1. Curt Ernst Carl Schumacher, better known as Kurt Schumacher, was a German politician and resistance fighter against the Nazis.
28 Facts About Kurt Schumacher
1. 2.
Kurt Schumacher was chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1946 and the first Leader of the Opposition in the Bundestag in West Germany in 1949; he served in both positions until his death.
3.
Kurt Schumacher was born in Kulm, in West Prussia, the son of a small businessman who was a member of the liberal German Free-minded Party and deputy in the municipal assembly.
4.
Kurt Schumacher returned to his law and political science in Halle, Leipzig, and Berlin, from which he graduated in 1919.
5.
Kurt Schumacher led ex-servicemen in forming workers' and soldiers councils in Berlin during the revolutionary days following the fall of the German Empire but opposed attempts by revolutionary left-wing groups to seize power.
6.
Kurt Schumacher was elected to the state legislature, the Free People's State of Wurttemberg Landtag in 1924.
7.
Kurt Schumacher transferred to the local republican organisation "Schwabenland" in the newly founded organisation to defend Germany's parliamentary democracy, the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold.
8.
In 1928, Kurt Schumacher became the SPD leader in the state of Wurttemberg.
9.
Kurt Schumacher was arrested in July 1933, two weeks before the SPD was banned, and was severely beaten in prison.
10.
Kurt Schumacher was given the opportunity to sign a declaration in which he renounced any political activity if released; unlike Fritz Bauer and seven other political prisoners, he refused to sign it.
11.
Kurt Schumacher spent the next ten years in Nazi concentration camps at Heuberg, Kuhberg, Flossenburg, and Dachau.
12.
In 1943, when Kurt Schumacher was near death, his brother-in-law succeeded in persuading a Nazi official to have him released into his custody.
13.
Kurt Schumacher was re-arrested in late 1944 and was in Neuengamme when the British arrived in April 1945.
14.
Kurt Schumacher wanted to lead the SPD and bring Germany to socialism.
15.
Kurt Schumacher soon found himself in a battle with Otto Grotewohl, the leader of the SPD in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, who argued the SPD should merge with the KPD to form a united socialist party.
16.
Kurt Schumacher was as ardently anti-Communist as he was anti-Nazi, and rejected the proposal.
17.
Kurt Schumacher campaigned throughout 1948 and 1949 for a united socialist Germany and particularly for the nationalisation of heavy industry, whose owners he blamed for funding the Nazis' rise to power.
18.
Kurt Schumacher wanted a new constitution with a strong national presidency, a post that he was confident he would win.
19.
Kurt Schumacher refused to give way and eventually the Allies, keen to get the new German state functioning in the face of the Soviet challenge, acceded to some of Kurt Schumacher's demands.
20.
Kurt Schumacher supported Adenauer's Law 131' from 1951, which granted pensions and voting rights to former NSDAP bureaucrats, policemen, and other officials.
21.
Kurt Schumacher even protested the execution of the last major Nazi war criminals in Landsberg in 1951.
22.
Kurt Schumacher was convinced he would win, and most observers agreed with him; however, Adenauer's new CDU had several advantages over the SPD in the 1949 West German federal election.
23.
Kurt Schumacher was especially critical and once called the communists "red-painted fascists".
24.
Kurt Schumacher attempted a heavy distinction in the public consciousness between his vision of democratic socialism and the realities in East Germany but still found his party partially damaged by association.
25.
Kurt Schumacher refused to co-operate in parliamentary matters and denounced the CDU as agents of the capitalists and foreign powers.
26.
Kurt Schumacher opposed the emerging new organisations of European co-operation: the Council of Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Defence Community.
27.
Kurt Schumacher saw them as devices to strengthen capitalism and to extend Allied control over Germany.
28.
Kurt Schumacher had formulated the preamble of SPD program for the party convention in Dortmund in September 1952.