Weddinger Opposition
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Weddinger Opposition Weddinger Opposition | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Hans Weber |
| Founded | 1924 |
| Dissolved | 1936 |
| Headquarters | Wedding |
| Membership (1927) | 2000 |
| Ideology | Left communism Trotskyism (later) |
| Political position | Far-left |
| National affiliation | Communist Party of Germany |
| International affiliation | International Left Opposition |
The Weddinger opposition (also known as the Weber group, more rarely Wedding-Palatinate opposition) was a group of the ultra-left wing of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that was formed in 1924. From 1928 onwards, the KPD leadership acted with numerous party expulsions against the group, which had been organized as a parliamentary group in the KPD since 1926. The group had around 2000 members in 1927; their strongholds were in the Berlin district of Wedding, in the Palatinate, which belongs to Bavaria, and in western Saxony.
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Researchers had identified two strikes at the BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, Palatinate, as the "constituent event" for the emergence of the Weddinger opposition. In November 1922, the chemical company dismissed Max Frenzel and two other works councilors because they had participated in a communist works council congress. Contrary to the attitude of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the independent trade unions, workers from BASF and other Ludwigshafen companies showed solidarity with the dismissed, but were unable to get them reinstated in a strike lasting several weeks. The factory workers' association in Ludwigshafen split through exclusions and resignations; the communist industrial association of the chemical industry was created under Fritz Baumgärtner. A second strike in the spring of 1924, which was directed against the extension of the daily working hours to nine hours, was unsuccessful, but led to a temporary mass influx to the industrial association. The establishment of the industrial association contradicted the resolutions of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) at the time, according to which communists should work in the unions of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB). The historian Marcel Bois sees the "extreme hostility" of the Weddinger opposition towards the independent trade unions and their "strong anchoring in the local workforce" as a result of the strikes at BASF.[1][2][3]
The ultra-left KPD party leadership elected in April 1924 under Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow found the support of the Palatinate party district. When Fischer and Maslow moderated their course in early 1925, the Palatinate became part of the ultra-left opposition. For example, a joint candidate from the SPD and KPD was rejected in the 1925 presidential election. In September 1925 the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) wrote an open letter to the German Communists and sharply criticized the KPD's course.[4] Thereupon Fischer and Maslow were replaced. Like other ultra-left groups, the Palatinate opposed the EKKI's open letter.[5]
Independent of the grouping in the Palatinate, an ultra-left opposition emerged in the Berlin district of Wedding in January 1925. The Palatinate and Weddinger groups became networked when the new KPD leadership under Ernst Thälmann deposed the Palatinate district manager Hans Weber at the end of 1925 in order to weaken the opposition there. Weber was transferred to the trade union department of the Central Committee in Berlin, where he lived in Wedding and quickly became the leading head of the opposition group there; while at the same time he retained his influence in the Palatinate.[6]
The third focus of the Weddinger opposition was the party district of West Saxony in the city of Leipzig. West Saxony was a stronghold of the SPD, which also dominated the trade unions and other organizations of the labor movement. Still belonging to the left wing of the party, the Social Democrats largely adhered to the ban on joint actions with the KPD. The reasons for the success of the ultra-left in West Saxony are the difficulties of the KPD in taking action in view of the dominant position of the SPD in the labor movement, as well as the person of Artur Vogt. Vogt had been in contact with Hans Weber since the summer of 1924.[7]
Other party members attributable to the Weddinger opposition lived in other districts of Berlin, in particular in Weißensee, as well as in Lower Saxony and Bielefeld. The Bielefeld sub-district leader Wilhelm Kötter, like Hans Weber, had been replaced and transferred to Berlin, through which he came into contact with the Weddinger opposition.[8]
Formation of factions and positions
According to a report by the party's internal surveillance, at an event on February 12, 1926 in Wedding, the local groups joined together to form a national faction, a leadership was elected and guidelines for the work of the group were adopted. Marcel Bois sees this meeting as an attempt to prevent the ultra-left opposition from breaking up and refers to the participation of people like Iwan Katz, Karl Korsch and Ernst Schwarz, none of whom joined the Weddingen opposition. Nevertheless, one could "explicitly identify a Weddinger opposition" after the ultra-left further differentiated itself in the following months.[9]
The Weddinger opposition accused the KPD leadership under Ernst Thälmann of continuing the course of Fischer and Maslow in restricting internal party democracy. The opposition group rejected the thesis of a relative stabilization of capitalism and assumed its imminent demise. The united front line was rejected; For example, the referendum on the expropriation of the princes represented a “revival of reformist illusions” for the Weddinger opposition. In the trade union issue, there was apparently a change of course and a rapprochement with the line of the central committee: on behalf of the Palatinate district management, Baumgärtner and Frenzel argued in early 1926 for KPD members to join the independent trade unions.[10]
