Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:36:41.461Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blutmai 1929: Police, Parties and Proletarians in a Berlin Confrontation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Chris Bowlby
Chris Bowlby
Affiliation:
Christ's College, Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In May 1929 illegal Communist demonstrations in Berlin led to several days' fighting as the Prussian police sought to restore order. Over thirty civilians were killed. Communist publications hailed events as an heroic defeat, in which lessons had been learned for the ‘final struggle’ to come; the Social Democrats hailed a decisive victory over Bolshevik aggression. Liberals expressed concern at the soverity of police action; National Socialists expressed sinister satisfaction at a significant portent of the distintegration of social and political stability. Above all, the dramatic events of Blutmai (‘Bloody May’) reinforced an element of emotional tension in Weimar and Prussian politics of great importance in understanding the final collapse of 1933.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 137 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Eyck, E., Geschichte der Weimarer Republik (2 vols., Stuttgart 1956), II, 219Google Scholar. Koestler, Arthur, Arrow in the blue (London, 1952), p. 226Google Scholar. The most detailed (and most polemical) account is by Laboor, E., Kampf der deutschen Arbeiterklasse gegen Militarismus und Kriegsgefahr (Berlin, 1961), pp. 261–94Google Scholar. Much the best briefer account is by Rosenhaft, Eve, ‘Working-class life and working-class politics: Communists, Nazis, and the state in the battle for the streets, Berlin 1928–1932’, in Bessel, R. and Feuchtwanger, E. J. (eds.), Social change and political development in the Weimar Republic (London 1981), pp. 207–40Google Scholar. The present author owes much to her work here and in Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and political violence 1929–1933 (Cambridge 1983)Google Scholar.

2 See Halperlin, W. S., Germany tried democracy (New York, 1974 edn), p. 359Google Scholar.

3 The KPD now had 54 seats; the SPD, 154.

4 Hermann Weber dates the attack on ‘social fascism’ from September 1928 – Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Wermarer Republik (2 vols., Frankfurt a.M., 1969), I, 223Google Scholar. The Versohnler were a right-wing opposition group within the KPD.

5 The SA were Sturm-abteilungen, Nazi stormtroopers. The RFB were the Roter Frontkampferbund, the Communist equivalent.

6 Amtsblatt fur den Landespolizebezerk Berlin, Stuck, 51 (22 12, 1928), pp. 329–30Google Scholar.

7 A KPD internal circular in March described ‘defence measures of the bougeoisie and Social Democracy against the rising revolutionary wave’, Weber, H. (ed.), Die Generallime. Rundschreiben des Zentralkomitees der KPD an die Bezirke 1929–1955. Quellen zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien. Reihe 3. Die Weimarer Republik 6 (Dusseldorf, 1981), p. 6Google Scholar.

8 See Pol, Heinz, ‘Die Diktatur der Angst’, Die Weltbuhne, XXV, 17, (23 04 1929), 621–624Google Scholar.

9 Betriebs-Zeitungs-Redakteur, VII, March 1929.

10 Weber, , Die Generallime, p. 1Google Scholar.

11 Ibid. p. 8. A leading KPD journal claimed that 1 May 1929 now symbolized ‘the transfer of hegemony over the proletarian world from reformism to communism’ (Die Internationale, XII, 8–9, 1 May 1929, 242)

12 This dilemma was especially acute for the traditionally militant RFB. See Schuster, K. P, Der Rote Frontkampferbund 1924–1929. Beitrage zur Geschichte des Parlamentansmus und der politischen Parteien, vol. 55 (Dusseldorf, 1975), pp. 216–17Google Scholar.

