100th birthday of Hans Böckler - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1975 - 40 Pfennig

Hans Böckler was born on 26 February 1875 in Trautkirchen in Middle Franconia as the son of a carter. He attended the elementary school in Fürth in Bavaria, learned the metal mallet craft and joined in 1894 in Fürth in the German Metalworkers Association. After completion of the military service from 1896 to 1899, he worked until 1903 as a metal racketeer, incidentally, he was active in trade union work and as an SPD member of the Fürth city parliament. The other stages of his work in the union were: 1903 full-time executive director of the German Metalworkers' Association, Association Secretary in the Saar, 1908 in the district of Frankfurt am Main, 1910 union district leader in Silesia, 1912 editor at the metal workers newspaper in Berlin. In 1914 he was drafted for military service and wounded in 1916. He then continued his trade union activities in Upper Silesia, Gdansk, Lorraine and Siegerland. From November 1918 to 1920, he was the union secretary of the Central Working Community, based on voluntary agreement between worker and entrepreneurial representatives and intended to bring about economic equality for workers on the basis of employment contracts. From 1920 to 1927 he was the first authorized representative of the General German Trade Union Confederation in Cologne. As a district secretary of the General German Trade Union Confederation for the Rhineland and Westphalia-Lippe he worked from 1927 to 1933. He was a member of the City Council in Cologne and from 1928 to 1933 a member of the Reichstag. In 1933 he was initially placed in protective custody by the Nazis, but was soon released and engaged in the illegal trade union movement. After the capitulation in 1945 he was actively involved in the reconstruction of the unions, was in the summer of 1945 district leader of the unions in Rhineland-Westphalia and a member of the Provincial Council of North Rhine and on October 2, 1946 Member of the State Parliament of North Rhine -Westphalia, put in April 1947 the Mandate voluntarily to devote himself exclusively to trade union work. On the founding of the German Trade Union Confederation for the British Occupation Zone, he was unanimously elected Chairman on 20 April 1947. Böckler became chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation at the founding congress on October 14, 1949, and in December 1949 in London at the founding conference, Vice President of the International Confederation-Free Trade Union. Böckler played a decisive role in the legal anchoring of parity co-determination in the mining industry. He was an honorary doctor of law at the University of Cologne and since 1948 a senator of the Max Planck Society. His death day is February 16, 1951.