Karl Artelt (31 December 1890 – 28 September 1981) was a German revolutionary and a leader of the sailors' revolt in Kiel.
Birth and education Karl Artelt was born on 31 December 1890 in the German village of Salbke, at Repkowstr. 12, which was later suburbanized into Magdeburg, the son of engine operator August Artelt and his wife Marie. He attended the eight-classes primary school and thereafter did an apprenticeship with the machine production company R. Wolf in Magdeburg and became a qualified engine fitter. There, he worked together with Erich Weinert, later a well-known poet, who taught him the basics of Marxism.CVs written by the grandson Karl Artelt: one unpublished, the other see webpage of Magdeburg university: http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/mbl/Biografien/0264.htm .
Party memberships In 1908 he became a member of the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) and later joined the USPD (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands). In spring 1919 he was one of the founders of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) in Magdeburg and in 1946 he joined the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands).
East-Asia
In 1908 he was hired by the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft – HAPAG, an international shipping line and spent some years amongst others as a stoker; these vessels were used to move copra in the South Seas.Peter Kast, Der Rote Admiral von Kiel (The Red Admiral from Kiel), Verlag des Ministeriums für nationale Verteidigung, Berlin 1958Karl Artelt, CV written by himself in 1960, unpublished, family property: Karl Artelt, grandson. (Similar to SAPMO-Bundesarchiv (German Federal archive), Sign.: SGY 30/0022) Two years later he was conscripted into the German navy, serving as a stoker and later as a pump specialist on board the armoured cruiser Gneisenau of the German East-Asia fleet in Qingdao (Tsingtau). He became a contemporary witness of the Bourgeois revolution in China led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. In September 1913 he returned to Magdeburg as a reservist and resumed his job at the Wolf factory.
First World War
When the first world war broke out he had to rejoin the navy, this time as an administrative clerk in the 1. Werft Division at Kiel-Wik.
At the beginning of 1915, he was detached to the Germania shipyard in Kiel as an engine fitter. After some months he was elected shop steward for the German metal workers union for the shipyard. In mid May 1916 the general war situation and the food supply in Kiel had deteriorated to such an extent that on 14 June, when the first early potatoes were distributed, there were assaults on sales points and storage halls. The following morning large numbers of the Germania shipyard workers went on strike.Dirk Dähnhardt, Revolution in Kiel, Wachholtz Verlag, 1978, pp. 37, 40, 56, 71, 136, 137. Karl Artelt was one of the strike leaders. During the winter the food supply situation worsened. At the end of March 1917, it was announced that bread rations were to be reduced. In protest 1,450 workers from the Howaldt shipyard and 4,000 workers from the Germania shipyard downed tools. Artelt was a member of the strike committee. He was apprehended because of these activities and tried at a court martial, where he was sentenced to six months in a fortress prison, which he had to serve at Groß-Strehlitz in Upper Silesia.Gegen die Militärdiktatur (Against Military Dictatorship) - Reichstagsrede des Abgeordneten Dittmann am 11. Oktober 1917 Nach dem amtlichen Stenogramm, in Zwei Reichstagsreden, Oktober 1917
Living in the prison with different officials from the workers movement had a sustainable influence on him. In one photograph he can be seen together with Prof. Dr. med. Krahn from Antwerp and Joseph Verlinden, president of the metal workers' union and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Antwerp.
When released from prison he received marching orders to move to Flanders, where he had to join the punishment battalion of the 2. Marine-Pioneerbataillon. When later Artelt protested against a leaflet of the military newspaper An Flanderns Küste, which according to his statement, "heavily insulted" the striking ammunition workers in Germany, he was sent to a mental home in Bruges. However, after six weeks of medical observation, a doctor ascertained his nerves were perfectly healthy. Soon thereafter he was transported back to Germany by express train.Karl Artelt, Mir der roten Fahne zum Vizeadmiral Souchon (With the Red Flag to Viceadmiral Souchon), in: "Vorwärts und nicht vergessen" - Erlebnisberichte aktiver Teilnehmer der Novemberrevolution 1918/1919, Dietz Verlag Berlin, 1958, S. 88-100.