13 Weber, , Die Generallime, p. 11Google Scholar

14 Die Role Front, 1 April 1929

15 Berliner Tageblatt, 28 April. Der Abend, 29 April.

16 Die Rote Fahne on 1 May gleefully quoted the protests of the SPD newspaper at Plauen.

17 Carl, v. Ossietzky, , ‘Abdankung, Herr Polizeiprasident!,’ Die Weltbukne, XXV, 20 (14 05 1929), 731Google Scholar.

18 Der Angriff, 29 April 1929.

19 Die Rote Fahne of April 30 stressed police ‘powerlessness’ when faced by resolute and disciplined demonstrations.

20 Grzesinski, , Verhandlungen des Landtags (VL), 13 05 1929, col. 6900Google Scholar.

21 Even the political police admitted this, see report to Kommando der Schulzpolizei in Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dahlem (GStA), 219/45. For the importance of May Day in early SPD history see E. Bernstein, Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiterbewegung (reprint, Berlin 1972), chapter 18. Even citizens of Wedding claiming to be ‘unpolitical’ held 1 May as sacrosanct–interviews with F.W., H.G., 15 Dec. 1982.(Note: the Wedding local authority giving permission for residents in its old peoples's homes to be interviewed requested that their full names not be published.)

22 Rosenhaft, , ‘Working-class life’, p. 224Google Scholar. A Wedding KPD official claims that ‘no-one expected shooting’ (interview with , K. W., 17 12 1982)Google Scholar.

23 Reports in Tempo, Berliner Tageblatt, Der Abend (all 2 May).

24 GStA, 219/46, 49. KPD attacks on ‘reformism’ in Die Rote Front, 29 April.

25 VL, 13 May 1929, cols. 6900–1. KPD march plans in Landesarchiv Berlin (LA Bln), Rep. 58 (Akten des Generalstaatsanwalts beim Landgericht), nr. 2886.

26 For poor KPD showing in south and west see Levine-Meyer, R., Inside German communism: memoirs of party life in the Weimar Republic (London, 1977), p. 151Google Scholar.

27 Police had been alerted by ‘lightning’ RFB raids the previous day. See Liang, Hsi-Huey, The Berlin police force in the Weimar Republic (Berkeley, 1970), p. 106Google Scholar.

28 The Bereitschaftspolizei were flying squads often used in riot control. Information for the following section is taken from LA Bln 58/2407, 2412, and Berliner Tageblatt, 2 May. The police did not help their image by maltreating journalists – see GStA, 219/45, 55. The Tageblatt's editor wrote in his diary for 2 May: ‘This morning I have to take care that our report doesn't become exclusively accusations against the police!’. (Feder, Ernst, Tagebuch, Stuttgart, 1971, p. 213)Google Scholar. A New Zealander reporting for a British paper was shot dead in Neukolln.

29 VL, 13 May 1929, col, 6906. Berlin police habitually associated Communist activity with ‘the most worthless criminal elements in society’ – Liang, , Berlin police, p. 84Google Scholar.

30 GStA 219/46. See also VL, 13 May 1929, cols. 6876, 6901. The escalation of police violence was charted by Ossietzky, in ‘Zorgiebel ist Schuld!’, Die Weltbtuhne, XXV, 19 (7 05 1929), 691–4Google Scholar.

31 Of a total of 1228 arrested in the May disturbances only 48 were, according to police records, convicted (GStA, 219/45).

32 Die Rote Fahne, 25 April. Even schoolchildren were mobilized for May Day processions in Wedding (LA Bln, 58/2383; interview with F.G., 15 Dec. 1982).

33 LA Bln, 58/2151; Vossische Zeitung, 3 May. The atmosphere of the Wedding area is well captured in Rimbach, Karl, Links und Rechts der Panke (Berlin, 1961), pp. 126–8Google Scholar.

34 The Kosliner Strasse (or, popularly, Ritze) was regarded as the most solidly ‘revolutionary’ community.

35 LA Bln, 58/2407. Grzesinski claimed a later time of attack (VL, 13 May 1929, col. 6902).

36 Neukrantz, Klaus, Barricades in Berlin (London, 1930), p. 110Google Scholar. This widely circulated novel, recently reprinted in the USA, gave a strongly pro-KPD account of events, but claimed to use only evidence collected by the ‘neutral’ Ossietzky Committee of Investigation into Blutmai. Other details taken from Vossische Zeitung, 3 May.

37 Thus Thalmann, , Protokoll der Verhandlungen des 12. Partertags der Kommumstischen Parta Deutschlands (Berlin, 1929), p. 92Google Scholar. Grzesinski analysis taken from VL, 13 May 1929, passim.

