German History Archives - Not Even Past

The Proletarian Dream: Working-class Culture in Modern Germany

The “proletariat,” imagined to be the most radical, organized, and active segment of the working class, never existed as more than a utopian concept, but it had a profound effect on German society from the founding of Social Democracy in 1863 to the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933. Over the course of seventy years, the idea of a proletariat, often simply equated with the working class, inspired countless treatises, essays, novels, songs, plays, dances, paintings, photographs, and films. All of these works shared the vision of a classless society, conveyed the importance of class unity and solidarity, and, in very concrete ways, contributed to the making of class consciousness.Some of the figures are familiar to scholars of German culture and politics, including Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Kautsky, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Wilhelm Reich, John Heartfield, and Bertolt Brecht. However, the vast majority are unknown working-class poets, artists, musicians, and intellectuals. Today largely forgotten, dismissed, or ignored, these men (and they were mostly men) insisted on the workers’ right to be heard, seen, and recognized. At the time, their contributions gave rise to a rich and diverse culture of political emotions, attachments, commitments, and identifications. Today, these works offer privileged access to the social imaginaries that formed during a crucial period in the history of mass political mobilization. In particular, they reveal what it meant—and even more important, how it felt—to claim the name “proletarian” with pride, hope, and conviction.

The workers’ demands for representation were part of larger political struggles associated with the worker’s movement and the working class, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (the SPD) and the German Communist Party (KPD). Given its formative emotional qualities, however, the proletarian imaginary cannot be dismissed as a mere function of party politics or political ideology. In ways not yet fully recognized, attachment to the figure of the proletarian became the basis of a vibrant alternative public sphere and a thriving socialist culture industry. Moreover, the countless stories and images of pride, hope, fear, rage, joy, and resentment made the worker a compelling figure in larger debates about modern class society and mass politics and contributed to the workers’ remarkable availability to socialist, nationalist, and populist appropriations. Marxist thought may have provided important concepts and theories but the enormous archive of emotions produced in the name of the proletariat forces us today to move beyond ideology critique—and to recognize the power of political emotions and of emotions in politics beyond traditional left-right distinctions.

To give a sense of the scope of this “proletarian” cultural output, let’s take a few examples. The ubiquitous workers’ song books offered compelling models, from the Workers’ Marseillaise to the Communist International, for singing, feeling, and thinking in unison as workers. The Lutheran pastor Paul Göhre edited workers’ life writings with a view toward facilitating cross-class understanding that made workers’ emotions legible to bourgeois readers. Socialist party leaders, like August Bebel spoke about socialism as an emotional experience by describing his attachment to socialism in surprisingly sentimental terms, while Karl Kautsky railed against the dangers of emotional socialism. Kinderfreunde groups, started during the 1920s, organized summer tent cities where working-class children already practiced living in a classless society, in part to help them overcome feelings of inferiority. Communists modeled proper physical and, by extension, political stances, in the Rotes Sprachrohr troupe (Red Megaphone), which used a hard, rigid way of speaking, standing, and moving to equate class struggle with militant masculinity. And communist groups became involved in the sex reform movement and other radical initiatives through the work of Wilhelm Reich, who saw proletarian revolution and full genital health as mutually supportive goals.

Curt Querner, The Agitator (1930). An example of the habitus of militant masculinity favored by the German Communist Party (oil on canvas, Nationalgalerie Berlin. Copyright 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst Bonn).

Aesthetic elements of these works were critical in the making of political emotions. For instance, a strong affinity between melodrama and the proletarian imaginary were represented by the aestheticization of suffering. Personified by the proletarian Prometheus, melodrama prepared the workers for the real hardships of class struggle. Socialist writers of working-class versions of the classic coming of age story, or bildungsroman, made character identification the most powerful vehicle for Bildung in the standard sense of education and in the Marxist sense of class formation. And in the work of the photo-montagist, John Heartfield, modernist techniques could give rise to distinctly proletarian structures of life and create an incubator for revolutionary action by making the violence inherent in montage.

