The Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers (''Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter'') was a German trade union that was politically close to the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

(KPD). It was formed in the period after the

German Revolution of 1918–1919 The German Revolution or November Revolution (german: Novemberrevolution) was a civil conflict in the German Empire at the end of the First World War that resulted in the replacement of the German federal constitutional monarchy with a d ...

and existed to the end of 1925.

History

The Union was formed in September 1921 by the merger of three left-wing trade unions that had not joined the

Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund The General German Trade Union Federation (german: Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, ADGB) was a confederation of German trade unions in Germany founded during the Weimar Republic. It was founded in 1919 and was initially powerful enough to ...

(ADGB), which they, like other radicalized workers in the General Workers Union of Germany (''Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands'') and the

Free Workers' Union of Germany The Free Workers' Union of Germany (; FAUD) was an anarcho-syndicalist trade union in Germany. It stemmed from the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FDVG) which combined with the Ruhr region's Freie Arbeiter Union on September 15, 1919. ...

had felt was

reformist Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement. Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can ...

. The three unions were the

Gelsenkirchen Gelsenkirchen (, , ; wep, Gelsenkiärken) is the 25th most populous city of Germany and the 11th most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher River (a tributary of the Rhine), it lies ...

Free Workers' Union, the Berlin-based Association of Manual and Intellectual Workers and the

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...

-based Farmworkers' Association (''Landarbeiterverband'').

Gustav Sobottka Gustav Sobottka (12 July 1886 – 6 March 1953) was a German politician in East Germany. He was a member of the Communist Party and was in exile during the Nazi era. He returned to Germany in 1945 as head of the Sobottka Group and later worked in ...

was one of the founding members of the union.Biographical details, Gustav Sobottka

Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur The Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship (german: Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, alternatively translated as "(Federal) Foundation for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in East Germany") is a governmen ...

, Retrieved November 25, 2011 At the national level, the newly merged Union became part of the

Profintern The Red International of Labor Unions (russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов, translit=Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Comm ...

. The Union's was mainly focused in the

Ruhr region The Ruhr ( ; german: Ruhrgebiet , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km ...

and bordering areas, as well as in the Berlin area. The dominant sectors were

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

and

metalworking Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scal ...

. In the Ruhr region, about half the KPD members who were members of various

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...

s were also members of the Union.Eric D. Weitz
Origins of the RGO
''Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State'', Princeton University Press (1997) pp. 151-153. Retrieved August 12, 2011. At its inception, the Union had roughly 90,000 members. Between 1922 and 1923, it grew to over 100,000 members. Although losing members by the end of 1923, it still had the strongest voice in Ruhr region mining council elections in 1924. The Union's membership contained different sorts of radicals, many of whom were undisciplined, and caused problems for the more disciplined KPD. The KPD, seeking to advance the class struggle, wanted to establish revolutionary unions to displace the Christian and liberal unions' position of power in the workplace. The KPD tried to organize party factions within the Union, but with little success. After the Fifth Congress of the Comintern in 1924, communists were urged to join the free unions, but the more radical Union instead urged workers to leave those unions, further straining relations with the KPD until the KPD ended it completely. Members withdrew and joined the ADGB and by the end of 1924, the Union was just over 20,000 strong; the following August, just 8,000 and faded from activity.

Bibliography

* Eva Cornelia Schöck, ''Arbeitslosigkeit und Rationalisierung. Die Lage der Arbeiter und die kommunistische Gewerkschaftspolitik 1920-28''. Frankfurt am Main/New York 1977 , v.a. pp. 88–113 and p. 249 * Hermann Weber, ''Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik. Band 1''. Frankfurt/Main 1969, v.a. S. 68f, p. 98f and p. 168

References

{{Reflist Organizations based in the Weimar Republic Defunct trade unions of Germany Communist organizations Trade unions established in 1921