Carl Wilhelm Severing (1 June 1875 – 23 July 1952) was a German union organizer and Social Democratic politician during the German Empire, Weimar Republic and the early post-World War II years in West Germany. He served as a Reichstag member and as interior minister in both Prussia and at the Reich level where he fought against the rise of extremism on both the left and the right. He remained in Germany during the Third Reich but had only minimal influence on reshaping the Social Democratic Party after World War II.
Severing came from a poor working class family in Westphalia. After completing an apprenticeship as a locksmith he became a member of the German Metalworkers' Union and rose rapidly in both the union and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Bielefeld. He won a seat in the Imperial Reichstag in 1907 but lost his bid for re-election in 1912. He remained active in the SPD, including as a writer for its Bielefeld newspaper.
Severing supported Germany during World War I in the belief that it was fighting a defensive war. After the Empire's defeat, he became a member of the First Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in Berlin, the Weimar National Assembly and then the Weimar Reichstag, where he retained his seat until the National Socialists rose to power in 1933.
During the period of serious labor unrest that broke out in the industrial areas of the Ruhr valley and Upper Silesia in early 1919, Severing was appointed state commissioner with the task of defusing the situation. He won praise for doing so with a minimum use of force. Following the 1920 Kapp Putsch, Severing was named Prussian interior minister. During his three terms in office, he worked to democratize both the Prussian administration and its police force, primarily by removing officials who were not supporters of a republican form of government. He attempted to build a strong police force in the conviction that its use would lead to less violence and fewer deaths than would the Reichswehr when confronting internal unrest such as the 1921 central German uprising.
Severing was Reich interior minister from June 1928 to March 1930. He was faced with the increasing strength of extremist parties and with violence from both the left, primarily the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and the right, including various Freikorps units and the Nazi Party. He had the Nazi SA banned in 1932 but in general resisted calls to ban extremist groups except when they posed a threat to the Republic. In the face of opposition from the SPD that he was seldom able to overcome, Severing also favored co-operation between the SPD and the extremist parties in the Reichstag, arguing that it would be worse to withdraw and leave them in control.
After Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen ousted the Prussian government in the 1932 Prussian coup d'état, Severing and the remainder of the SPD offered no resistance to a move that helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler to become German chancellor in 1933. Severing remained in Germany during the Third Reich where he faced only minor harassment. He had contacts with some of the parties involved in the 1944 assassination plot against Hitler but played no active role.
In the aftermath of World War II, Severing was contacted by and worked with the Allied occupation authorities and again became active in the SPD, but he never played a leading role because the party wanted a wholly new start. He was, however, a member of the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia until his death in 1952. Imperial era
Family and first political experience Carl Severing came from a Protestant working class family in straitened circumstances in Herford, Westphalia, which was then a province of Prussia. His father Bernhard worked as a cigar sorter, and his mother Johanna was a seamstress. The family fell into hardship when his father became mentally ill. Carl and his half-brother had to help their mother sort cigars, a job that was done at home. A pastor offered to pay for Carl to attend high school and suggested that he become a pastor, but Carl wanted to be a musician. Since it turned out to be impossible to finance the study, he attended public school and then began an apprenticeship as a locksmith, which he finished in 1892.
Although politics played no role in Severing's family, Carl showed an early interest in the socialist labor movement after a colleague introduced him to its goals. Immediately after his journeyman's examination, Severing joined the German Metal Workers' Union (DMV). He became the organization's secretary and in 1893 was elected to the local trade union cartel as a representative of the DMV. He was also a correspondent and contact for the Social Democratic newspaper from neighboring Bielefeld.
In 1894 Severing left Herford for Bielefeld where he gave up his employment in handcraft and switched to factory work. In Bielefeld, too, he became involved in the Social Democratic Party and the trade union. In 1895 he played a leading role in a failed strike involving a lockout and lost his job as a result.
Switzerland
Severing then went to Zürich where in 1895 he began work as a skilled laborer in a metal goods factory. He became involved in the Swiss Metalworkers' Union, which had independent sub-organizations for immigrant German workers. He also joined the local committee of German Social Democrats and the German Workers' Educational Association ('Concord'). Within a short time Severing had established himself as a leading figure in the various associations.
Severing's political views became markedly more radical during his years in Switzerland. His criticism of the politics of the Social Democrats led him to resign from his functions in the Workers' Educational Association. In his speeches he frequently spoke of world revolution and no longer only of improving the political and social condition of the workers. He observed from a distance that the SPD in East Westphalia was beginning to follow a distinctly pragmatic course and that the party was considering taking part in the Prussian state election, which tended to be viewed with scorn because of the Prussian three-class franchise that weighted votes based on the amount of taxes paid.