Cover of the journal Süddeutsche Postillon (21:6 1902), with the ideal-typical worker fighting the dragon of capitalism. (Ich bin ein Proletar!/ I Am a Proletarian!,” (With permission of Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin.)

While German Studies continues to neglect questions of class, a phenomenon worthy of further commentary (given the German contribution to Marxism and communism), The Proletarian Dream provides the first comprehensive overview of German working-class culture. Is is also is the first account of the culture of socialism that insists on freeing the culture of the workers’ movement from the fetters of ideology critique and recognizing its close connection to popular culture, mass culture, and the culture industry.

As a scholarly subject, the proletariat today may be considered outdated, irrelevant, and slightly peculiar. For me, its alleged obsolescence only confirms what Alexander Kluge once said about his reasons for writing about the proletariat—namely, that it is important not to “allow words to become obsolete before there is a change in the objects they denote.”

Sabine, Hake, The Proletarian Dream—Socialism, Culture, and Emotion in Germany, 1863-1933 (2017).

Several recent monographs in other disciplines address very similar questions in different contexts. The changing meanings of the proletarian in nationalist, regionalist, and anti-colonial movements are particularly obvious in Latin America and Southeast Asia and confirm the centrality of culture, including folk and popular culture, in generating political emotions and forging proletarian identifications:

John Lear’s 2017 book, Picturing the Proletariat, Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908-1940 , highlights the ways radicalized workers in Mexico drew on indigenous traditions (e.g., Posada’s use of folk traditions in political printmaking) and internationalist iconographies (e.g., the proletarian Prometheus in the German socialist press) to support the struggles of workers in agriculture and industry.

Samuel Perry’s 2014 book, Recasting Red Culture in Proletarian Japan: Childhood, Korea, and the Historical Avant-garde, reconstructs the proletarian moment through the communist appropriation of Japanese woodblock techniques, the didactic goals of proletarian children’s literature, and the political avant-garde’s complicated relationship to their country’s imperialist practices.

Sunyoung Park’s 2015 book, The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 offers the corresponding Korean perspective, which includes close attention to the conditions of socialist revolution in rural societies and the unique contribution of socialist women writers.

Photo credit: Agitprop performance by the Red Megaphone Troupe (Grupa Rotes Sprachrohr).

Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader (2016) by Matthew Qvortrup

by Augusta Dell’Omo

With a sly smile, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, lets his black Labrador Koni off the leash and it immediately begins to approach German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Merkel, who was bitten by a dog in 1995, attempts to hide her visible discomfort, lips pursed and legs tightly crossed. Putin, well aware of the effect he created in the German Chancellor, appears smug and amused. The first Putin-Merkel visit in 2006 got off to a rough start. As one of many revealing anecdotes in Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader, political scientist and professor Matthew Qvortrup seeks to introduce an American audience to the woman fondly known in Germany as “Mutti.” Qvortrup’s work remains one of the few English language biographies of “the new leader of the free world.” Serving as the Chancellor of Germany since 2005, Merkel represents the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the major center-left party in Germany. On September 24, 2017, Merkel won a remarkable fourth term in office, heading off a nationalist surge to maintain control of the German Bundestag, the legislative body at the federal level in Germany. Merkel’s success begs the question: how did a woman, born in relative obscurity in East Germany to a Lutheran pastor rise to become the protégée of Helmut Kohl and arguably the most powerful woman in Europe? Qvortrup, relying on original sources and archives never made available in English, in combination with his powerful storytelling abilities, creates a compelling narrative of Merkel’s rise.
The first half of Angela Merkel details both the solidification of Merkel’s power in the CDU, but also the solidification of Merkel’s “brand.” As she herself would admit, Merkel relies far more on substance and consistency than flashy speeches and charm. Political pundits in Germany and abroad often criticize Merkel as “boring.” She prefers to exude calm, rationality, prudence, and unflappability. For much of her early life, says Qvortrup, Merkel “was not consumed by a passion for dissent,” instead nurturing a deep love of the sciences, eventually achieving a doctorate in quantum chemistry. Qvortrup attributes Merkel’s political awakening to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the process of German reunification. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Merkel became involved in the new democracy movement through the Demokratischer Aufbruch (DA), which would eventually merge with the East German CDU. Merkel rapidly rose through the ranks, eventually receiving an appointment by Kohl himself as federal Minister for Women and Young People. Merkel’s early years coming up in the ranks of the CDU solidified in her mind the important of grassroots organization, effective team members, and loyalty to the party hierarchy. While Merkel discovered her commitment and passion on issues of capitalist oriented economic development and reunification, Merkel also revealed a political pragmatism many of her colleagues did not initially suspect. According to Qvortrup, Merkel proved perfectly willing to let other members of the party fail if it advanced her own progress. Early on in her career in November 1991, Merkel declined requests to speak out in favor of the Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), Lothar de Maizière, after calculating that his fall opened the door for her career advancement.