38 Neukrantz, , Barricades, p. 96Google Scholar. Details of deaths from GSta, 219/54.

39 LA Bln, 58/2407. Neukrantz claims that local KPD leaders had been ‘sent away’ for 1 May (Barricades, p. 79). Police reports in GStA, 219/50 describe KPD leaders acting peacefully elsewhere on 1 May. Attempts to dissuade ‘anarchists’ described in an interview with K W., 17 Dec 1982.

40 GStA, 219/54.

41 See Rosenhaft, , ‘Working-class life’, p 228Google Scholar, and Liang, , Berlin police, p. 107Google Scholar.

42 Vogt, M. (ed.), Akten der Reichskanzlei. Weimarer Republic. Das Kabinett Mutter II (2 vols., Boppard am Rhein, 1970), I, 643Google Scholar. Police and sympathetic press reports tried hard to close the disparity, the Berliner Tageblatt of 6 May claimed that fourteen rifles had been shot to pieces in police hands, but that luckily no policeman had been hurt thereby!

43 Verhandlungen des Reichstags (VR) 2 May 1929, col. 1802.

44 Protokoll.. des 12. Parteitags, p. 93. Police report in GStA, 219/46. KPD strike figures in Die Rote Fahne, 24 May

45 Schuster, , Frontkampferbund, pp. 220–1Google Scholar.

46 Tempo, 2 May, Intelligence reports preserved in GStA, 219/46 made by the Retchskommissar für l'berwachung der offentlichen Ordnung indicate the resentment felt by many rank-and-file RFB members at their leaders' pusillanimity.

47 Details in LA Bln, 58/2408; GStA, 219/46, 47; Berliner Tageblatt of 3 May.

48 Quoted by Grzesinski, VL, 13 May 1929, col. 6913.

49 Reports in LA Bln, 58/2406.

50 Lange's article is filed in GStA, 219/46. For Communist opinion cf Neukrantz, p 150. The Vossische Zeitung of 4 May provides some of the most dubious description of highly organized resistance. Yet newspapers and oral evidence of every persuasion agree that there was determined if random resistance from some in the street.

51 Vogt, , Akten der Reichskanzlei, p. 643Google Scholar. Severing describes this as an example of Grzesinski's failure to act even-handedly against both Left and Right: see Severing, Carl, Mein Lebensweg, Bd. II (Koln, 1950), pp. 186–7Google Scholar. See also note 91 below.

52 An SPD member described a ‘punishment expedition’ against the Kosliner community. See Vorwarts, 3 May, p. 8.

53 Schuster, , Frontkampferbund, pp. 220–1Google Scholar.

54 Ibid. p. 221. See also Zimmerman, R., Der Leninbund. Beitrage zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien. Bd. 62 (Dusseldorf, 1978), pp. 152–4Google Scholar

55 GStA, 219/46.

56 GStA, 219/45.

57 GStA, 219/45.

58 By December 1929, according to Timpe, F., a total of 38 had died from wounds received in May See ‘Maiprozesse’, Die Weltbuhne, XXV, 52 (24 12 1929), 931Google Scholar.

59 LA Bln, 58/2151. Reuters report in Manchester Guardian, 8 May.

60 Berliner Tageblatt 6 May. Grzesinski in VL, 13 May col. 6904. Police figures listed 48 officers injured, but only four ‘seriously’ (GStA, 219/45).

61 LA Bln, 58/2151. The journalist's death caused the Prussian government particular embarrassment abroad.

62 It was transferred at short notice from Dresden, so as to be near the ‘battlefields’. See Weber, , Die Wandlung, P. 225Google Scholar

63 Ibid. p. 225.

64 Quotations taken from Protokoll…des 12. Parteitags, pp. 23, 91–3, 160. See also Rosenhaft, , Beating the Fascists?, pp. 37–41Google Scholar.