In 1898 Severing left Switzerland and returned to Bielefeld.
Rise in the Bielefeld labor movement In 1899, after his return from Switzerland, Severing married a distant relative, Emma Wilhelmine Twelker, who was expecting his child. The couple had two children.
Due to the lack of support Severing encountered within the local SPD, he shifted his focus to union work. He rose rapidly in the field and in 1901 became managing director of the local branch of the German Metalworkers' Union. At the time the local union had enrolled only about 30% of the potential membership. During Severing's term of office, it increased sixfold; by 1906 the level of organization had reached 75%. The introduction of shop stewards contributed to his success. The system guaranteed the union's proximity to the concerns and needs of its members.
From his base in the metalworkers' movement, Severing extended his sphere of influence to Bielefeld's entire trade union organization, against fierce resistance from other unions. By 1906 he was the central figure in the city's labor movement. In both 1906 and 1910, Severing achieved wins for the workers without a strike. It was not until 1911 that there was a major work stoppage and it, too, was successful. In 1912 he resigned from his post at the metalworkers' union.
During the years when his predominant efforts were with trade unions, Severing's political views changed significantly. His revolutionary positions were replaced by a pronounced pragmatism that was frequently regarded as right wing within the party. His goal was no longer the dictatorship of the proletariat but the integration of workers into society. In this respect, he came closer to the revisionist positions he had once fought.
Entry into politics Severing's influence on the Bielefeld labor movement during the Empire was based primarily on his success in the trade unions. Through the "unionization of the party", his indirect influence on the SPD through close associates was great enough to enable him to dispense with taking a leading position in it himself.
More important to him was the opportunity to have a parliamentary voice. He first ran for a Reichstag seat in 1903, at the time still a hopeless endeavor even though there had been a significant increase in Social Democratic voters. In the Reichstag election of 1907, he won a seat from the electoral district of Minden 3. His success was in contrast to the overall Reich results. In the so-called "Hottentot election", the Social Democrats lost a considerable number of voters and seats after they were branded as "enemies of the Reich" for opposing what came to be known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide in German South West Africa.
With his victory Severing moved into the inner circle of decision makers. In the SPD parliamentary group, he became an expert member of numerous committees and a sought-after debater in their meetings. He also began to write regularly for the revisionists' theoretical (Socialist Monthly), and in the he wrote about his work in the Reichstag and his participation in various international union and socialist congresses.
Severing's opponent in the 1912 Reichstag election was Arthur von Posadowsky-Wehner, a conservative who until 1907 had held numerous cabinet-level posts in the Reich government and who ran as the joint candidate of the Centre, National Liberal and German Conservative parties. Posadowsky defeated Severing in the runoff election because the base of the left-liberal German Progress Party, contrary to the recommendation of its party leadership, did not vote for him.
Even after losing his Reichstag seat, Severing remained one of the most influential "provincial princes" and played an important role in the party committee, a body that along with the executive board and the SPD Reichstag delegates represented the districts in the party as a whole. In 1912 Severing gave up his position at the German Metalworkers' Union. From 1912 to 1919 he was editor and de facto director of the Social Democratic newspaper in Bielefeld.
World War I
Support for the war Shortly before the start of the First World War, a large anti-war demonstration was held in Bielefeld at which Severing spoke cautiously in favor of Social Democratic support for a conflict that he saw as a defensive war: "But once the die is cast, there is only one goal for Social Democracy, too: to protect the German people by all means against power-hungry claims of the [Russian] peace czar." After the war began on 4 August 1914, he wrote ". [In times of war, the law falls silent.] ... The war is here and we have to defend ourselves." To legitimize the approval of war bonds by the Reichstag, he made use of socialist ideas of war policy as a means to achieve both social equality for workers and long overdue reforms.
Severing remained in the pro-war camp during the following years. In the party committee in 1915, he denied SPD co-leader Hugo Haase the right to express his critical opinions and in 1916 attacked Karl Liebknecht, an outspoken opponent of the war, with polemical and partly false accusations. Supported by the regional Social Democratic press, he succeeded in swearing the Bielefeld-Wiedenbrück SPD to the course of the party majority around its moderate pro-war co-leader Friedrich Ebert. After the anti-war wing of the SPD broke off to form the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in April 1917, it played a significant and in some cases dominant role in parts of the Rhineland and Westphalia, but it was barely able to gain a foothold in East Westphalia.
Reichstag peace resolution and war's end