An election poster, on which not only men can be seen, how often in the first half of the 20th century
Photo: Shmh.de
Left -wing parties also had problems with confident, strong women. Just think of the word battles of the young Rosa Luxemburg with the old men’s team at the head of the SPD around Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. Even if the latter had asked for the perfect equality of the sexes in his unforgettable at the time in the workforce and under progressive intellectual work “The woman and socialism”. Even such an experienced and recognized politician and publicist like Clara Zetkin did not easily have it with the leading comrades in social democracy and later in the KPD. It was not much different in the USPD, which in April 1917, in the middle of the First World War and against the SPD’s party executive, independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. Of the 44 speakers on their founding party conference, there were only three female: Rosi Wolfstein, Mathilde Wurm and Luise Zietz. Sounding names, historically interested people still familiar today. Otherwise, little is known about the USPD women, they have so far been rather disregarded by research.
Hartfrid Krause, born in 1942, lecturer at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and temporarily school director, wants to fill this gap. After the Darmstädter presented a voluminous, over 600-page history of the USPD four years ago, he now devotes himself to its comrades. Not without referring to the historian and feminist Gisela Notz in his foreword.
The reader should not be put off by the overwhelming statistical material that Krause initially spreads before he goes into closer to the party and parliamentary work of the USPD women and offers short biographies. The fact that the strongest members of the independent Social Democrats, each with over 60,000 members of Berlin, Saxony, Niederrhein, Leipzig and Thuringia, were not surprising, large cities and industrial regions, and the party in the country was less present. It was not much different with the other workers’ parties.
Although underrepresented underrepresented in management functions, the USPD women have significantly shaped and shaped politics.
On the other hand, of the newness value that the USPD women were six years younger than the USPD men; Their average age was 30.9 years, which the men were 36.8 years old, as calculated here. A little more than two thirds of the USPD women were younger than 40 years, writes Krause, only ten percent older than 50. At least half of the USPD men were married. Three were female among the 21. January 1919 elections to the National Assembly of the Young Weimar Republic. The author also criticizes that there was a clear slope at the party parliament. The proportion of male delegates was at least ten times as large as the proportion of female. The fact that the latter mostly only took part in the party’s top debate committee, in contrast to the men, explained by their double or even triple pollution as a housewife, mother and/or working.
The same applies to their parliamentary activity. Many new parliamentarians sooner or later frustrated the time and forces, the long journey to Berlin and internal party disputes. Tatient and disillusionment appeared, Krause writes.
The year 1920 was a special turning point. After the left majority of the USPD in September and its transition to the KPD at the so -called unification party conference in December of the year, many formerly committed members withdrew; The “rest” returned to the lap of the SPD two years later. The crux of the matter at that time was the controversial question of whether the III, founded in Moscow in March 1919, was to join the Communist International (AI) or the 2nd international. At that time, this became violent and extremely controversial in the party press and at the party parliament.
Interesting, although not surprising, the knowledge of Krauses research is that young USPD women promise more of the radical comrades pressed on direct action such as Walter Stoecker and Ernst Däumig (both of them switched to the KPD; last negotiated with the leadership with the Ki leadership), while the older comrades were the experienced party leaders like Wilhelm Dittmann, Hugo Haase and Georg Ledebour confidante. Almost every fourth USPD woman under the age of 30 voted for the connection to the AI. The “phenomenon”, the younger party members, regardless of the gender, radical and resoluter, also knows the recent past and the present.
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In the second chapter, Krause illuminates the parliamentary and party work of the USPD women. In this, topics such as education, school and health had priority. However, the USPD genes also seriously dealt with fundamental questions such as war and peace, exploitation and disenfranchisement as well as gender equality in society and family, in the workplace and in the party. The short biographies occupy the largest room in the book. To put together this alone, a carer work was the same. The source situation is difficult and incomplete. Krause was particularly based on membership lists, party congress protocols and police files. The author was not only interested in birth and death, but also social backgrounds, educational paths, professions and appointments, political and voluntary activity as well as fate after 1933 as well as life and work after the liberation from fascism, this was granted to the former USPD women.
Krause comes to the conclusion that the women in the USPD, although underrepresented in management functions, politics and party politics, have significantly shaped and shaped them. His book is a tribute to forgotten activists and pioneers for freedom, equality and justice.
Hartfrid Krause: The comrades in the USPD. Westphalian steamboat, 197 p., Br., 25 €.
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