Theodor Leipart (17 May 1867 – 23 March 1947) was a German trade unionist and politician who served as chairman of the General German Trade Union Federation from 1921 to 1933, during most of the Weimar Era.
Life Provenance and early years 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. Ernst Alexander Leipart (1831–1885), his father, was trained and had worked initially as a self-employed tailor specialising in women's dresses. By the time Theodor was born, however, his father had a more itinerant job, travelling for the "Bettfeder-Reinigungs-Anstalt" (literally, "Bed-springs cleaning institution"). His mother, born Wilhelmine Charlotte Friederike Schmidt, was the daughter of a machinist. She travelled with her husband, possibly working with him on the bed-springs cleaning, while Leipart was brought up by his maternal grandparents in Neubrandenburg. It was here that he attended middle school and here, in 1881, that he was confirmed into the church. His schooling was made possible through funding from a local "syndikus" and brought him into contact, as he later recalled, with some excellent teachers. Looking back, he would speculate that it was this early experience of "solidarity between [middle and working] classes" that made him a "less radical" socialist than he might otherwise have become. Pride in his working-class background and loyalty to those class roots would nevertheless remain defining themes throughout his life.
Between 1881 and 1885 he lived in Hamburg, training for work as a Drechsler (lathe operator), working at that time almost exclusively with wood. He 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. Having completed his training, in 1886 he joined the Social Democratic trades union movement. That year he was elected to the executive of the Hamburg section of the German Lathe-operators' Union ("Deutsche Drechslerverband").
The Woodworkers' Union ("Holzarbeiterverband")
Over the next few years he held a succession of trades union appointments. In July 1893 the Lathe-operators' Union was merged into the newly formed Woodworkers' Union ("Holzarbeiterverband"), which had its national head office, till 1919, in Stuttgart. In 1908 Leipart became chair of the Woodworkers' Union in succession to Carl Kloß. He retained his position at the top of what was, at the time, one of Germany's principal trades unions till 1919. In 1904, he also became the first secretary of the International Union of Wood Workers.
Württemberg Landtag As imperial Germany made way for republican Germany, during 1919 the Woodworkers' Union moved its national headquarters from Stuttgart to Berlin, and Leipart relinquished the union chairmanship. At around the same time, in the People's State of Württemberg ("Volksstaat Württemberg"), he accepted an invitation to join the regional government as Minister for Labour under the regional minister-president Wilhelm Blos in July 1919. That appointment lasted just over a year, since the Blos government collapsed in August 1920. Meanwhile, on 6 June 1920 the first regional elections of the republican era were held. The Social Democrats received 17 seats in the 100 seat regional legislature (Landtag), making them the third largest party, albeit by a very narrow margin, behind the Farmers' and Vintners' Party in second place and the Catholic Centre Party which topped he poll that year. Theodor Leipart was listed high enough up on the SPD candidate list for him to receive one of the party's seventeen seats. He resigned his Landtag membership on 14 February 1921, however, after slightly more than eight months.
Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund ("General German Trades Union Federation" / ADGB) His brief parliamentary career had never been more than a sideline. The real focus for Leipart's talents and interests remained the trades union movement. Alongside his friend and comrade Carl Legien he played a pivotal role during the war and the ensuing period of social and political turmoil in the creation of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund ("General German Trades Union Federation" / ADGB), an amalgamation of 52 trade unions and other similar groupings. The drafting of the ADGB's statutes and the accompanying "programme of guidelines" ("... Richtlinien"), designed to place the movement ever more firmly on the path towards a free trades union movement, were chiefly his work. Following the sudden death of his "comrade in arms", Carl Legien, Leipart was elected to succeed Legien as chairman of the ADGB by the executive committee on 19 January 1921, an election that was endorsed by a full congress vote on 24 June 1922.
That same year he was appointed vice-president of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Between 1921 and 1925 he belonged to the executive council ("Verewaltungsrat") of the International Labour Organization (ILO). In addition, he continued to serve as chair of the National Economic Council and in a succession of other trades union related institutions. He also founded "Die Arbeit" (literally, "Work"), a trades union monthly news magazine which appeared between 1924 and 1933.