Angela Merkel at a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) campaign event in 2013 (via Wikimedia Commons)

The second half of Qvortrup’s work really picks up speed as Merkel, after consolidating power in the CDU, gains control of the chancellorship. Here, Qvortrup launches into the crux of his argument: Merkel’s success, he believes, rests in her unique ability to recognize others’ perceptions of her, and then either reinforce or upend them as needed. This, in combination with her pragmatism, willingness to compromise on the international stage, and promotion of modernization and globalization at home, made Merkel not only popular, but effective. Her sole guiding principle, it seems, is the preservation of European unity with Germany’s preeminent position in it. In Qvortrup’s calculations, Merkel’s handling of almost every major political crisis, from the Eurozone crisis to Russian aggression in Ukraine, reflected her ability to calmly and rationally assess the situation. Her interactions with Putin are perhaps the most famous and powerful example of her rationality. According to Qvortrup, Merkel manipulated Putin’s expectations of her as a matronly, unassuming woman in order to drive concessions out of him, and put herself in his situation. As an East German, Merkel possessed a unique ability to recognize the Russian geopolitical uncertainty. Furthermore, Qvortrup hints at the clear gender politics of much of Merkel’s reign: she not only remains above the fray in the masculine political games of Europe’s male leaders, but she also manipulates their expectations of her.

Merkel arrives at the Supporting Syria and the Region conference, London, 2016 (via Flickr)

Qvortrup ends with his most interesting discovery of all: Merkel’s support for refugees represents a stark departure from her usual approach to politics. Merkel, traditionally governed almost entirely by pragmatism and a commitment to a united Europe, finally “discovered an issue that was more important than her own career.” Here, Qvortrup comes full circle to the young girl who grew up in a divided nation, finally finding an issue on which she is willing to expend her political capital and stake her own reputation. Angela Merkel offers an insightful, enjoyable read to those seeking to understand the woman Qvortrup describes as part Mother Courage, part Machiavelli.

Also by Augusta Dell’Omo on Not Even Past:

History Calling: LBJ and Thurgood Marshall on the Telephone
Review of Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman

Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice From the Sixteenth Century to the Present, edited by Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin (2016)

This review was originally published on the Imperial & Global Forum on May 22, 2017.

By Ben Holmes (University of Exeter)

What does it mean to belong to the human race? Does this belonging bring with it particular rights as well as responsibilities? What does it mean to act with humanity? These are some of the big questions lying at the heart of a new edited collection from Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin, Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice From the Sixteenth Century to the Present (2016). Based on a 2015 conference at the Leibniz Institute in Mainz, the book, as the title suggests, is not a purely conceptual history of the term “humanity.”[1] Rather it looks to discover “the concrete implications of theoretical discourses on the concept of humanity.” In other words, how did ideas of “humanity” guide European practices in areas like humanism, imperialism, international law, humanitarianism, and human rights?[2] The editors argue that despite the implied timeless, universal nature of the term, humanity is both a changing, dynamic concept, and has been prone to create divisions as much as it promotes commonality. Although the volume is a study of European conceptions of humanity, the contributions are transnational, displaying how conceptions of humanity were practiced in Europe and in the continent’s interactions with the wider world over the course of five-hundred years.