65 For the best history of this thesis see Bahne, S, ‘Sozialfaschismus in Deutschland Zur Geschichte eines Poltischen Begriffs’, International Review of Social History, X, (1965), 211–45CrossRefGoogle ScholarA more apologetic account is by Schleifstein, J., Die Soztalfaschtsmusthese (Frankfurt a M, 1980)Google ScholarBoth agree on the crucial emotional importance of May 1929

66 The police confiscated puppet models of Zorgiebel in fascist attire – photographs in GStA, 219/45 For Vorwarts comparisons see Die Rote Fahne, 24 May Von Jagow was a pre 1914 Prussian police chief

67 Die Rote Fahne, 24 May VL, 13 May 1929, passim

68 In the Sklarek scandal, for example See Schimmler, B, Der Wedding anno dunnemals (Berlin, 1980), p 44Google Scholar

69 Schuster, , Frontkämpferbund, pp. 219–23Google Scholar.

70 KPD deputy Kasper, VL, 14 May 1929, col. 6983.

71 Rosenhaft, , ‘Working-class life’, p. 225Google Scholar. See also Beating the Fascists?, p. 212, for the KPD's indestructible Hegelian optimism. One of those arrested on 1 May wrote to a friend from prison: ‘I feel like cattle due to be slaughtered (wie ein Stuck Vieh dass (sic) geshlachtet werden soll)’ – LA Bln, 58/2407.

72 The KPD vote in Wedding was still increasing in 1933 (Schimmler, , Der Wedding, p. 46)Google Scholar. Neukrantz claimed that the Köslínert KPD cell gained 180 new members in May 1929 (Barricades, p. 173).

73 Interviews with H.G., F.W., 15 Dec. 1982.

74 See Weber, , Die Wandlung, pp 164–5, 180Google Scholar

75 The classic description of this kind of pervasive criminality is Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz An interesting pro-Nazi account, stressing Wedding's independent spirit and resistance to state control, is Otto Paust's Land im Licht (Berlin, n d) See also Rosenhaft, Eve, ‘Organising the lumpenproletariat cliques and communists in Berlin during the Welmar Republic, in Evans, R J (ed), The German working class, 1888–1933 the politics of everyday life (London, 1981), pp 174–219Google Scholar

76 Even if, to follow Weber, the triumph of the Thalmann group had removed the raison d'être for other ‘ultra-left’ groups within the KPD, Thalmann's call for ‘prudent restraint’ as the police opened fire must have seemed to many to be a betrayal (Weber, Die Wandlung, ch 3)

77 LA Bln 58/2406, GStA 219/46 The Berliner Volkszeitung of 2 May called the disturbances ‘more criminal than political’

78 Liang, , Berlin police p. 16Google Scholar. Neukrantz suggests tension between local police and outsider drafted in to act more vigorously (Barricades, pp. 60–3).

79 A sharply observed portrayal of this kind of underworld manoeuvre is made by Fritz Lang in his film ‘M’ (1931).

80 A KPD circular of July 26 urged the formation of Arbeiterschutzorganisationen (Weber, , D' Gerurallinie, p. 36)Google Scholar.

81 Stephan, B., 700 Jahre Wedding. Geschichte eines Berliner Bezirks (Berlin, 1951), p. 80Google Scholar.

82 Ibid. p. 80. Election results from Schimmler, , Der Wedding, pp. 43–6Google Scholar.

83 The KPD became the strongest part in Wedding in the local elections of November 1929, with 81,000 votes to the SPD's 60,000. Meanwhile in Reichstag elections the Nazi vote in the Wedding constituency increased from 0.8 per cent in 1928 to 9 per cent in 1930. See Hamilton, R., Who voted for Hitler? (Princeton, 1982), p. 78Google Scholar.

84 Another factor was the increased turnout in ‘crisis’ elections, described in Bracher, K. D., The German dictatorship (London, 1970), pp. 182–3Google Scholar.

85 For the phenomenon of ‘switching sides’ see Rosenhaft, Beating the fascists?, pp. 164–6Google Scholar.

86 In a pamphlet entitled Der Berliner Blutmai, Paul Frölich wrote prophetically: ‘It is clear…that the KPD by its political tactics, which facilitate the division among workers, its incoherence, and its adventures, weakens proletarian resistance, furthers the mood of despair, and thereby actually drives its adherents to fascism… Quoted in Weber, , Die Wandlung, p. 225Google Scholar.

