporting on the war. This state of affairs, as well as the oppositional stance of the local SPD association in Stuttgart, based on the workers of the large Stuttgart companies, who invited Karl Liebknecht as a speaker and made him promise to vote against the war credits at the next vote, led to a conflict with the SPD - State Board. In the dispute, Keil positioned himself with the following assertion: “With a unanimity that has seldom prevailed on a major issue that preoccupies the party, the social-democratic working class in Germany takes the self-evident standpoint that, in the great struggle of nations, it is in their own best interest to defeat the horrors to prevent an enemy invasion and wish the German arms victory and have to help bring it about. ”As a result, the left-wing editors were forced out of the Swabian Tagwacht. After Keil had left there in the meantime, he was appointed editor-in-chief of Tagwacht by the Württemberg SPD state executive on November 4, 1914. An internal party dispute with the mutual defamation on leaflets and in brochures broke from the fence, as a result of which the left wing of the party in Württemberg split off in 1915, not only in 1917 as in the Reich. An attempt at mediation by the party headquarters, in which Friedrich Ebert was also involved, also failed. After the November Revolution, a political swing of the party right-wing wedge seemed to be noticeable. In his speech at the extraordinary SPD state assembly on December 21, 1918, to the great applause of the delegates, he announced that the means of production must now be transferred into the possession of society so that the income from the work would be distributed fairly to all useful members of society .

MP

From 1900 to 1918, Keil was a member of the state parliament in the second chamber of the Württemberg state estates . In 1919/20 he was a member and president of the constituent assembly of the free people's state of Württemberg . He then belonged again to the state parliament until 1933 , where he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group from 1919 to 1933.

From 1910 to 1918, Keil was a member of the Reichstag for the constituency of Württemberg 2 ( Cannstatt , Ludwigsburg , Marbach , Waiblingen ). In 1919/20 he was a member of the Weimar National Assembly . Then he was again a member of the Reichstag until 1932 . Within the Reichstag parliamentary group, he was primarily responsible for financial policy. Together with Matthias Erzberger ( German Center Party ) he prepared the financial reform after the First World War . He pushed through the creation of a uniform income tax , a property levy and the war profit tax .

After the Second World War , Keil was head of the municipal representation in Ludwigsburg and chairman of the district councilors' conference for Württemberg / North Baden. In 1946 he was a member and president of the provisional parliament, then a member of the state constitutional assembly in Württemberg-Baden . From 1946 to 1952 he was a member and during this time from 1947 President of the Landtag of Württemberg-Baden . From 1947 to 1949 he was a member of the Parliamentary Council of the State Council of the American Zone.

Honors

In 1950, Keil was awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Ludwigsburg. The Wilhelm-Keil-Schule in Remseck and Wilhelm-Keil-Straße in Tübingen are named after him. From the hand of Federal President Dr. Theodor Heuss received the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951 .

Public offices

From 1921 to 1923, Keil was Minister of Labor and Food of the Free People's State of Württemberg in the cabinet of Prime Minister Johannes von Hieber .

Publications

  • The German people at war. Publishing house of the Ulmer Volksbuchhandlung, Ulm 1914.
  • The first war taxes and social democracy. Vorwärts bookstore, Berlin 1916.
  • Rescue from financial misery. Publishing house for social science, Berlin 1919.
  • Germany's financial misery. The bankruptcy of Helfferich . Verlag der Schwäbische Tagwacht, Stuttgart 1921.
  • Income tax on wages (income tax). Presented and explained on the latest legal basis. Verlag der Schwäbische Tagwacht, Stuttgart 1921.
  • The financial disaster. Criticism and advice to improve the German financial situation. Haase-Verlag, Kiel, 1921.
  • Do you know that? What was achieved with the democratic republic. A brief comparative overview. Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin 1932.
  • Christianity and Socialism. Kulturaufbau-Verlag, Stuttgart 1946.
  • Experiences of a Social Democrat. Two volumes, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1947/48.
  • Germany 1848–1948. Contributions to the historical-political appraisal of the popular uprising of 1848/49. Volkswille publishing house, Stuttgart 1948.
  • Parliament. Verlag der Turmhausdruckerei, Stuttgart 1952.
  • MPs - parties - people. Isar-Verlag, Munich, 1952.
  • The great old men who tied me up. 1952.

literature

  • AdsD (Archive of Social Democracy / Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung ): portrait; Note on 1.20 m of archive material
  • Klaus Achenbach:  Wedge, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 407 ( digitized version ).
  • Herold, Herbert - Nauendorf, Helmut, From Revolution to Powerlessness (1919–1933), in: Working Group History of the Nürtinger Workers' Movement, The Other Nürtingen. A contribution to the local history of the 100th birthday of the Nürtingen SPD, ed. v. SPD local association Nürtingen, Nürtingen 1989, pp. 79-134, p. 87.
  • Keil, Wilhelm, in: Archive of the Social Democracy of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Inventory overview, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 2006, p. 206.
  • Jürgen Mittag : Wilhelm Keil (1870–1968). Social democratic parliamentarian between the German Empire and the Federal Republic. A political biography . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-7700-5238-2
  • Frank Raberg : Biographical handbook of the Württemberg state parliament members 1815-1933 . On behalf of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-016604-2 , p. 425 .
  • Schoplick, Valentin, The First World War, in: Working Group History of the Nürtingen Labor Movement, The Other Nürtingen. A contribution to the local history of the 100th birthday of the Nürtingen SPD, ed. v. SPD local association Nürtingen, Nürtingen 1989, pp. 63–78.
  • 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 .
  • Boris Schwitzer : Wilhelm Keil as a social democratic financial politician in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic . Self-published by the Institute for Regional Studies and Regional Research, Mannheim 2002, ISBN 3-923750-90-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Cf. Keil, Wilhelm, in: Archive of Social Democracy of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Inventory overview, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 2006, p. 206.
  2. ↑ Keil, Wilhelm, cited above. according to: Schoplick, Valentin, The First World War, in: Working Group History of the Nürtingen Labor Movement, The Other Nürtingen. A contribution to the local history of the 100th birthday of the Nürtingen SPD, ed. v. SPD local association Nürtingen, Nürtingen 1989, pp. 63–78, p. 66.
  3. ↑ See Schoplick, Valentin, The First World War, in: Working Group History of the Nürtinger Workers' Movement, The Other Nürtingen. A contribution to the local history of the 100th birthday of the Nürtingen SPD, ed. v. SPD local association Nürtingen, Nürtingen 1989, pp. 63-78, pp. 66-67.
  4. ↑ See Herold, Herbert - Nauendorf, Helmut, Von der Revolution zur Ohnmacht (1919–1933), in: Arbeitskreis Geschichte der Nürtinger Arbeiterbew Movement, Das Andere Nürtingen. A contribution to the local history of the 100th birthday of the Nürtingen SPD, ed. v. SPD local association Nürtingen, Nürtingen 1989, pp. 79-134, p. 87.
  5. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 3, No. 250, December 29, 1951.
personal data
SURNAME Wedge, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdL, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Helsa
DATE OF DEATH 5th April 1968
Place of death Ludwigsburg