Leibniz Institute of European History (via Wikimedia Commons).

The volume is divided into four sections. The two chapters in section one explore how ideas of humanity developed over the volume’s five-hundred year period. Francisco Bethencourt demonstrates how, since antiquity, ideas of the humanity or sub-humanity of different categories of people have created legal and political divisions between the rights of free man and slave, civilized and barbarian, or man and woman. Although these distinctions have gradually eroded in response to more inclusive notions of humanity, Bethencourt warns that hierarchical ranking of peoples remains “one of the persistent realities of [the] human condition,” thus disabusing “triumphalist narratives” which would portray modern notions of “humanity” as the culmination of an inevitable progress of enlightened beneficence.[3] Paul Betts looks more closely at the politicization of humanity during the twentieth century. He also shows humanity was not the sole property of progressive politics; throughout the century “humanity remained a slippery term, and could be aligned to various causes,” including fascist, communist, or racist ones which legitimated what many would consider inhuman practices like apartheid. Betts provocatively concludes by suggesting that an intellectual estrangement exists between the aspirational notions of common humanity today and those notions that characterized previous generations of internationalists.

The rest of the chapters in the book are structured according to what the editors describe as”‘three essential areas” that constitute sub-topics of humanity. Thus, Part II revolves around the development of ideas and debates surrounding morality and human dignity in the context of major transnational movements like humanism, colonialism, or missionary activity. Compared to the later sections, some of the chapters in Section II study humanity in a slightly more theoretical fashion than as a “concept in practice.” Mihai-D. Grigore’s chapter situates Desiderius Erasmus’s (1466-1536) sixteenth-century political writings as emblematic of a wider transition from theological to political understandings of humanity, and Mariano Delgado’s chapter presents the Spanish Franciscan friar Bartolmé de Las Casas’s (1484-1566) arguments for recognizing the humanity of indigenous populations of Spain’s “New World.” In doing so, they provide a study of the changing ideological conceptions of humanity rather the practical implications of these ideas. This should not detract from two very useful case studies of sixteenth-century debates about human nature; but it does raise the question of how far one pushes the idea of a “concept in practice” In contrast, Judith Becker’s contribution on nineteenth-century German Protestantism in India illustrates the practical implications of ideas of humanity by showing how the missionaries’ belief in the unity of mankind guided both the evangelistic and humanitarian aspects of their missionary work in India.

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Section III examines themes around humanitarianism, violence, and international law, and illustrates how theories of humanity practically affected European attempts to remedy or restrain the violence of warfare or slavery. Thomas Weller provides an intriguing case study on the contributions the sixteenth-century Hispanophone world made to the arguments later famously espoused by eighteenth-century Anglo-American abolitionists in their protests against the transatlantic slave trade. While questioning any straightforward evolution between the arguments of sixteenth-century writers like Tomás de Mercado (1525–1575) or Luis de Molina (1535-1600) and eighteenth-century transatlantic abolitionists like William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Weller does highlight an under-researched topic concerning what he considers “humanitarianism before humanitarianism.” Picking up the antislavery story, Fabian Klose shows that while British abolitionist narratives about African humanity helped shape the national and international legislation that ended the transatlantic slave trade, these same appeals to protect humanity also legitimated new forms of violence, like armed intervention and colonial expansion in order to enforce the ban. Further emphasizing that the relationship between humanity and humanitarianism is far from straightforward, Esther Möller shows the tensions over the concept in the Red Cross Movement in the second half of the twentieth century. Specifically, the implementation of humanity as the first of the seven Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross precipitated debates in the movement between those who saw humanity as a politically neutral concept, and those national societies involved in anti-colonial struggles, which argued that engagement with politics was a humanitarian duty. Humanity, intended as a principle to unite national societies, actually highlighted the regional and political divisions in the movement.