87 There is a perceptive if brief analysis of this change in Feuchtwanger, E.J., Prussia: myth and reality (London, 1970), pp. 224–25Google Scholar.

88 Hunt, R. N., German social democracy (Chicago, 1970), p. 244Google Scholar.

89 Matthias, E., ‘German social democracy in the Weimar Republic’, in Nicholls, A.J. and Matthias, E. (eds.), German democracy and the triumph of Hitler (London, 1971), p. 52Google Scholar.

90 Police reports on KPD in GStA, 219/46. Braun, Otto, Von Weimar zu Hitler (New York, 1940), p. 287Google Scholar.

91 For a discussion of Grzesinski's actions as Prussian Minister of the Interior see Glees, A., ‘Albert C. Grzesinski and the politics of Prussia 1926–1930’, English Historical Review, LXXXIX, CCCLIII (10 1974), 814–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.Glees argues that Grzesinski was always even-handed in his dealings with anti-republican forces, but has curiously little to say about the implications of as dramatic a conflict as that of May 1929.

92 Matthias, , ‘Social democracy’, p. 53Google Scholar. He is referring to the Spartacus rising; but its memory was readily recalled in 1929, as press references testify.

93 Liang, , Berlin police, pp. 53—5Google Scholar. For internal criticisms see Polizeibeamtenzeitung, 3 May, p. 10.

94 VL, 7 Feb. 1929, cols. 3234–5.

95 Laboor, , Kampf der deutschen, pp. 263–4Google ScholarDie Rote Fahne 30 April. For police anti-Communism see Liang, , Berlin police, p. 84Google Scholar.

96 Die Menschenrechte, IV, 1 Oct. 1929.

97 Timpe, ‘Maiprozesse’, passim. Neukrantz, claims that troops were offered (Barricades, p. 162)Google Scholar. Cabinet minutes show that Severing offered ‘reinforcements’ – the type is not specified (Vogt, , Akten der Reichskanzlei, p. 643)Google Scholar.

98 There are vivid accounts of pseudo-military police behaviour in the Polizeibeamtenzeitung, 10 May 1929; and in Die Menschenrechte, 1 Oct. 1929. Liang perhaps underestimates the corrupting effect of monarchist and/or militarist police officers in the 1920s (Berlin police, pp. 89–90). Eric his Kohler provides a useful analysis of militaristic sentiment among the Prussian police as it affected SPD leaders in the months before Papen's coup of 1932. See Kohler, E.D., ‘The crisis in the Prussian Schutzpolizei 1930–32’ in Mosse, G.L. (ed.), Police forces in history (London 1975), pp. 131–50Google Scholar.

99 Liang, , Berlin police, p. 108Google Scholar. Police reticence on the subject of Blutmai is still effective. When the present author asked a former member of the Wedding Bereitschaftspolizei – who had previously given much information on early 1920s events – to discuss May 1929, he stated that the Prussian Ministry of the Interior (now long extinct!) had imposed a perpetual vow of silence on all involved.

100 vL, 13 May, 1929, col. 6904. In describing police ‘errors’, Grzesinski glibly concluded: ‘Wo Holz gehauen wird, da fallen Späne’ (roughly: ‘You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs’). Note Papen's use of a similar phrase to ‘explain’ violence in 1933, quoted in Bracher, , German dictatorship, p. 196Google Scholar.

101 Much of this applause would have been highly illiberal: it is tempting to compare the visage offered by the SPD regime in May 1929 with Oswald Spengler's vision of an authoritarian ‘Prussian’ socialism in his Preussentum und Sozialismus (München, 1924 edn), pp. 102–3Google Scholar.

102 Anderson writes perceptively of the SPD ministers: ‘Their real ‘crime’, if one chooses to call it so, was a political and not a moral one; it was born not of wickedness, but of political blindness and weakness. It consisted in the acceptance of responsibility without having first secured the power to act responsibly’. Anderson, E., Hammer or anvil? The history of the German working class movement (London, 1945), pp. 131–2Google Scholar.