27 Facts About Theodor Leipart

Theodor Leipart was a leading German trades unionist.

Theodor Leipart was born into a Protestant family, the seventh of his parents' twelve recorded children, in Neubrandenburg, then in the eastern part of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a grand duchy in the North German Confederation.

Theodor Leipart's mother, born Wilhelmine Charlotte Friederike Schmidt, was the daughter of a machinist.

Theodor Leipart travelled with her husband, possibly working with him on the bed-springs cleaning, while Leipart was brought up by his maternal grandparents in Neubrandenburg.

Theodor Leipart's schooling was made possible through funding from a local "syndikus" and brought him into contact, as he later recalled, with some excellent teachers.

Theodor Leipart had wanted to train as a gardener, but two of his uncles were lathe operators, and had offered to take him on as a trainee without charge.

Theodor Leipart retained his position at the top of what was, at the time, one of Germany's principal trades unions till 1919.

Theodor Leipart was listed high enough up on the SPD candidate list for him to receive one of the party's seventeen seats.

Theodor Leipart resigned his Landtag membership on 14 February 1921 after slightly more than eight months.

Theodor Leipart founded "Die Arbeit", a trades union monthly news magazine which appeared between 1924 and 1933.

Between 1922 and 1933, as leader of Germany's trades union movement, Theodor Leipart earned plaudits for the skill and patience with which he was able to integrate hitherto opposed groupings and works councils.

Theodor Leipart advanced in practical ways the concept of economic democracy and he was an eloquent advocate for trades union autonomy and responsibility.

Theodor Leipart was never a man for confrontation, preferring to apply compromise and flexibility in response to changing political currents and shifting power balances.

On 14 October 1932 Theodor Leipart delivered a keynote speech to the ADGB national "trades union college" at Bernau.

Theodor Leipart asserted that at a time of intensifying political crisis, the ADGB were no longer inclined to "be bound by party ties".

Theodor Leipart presented this as a response to the charge that the ADGB "was not sufficiently national".

Attempts by Theodor Leipart to strengthen the labour movement by fostering ever greater unity between free trades unions continued, but his apparently persisting hope that the ADGB might be able to stand aside from the looming political confrontations turned out to be hugely over-optimistic.

Theodor Leipart was criticised at the time and subsequently over the resolution of the ADGB national executive of 19 April 1933, which expanded on his own call on 15 April 1933, that trades union members should participate in Nazi Labour Day celebrations scheduled for 1 May 1933.

Theodor Leipart's reasoning was that he had wanted to protect union members from exposure to Nazi reprisals that would have followed if they had failed to celebrate in public the fascist version of Labour Day.

Theodor Leipart was a few months short of his sixty sixth birthday when the Nazis took power, and during the next twelve years he lived, for the most part, quietly in Berlin, and was seen to be politically inactive.

Theodor Leipart nevertheless remained consistently, if passively, hostile to the Nazis.

Theodor Leipart repeatedly refused to hand over control of the ADGB to the Nazis "voluntarily", rejecting the bribe of an enhanced pension if he were to do so.

Theodor Leipart was among those arrested and taken into "protective custody".

Theodor Leipart's home had ended up in Berlin's US occupation zone.

Theodor Leipart's papers included several lengthy manuscripts on these topics.

Shortly before he died, in a discussion over the postwar political situation, Theodor Leipart was asked by a reporter about the bitter hostility that the Communists had heaped on the Social Democrats before 1933, in ways which had made it completely impossible for the political left to present a united front against Nazism.

Theodor Leipart was shunned by most of those whom he once been able to count on as his friends.