American Red Cross Society Building, 1922 (via Wikimedia Commons)

The final section focuses on how humanity has influenced social and benevolent practices like charity, philanthropy, and solidarity movements. Picking up the themes of Möller’s chapter, Joachim Berger shows the difficulties of using humanity as a rhetorical device to unite a transnational movement like international Freemasonry. In international forums for European Freemasons, humanity acted as an “empty signifier” which papered over national differences, but these regional differences were re-exposed whenever practical action to support “universal brotherhood,” like transnational charity, was proposed. Studying nineteenth century Catholic philanthropic groups’ promotional campaigns for child-relief in Africa and Asia, Katharina Stornig highlights the at-times dissonant nature of European conceptions of humanity. These philanthropic campaigns used universalist rhetoric of a common humanity to present a moral imperative to save distant children, while simultaneously emphasizing the “barbarity” and “inhumanity” of these children’s parents, who they deemed responsible for this suffering. Gerhard Kruip’s chapter, using church documents to explore the Catholic Church’s attitudes towards solidarity and justice, is part history and part call-to-arms. Kruip exhorts the current Catholic hierarchy to do more to promote global justice by becoming less western-centric, less centralized, “and more open to all the different cultures of the human family,” while also calling for greater state regulation and collective action to ensure a fairer distribution of “common goods for humanity as a whole.”

Cardinals leaving St. Peters (via Wikimedia Commons).

Johannes Paulmann concludes the volume by tying the big themes together with his four main perceptions on humanity. Firstly, humanity has often been defined by its antonyms, most obviously by behaviors of inhumanity. Secondly, the abstract nature of humanity allowed the concept to fulfill a diverse array of functions for a multiplicity of causes. Paulmann’s third and fourth perceptions question the static nature and universality of humanity. Not only was humanity dynamic, which its proponents often understood as a process and goal rather than a fixed reality, but many of these ideas of ‘progress’ implied notions of hierarchies in terms of civilization or development. Paulmann’s conclusion provides a welcome theoretical summary, bringing together the volume’s diverse collection of topics.

The volume’s scale and scope will make this book attractive to scholars of humanitarianism, international law, and human rights. The structure of the volume, while generally clear, could have been explained in more depth for the benefit of non-specialists. For instance, dividing humanitarianism and charity into two separate sections may require clarification to anyone unfamiliar with the theoretical difference between the two. Moreover, some chapters occasionally skirted between themes of humanitarianism, charity, and missionary, which created a bit of confusion. Nevertheless, this is a very important collection of case studies exploring the European concept of humanity and its spread, and leaves the door open to future works focusing on non-European conceptions of the term and how non-Europeans may have actively re-shaped and reinterpreted European ideas.

[1] For such histories, see Hans Erich Bödeker, ‘Menscheit, Humanitӓt, Humanismus’, in Otto Brunnter et. al. (eds.) Geschtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen in Deutschland vol.3 (Stuttgart, 1982).

[2] A vast corpus of works exist on each of these areas, which are too many to list here. For humanitarianism see Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, 2011). For humanitarianism’s relationship with imperialism see Rob Skinner and Alan Lester, ‘Humanitarianism and Empire: New Research Agendas’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40:2 (2012), 729-747. On human rights see Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman (ed.), Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2011).

[3] For more criticism on ‘triumphalist narratives’ of human rights see Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (London, 2012).

Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, by Stefan Ihrig (2016)

By Kelly Douma, Penn State University

Stefan Ihrig closes this book with a quote that encompasses his argument from Raphael Lemkin, the father of the word genocide: “Genocide is so easy to commit because people do not want to believe it until after it happens.” All the signs and symptoms of Nazi-perpetrated genocide existed throughout the decades leading up to the Holocaust, but were ignored by the greater public. Ihrig’s evidence takes the form of German reactions to the Armenian genocide. He argues that the pro-Ottoman nature of World War I Germany and the open genocide debate of Weimar Germany contributed to a “pragmatic” approach to “human rights, life, and liberty,” ultimately laying the groundwork for the virulent anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. Through extensive use of contemporary newspapers as well as court trials and military correspondence, Ihrig creates an image of German politics and culture beginning in the 1890s that makes the Holocaust seem – although still far from inevitable –a product of building tension rather than a sudden explosion of anti-Semitism.

Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, 1930 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Ihrig begins his argument by elucidating an often overlooked connection in modern European history between the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. He does not attempt to compare their causes or results, but rather investigates Germany’s political involvement with the Ottoman Empire and Turkey both during the massacres of the 1890s and the genocide of the 1910s. From there he teases out an intricately woven political fabric connecting Germans and the Ottomans, resulting in a pro-Ottoman stance despite the rumors of anti-Armenian activity. He identifies several pro-Armenian Germans stationed in the Ottoman Empire whose correspondence stands against the bulk of material, which typically did not comment on genocidal activities. The most notable of these men was Max Erwin Scheubner-Richter, a German consul in Erzurum province. Scheubner’s correspondence, among others, helps Ihrig answer his question, “What could Germany have known about the Armenian genocide?” He finds that, in fact, the German military and government must have known nearly everything about the Armenian Genocide, although he does not go so far as to suggest that they were actively involved. He states that Germany knew what was happening, but was willing to “sacrifice the Armenians as the price of preserving Ottoman goodwill toward Germany.” This is a bold claim that has strong repercussions for the study of Germany in WWI and the interwar period.

After establishing German military and political knowledge of the Armenian Genocide, Ihrig tackles the much more difficult question: how much did the German public know of the Armenian Genocide and what was the cultural reaction to it? The second half of the book proves that Germans during the interwar period knew a great deal about the Armenian Genocide. Ihrig describes the emergence of a German cultural script that included pragmatic and extended debates on both the justification and the denial of the Armenian Genocide. Through intensive reading of German newspapers across the political spectrum during the interwar years, Ihrig defines what he calls “The Great Genocide Debate” of 1921-1923. His detailed analysis shows that pro-Armenian writers were consistently at odds with those who claimed the necessity of the Turkish reaction to the “Armenian problem” or reinterpreted the events to justify the genocide in terms of Armenian aggression. He also identifies two men, Franz Werfel and Armin Wegner, who wrote novels and open letters about the Armenian Genocide, but were ultimately too late to warn the German public about the genocidal capability of the Nazi party.

The German–Turkish Non-Aggression Pact was signed between Nazi Germany and Turkey in 1941 and lasted until 1945 (via Wikimedia Commons).

In the last section of his book, Ihrig finally answers the question that has been burning throughout his research: how did this cultural, political, and governmental response to the Armenian Genocide influence the events of the Holocaust? He could not be more clear in his answer. He states that the Nazis were inspired by the Armenian Genocide. He firmly critiques historians who argue that interwar Germany did not “come to terms” with the Armenian Genocide. Rather, he asserts, “Germany came to terms in a manner that we would perhaps not expect and cannot morally condone.” In his eyes, Germany recognized the events and, in a term he coined for this book, practiced a form of “justificantionalism,” or intellectual justification of the events of the genocide.

Deported Armenians leaving their town (via Wikimedia Commons).

Ihrig’s book is written for both experts of the field and general historical readers. The book leaves room for continuing research on the connections between Germany and the Armenian Genocide, such as why Germany was able to cross confessional lines to support the genocide of a Protestant Christian minority by a Muslim government. Ihrig also does not focus specifically on Hitler’s experience with the Armenian Genocide and instead assumes his knowledge of the events as a product of the developing cultural discourse and his position as an avid newspaper reader. This answer doubtless will not convince some readers of his connection and it could use further fleshing out. However, the work stands overall as a thorough treatment of to otherwise missed connection between the first and second acknowledged genocides of modern history.