Minutes of the Marinestation in Kiel mention Artelt as one of the "Haupthetzer (main agitators)" in a gathering in the union house on 12 April 1918. The record says he has, still as a member of the Sipyard Division (Werftdivision), addressed numerous sailors and workers. Mid-May 1918 he sent a postcard from a military hospital in Hamburger to his mother.Klaus Kuhl, Gespräche mit dem Enkel Karl Artelt (Conversation with the grandson Karl Artelt), 2010 unpublished. It remains unclear, why he was admitted to this hospital.The minutes are within a file of the chief of staff of the Marinestation of the Baltic, Küsel (Federal Archive BArch RM 8/1027 Bl. 41), they say: "There is a danger that the great incitement that is currently taking place among the local [Kiel] workers will spread to the latter because of the close relations of the workers with our people [the navy]. Thus, a main agitator among the workers of the Germania shipyard - Artelt by name - a member of the I.W.D. [Shipyard division]. By [!] a report of a military police officer on a meeting held in the trade union house on 12 April by the social-democratic association Groß-Kiel, in which Artelt attracted attention by hate speech, not less than 25-30 petty and senior officers second class participated in uniform, who made themselves unpleasantly recognizable by shouts for the social-democratic minority. Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine the names. The whole severity of the law must be applied to such people. ... After their punishment such people must be removed swiftly from Kiel by appropriate command to the front." The grandson in Magdeburg confirmed that his grandfather sent the following month on 5 May 1918 a postcard from a Hamburg naval hospital to his mother. On the front is a photo, showing Karl Artelt (cap tally I. Shipyard Division) together with two comrades in uniform with peaked caps. Behind them are flowering bushes. On the back is written: "Dear Mom, Congratulations to your birthday Your Karl." The card is stamped on 5 May 1918. The grandson has no explanation for why his grandfather, after he apparently already had arrived in Kiel, was staying in the hospital in Hamburg. He assumes, it could have been because of his eyes. He had eye problems from very early years, also on the "usual" photos one can realize that he wore an old type of spectacles ("Kneifer").
After reporting to the division commander in Kiel, there were difficulties in detaching him: his former unit sent him to the "Matrosen Division" (sailors' division). However, he was rejected. Through a Captain Ludolf, who knew him from his case in 1917, he was eventually placed in the Torpedo Division (barracks in Kiel-Wik), where he worked in the torpedo boat repair workshop. Other sources wrongly indicate the torpedo workshop in Kiel-Friedrichsort.According to Dirk Dähnhardt, Revolution in Kiel (p. 56), Artelt worked in the Torpedowerkstatt (torpedo workshop) Friedrichsort. It seems Dähnhardt made a mistake here: those sources which he refers to and in a report from the Bundesarchiv (see below) show definitely that Artelt worked in the Torpedobootsreparatur-werkstatt or -werft (torpedo boat repair yard) in Kiel Wik. Robert Rosentreter, in Blaujacken im Novembersturm (p. 32) seems to have merely copied Dähnhardt's information, although he claims to refer to Artelt's statements from 1960. As a specialist of pumps he supervised a group of shipyard workers who had to work for the navy. He used his job to secretly re-establish the navy shop stewards system, which had been smashed in 1917.Hermann Knüfken also describes in his book Von Kiel bis Leningrad (From Kiel to Leningrad) (Verlag BasisDruck, Berlin 2008), the re-establishment of the shop steward system within the navy at that time (pp. 32 ff.).
Kiel mutiny
Lothar Popp and Karl Artelt became the leaders of the sailors' mutiny in Kiel in November 1918. Artelt was the first to raise political demands, including the "introduction of universal, equal and secret suffrage for both sexes"Dähnhardt, Revolution, p. 71. and founded the first soldiers' council on 4 November 1918. As a representative of that council, he was asked by governor Souchon to meet him for negotiations. Together with other sailors' representatives they went by car from Kiel-Wik to the Naval Station carrying a large red flag. Artelt personally confronted some of those troops who came to quell the uprising and convinced them to either move back or to support the mutineers. On 10 December 1918, Artelt became Lothar Popp's successor as chairman of the Supreme Soldiers' Council in Kiel.Dähnhardt, Revolution, p. 136 f. Popp remained in the council (probably only pro forma) as a political advisor.“Republik“, newspaper of the USPD for the province Schleswig-Holstein, 11 December 1918.
The town archive Kiel keeps a photograph that was seen for a long time as depicting the burial procession for the victims of the revolution on 10 November 1918. Some identified Lothar Popp, Gustav Noske and Karl Artelt in the photo. The grandson of the latter, also Karl Artelt, was sure that his grandfather was the person second from left in the first row.He argued that his grand father was of rather small to middle height and that he, because of a problem with his eyesight, did not carry a rifle by that time but a pistol. Before it became clear that the photo depicted Berlin and not Kiel, the grand son Karl Artelt was quoted as saying: The sailor third from the right wearing a coat and a sabre is my grandfather. He was short or maybe of 'medium height'. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the sailors' mutiny in Kiel I was asked - by then I was a student at the "Johannes R. Becher" literature institute in Leipzig - to write two full-page articles for weekend editions of the Magdeburg newspaper Volksstimme about this historic event. By then we naturally also talked about "secondary issues". That is why I remember very vividly, that he told me that he carried a '08 pistol during the time of the mutiny, because it was difficult for him to handle a rifle (he had an inherent eye problem). In 1945 he also received as 1st secretary of the KPD from the von der Soviet military administration a '08 pistol, we later talked about this weird coincidence. The sailor in the middle identified by others as Karl Artelt is out of [the] question. Whoever is still having doubts should compare the photographs showing Artelt on board the Gneisenau in 1912 with the Artelt wearing a coat in the photograph taken six years later marching through Kiel. When I was ca. three years old I started to consciously recognize the face of my grandfather and we were all in all 39 years closely associated (living ten years in the same house, eight years nearby his place in Nebra and many weekends spent together. Later when I stayed in Magdeburg I visited him very often. We had long talks, on politics and history.)