Between 1922 and 1933, as leader of Germany's trades union movement, Leipart earned plaudits for the skill and patience with which he was able to integrate hitherto opposed groupings and works councils. He advanced in practical ways the concept of economic democracy and he was an eloquent advocate for trades union autonomy and responsibility. He was never a man for confrontation, preferring to apply compromise and flexibility in response to changing political currents and shifting power balances. The strategy worked very well during the early years of the German republic and the savage challenges of the inflation crisis. However, as later commentators, able to view history through the revealing prism of subsequent events, were quick to point out, the instinct for compromise did nothing to arrest the tide of post-democratic populism that came to the fore after 1929. There were those who later blamed the success of Nazism on the so-called "Leipart way" ("Leipart-Kurs"), which historians have subsequently competed to explain, justify or condemn.
Responding to political crises 1932 was a year of two general elections, which together seemed to demonstrate that support for political extremism had reached such a level that the parties committed to a democratic political structure could no longer exclude the populists from power. On 22 June 1932 the ADGB executive issued a declaration to the effect that the struggle against the common enemy made it an imperative duty, incumbent on the entire German labour movement, to operate a united front. That the ADGB, representing the trades union element movement within that united front, and in particular the leadership of the ADGB, would play a central mediating role, was recognized on all sides. The problem with this analysis was that the German labour movement rested on two principal pillars: the Social Democrats and the Communists. Taking their lead from Moscow, but also mindful of their origins as a breakaway movement from the Social Democrats that had split because of opposition to support for the war, the German communists opposed the Social Democrats with a hatred and passion worthy of the Nazi Party itself. There would be no common cause between Social Democrats and Communists. On 14 October 1932 Theodor Leipart delivered a keynote speech to the ADGB national "trades union college" ("Bundesschule des ADGB") at Bernau (Berlin). He asserted that at a time of intensifying political crisis, the ADGB were no longer inclined to "be bound by party ties" ("Parteifesseln zu tragen"). He presented this as a response to the charge that the ADGB "was not sufficiently national" ("Man wirft uns vor, dass wir nicht national seien"). The carefully nuanced formulation was intended to send a message to the increasingly influential Nazi leaders that the unions could no longer be seen simply as an extension of the Social Democratic Party, despite the long-standing ties that bound the two. Attempts by 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.
The failure of the mainstream parties to gain a parliamentary majority among themselves, combined with their refusal to enter into coalition with Nazis or Communists, meant that during 1932 Chancellor Brüning resorted to the desperate measure of administering the country through a series of emergency decrees. It provided an unfortunate precedent for 1933. In the meantime, fearful of triggering something even worse, Theodor Leipart and other ADGB bosses went along with Brüning's strategy. The strategy may have bought time for the government, but in January 1933 the Nazis nevertheless took power and lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. The union leaders continued to try and negotiate with the Nazi leadership even after the Reichstag fire. Serious talks took place with representatives of the Nazi business organisation as late as April 1933, although these were massively controversial within the union.
Twelve years later, after the Nazi nightmare had run its course, it was put to Leipart that he should have reacted to the Nazi power seizure by immediately calling a general strike. He ascribed the ADGB's failure to confront the changes of January 1933 to various factors, including the crisis levels of unemployment in the country which would have weakened the union's ability to enforce a strike, the fact that the Nazis had already effectively "taken over" key utilities such as the electricity and water companies, the high level of support that Hitler enjoyed with his "middle-class powerbase and entrepreneurs" ("bürgerliche Kräfte und Unternehmer") and, finally, the fact that Hitler had come to power legally, which was (and remains) a judgment widely backed by constitutional experts, and which meant that a general strike against a legitimately installed government would have been an act of insurrection against the constitution itself. Leipart was also 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. His 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. Nevertheless, the verdict of subsequent commentators was that Leipart's non-confrontational approach over this matter further weakened the resolve of socialists who might otherwise have opposed the Nazis in greater numbers and with greater impact than they did.