You may also like:

The Tatars of Crimea: Ethnic Cleansing and Why History Matters.
Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman (1992).
The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer (2007).

David’s Mighty Stone: How One Slave Laborer Restored Survivors’ Rights

Kacey Manlove
Rockport Fulton High School
Senior Division
Historical Paper

Read Kacey’s Paper Here

Nazi Germany was not only responsible for death and violence across Europe. The Third Reich also enslaved millions in their factories. In particular, the German industrial giant I.G. Farben, which produced the Zyklon B that murdered so many during the holocaust, enslaved thousands in order to make its deadly products. But after the war’s conclusion, Norbert Wollheim, formerly an enslaved laborer for I.G. Farben, demanded reparations–both financial and moral–for his country’s use of slavery.

Kacey Manlove, a student at Rockport Fulton High School, wrote a research paper for Texas History Day that tells Wollheim’s remarkable story. You can read two excerpts below and open the full paper above.

IG Farben factory near Auschwitz, 1941 (German Federal Archive)

By the time World War II began on September 1, 1939, Hitler had already annexed Austria and the Sudetenland, and his army then rapidly advanced through Europe, implementing Anti-Semitic laws and creating pools of available laborers. Farben followed the German army to lay claim to chemical industries in annexed or conquered countries, increasing its holdings and profits five-fold to become the largest chemical company in the world. Hitler’s Reich exclusively utilized Farben’s fuel for armament, its chemicals for medical experiments, and its Zyklon B pesticide for executing prisoners incapable of work. By November 1940, Farben’s quota for synthetic rubber (buna) exceeded what its plants could produce. To satisfy the Reich’s needs, Farben agreed to quickly build two new plants, one an extension of their current plant in Ludwigshaften, Germany, the other in Auschwitz, Poland, home of the Nazi’s largest concentration camp system (appendix D). Farben officials specifically selected the Auschwitz location to use raw materials from the nearby Furstengrube coal mines for energy and existing railways for easy shipping. The Auschwitz camp system also provided access to prisoners whom Farben utilized for slave labor in exchange for a nominal payment to the Schutzstaffel [SS]. Slave laborers built Buna/Monowitz, the first industry-based concentration camp, to accommodate Farben’s needs (appendix E), and by 1945, Farben utilized more than 100,000 slave laborers in its various plants. Nazi Labor General Fritz Sauckel authorized Farben’s employees to exploit prisoners “to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.” After the war, this policy would become the core principle in Norbert Wollheim’s suit against Farben for redress.

Labels taken from canisters of Zyklon B from the Dachau gas chambers (USHMM, courtesy of National Archives)

Norbert Wollheim’s suit and subsequent agreement with German industrial giant I. G. Farben not only reclaimed rights for survivors in Buna/Monowitz but also set a precedent for toppling other German industry giants that had used slave laborers to support Nazi Germany. Governments of both America and the Federal Republic of Germany played critical roles in concluding the reparations process that the Wollheim Agreement had begun. All German firms stipulated that their settlements represented a moral obligation, not an admission of any legal responsibility, but to former slave laborers, the monetary redress they received provided a sense of closure, exemplifying the justice they had been denied at Nuremberg. Against great odds, Wollheim’s civil suit had cast the first stone, defeating an industrial giant. The ripple effect caused by that defeat paved the way for additional settlements that have compensated over 1.6 million former slave laborers for their loss of rights during one of the greatest human rights violations in the twentieth century.

Check out the latest Texas History Day projects at Not Even Past:

O Henry Middle School student Maura Goetzel’s paper on liberty and security in early America

And a group of Westwood High School students’s website on America’s most dangerous moment

Recent Posts