Robert Richard Lipinski (6 February 1867 – 18 April 1936) was a German unionist, politician and writer, who was active in Germany's

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

and the Independent Social Democratic Party.

Early life and career

Lipinski was born in Danzig and was the third of four children of Heinrich Johann Lipinski (1837–75) and Christina Charlotte Henriette ''née'' Schroeder (1832–85). His parents separated during his childhood and as a child, he worked in a shipyard to contribute to the family. He did not receive an education after elementary school. Lipinski attended the primary school in Danzig from 1874 to 1881. At the age of 14, Lipinski was offered a short-term contract as a gardener before becoming a shop assistant in a material goods store serving brandy by the end of 1881. He broke off the contract in early 1882 because of maltreatment from his boss. In April 1882, he moved to

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

with his mother, where he started a job in the distilling business. He later worked as a bookkeeper in his brother's mirror and frame factory. From September 1882 to 1894, he was a rapporteur for the ''Socialist Leipziger Zeitung'', and was fined and imprisoned several times for violating press law regulations.Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Leipzig. Akte 21079 lfdn.: 125 In 1886, he joined the trade union and four years later the

(SPD). In the following years, he was a co-founder of several smaller unions: the Free Association of Merchants in 1890, the Association of Commercial Employees in 1897, the Association of Workers Press in 1900, and the Association of Modern Labour Movement Staff in 1901. In 1900, he was the co-founder of the association of the workers' press. A year later he was one of the founders of the "Association of the support on the floor of the modern labor movement staff". From 1894 to 1901, he worked part-time as the editor of the newspaper ''Leipziger Volkszeitung''. Lipinski married Selma Maria ''nee'' Böttger (1875–1960) in Kleinmiltiz. They had eight children; his daughter Margaret married socialist politician

Stanislaw Trabalski Stanislaw Bronislaw Boleslaw Trabalski (25 October 1896 – 12 November 1985) was a German politician ( SPD, USPD, SED). Life His parents, Franciszek Trabalski and Maria Trąbalski, born Mackowiack, had immigrated from Poland in 1888. His f ...

in 1921.

Political career

From 1907 to 1917, Lipinski was the chairman of the

SPD The Social Democratic Party of Germany ( , SPD ) is a social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the party's leader since the 2019 leadership election together wi ...

district of Leipzig. He won his first political office in 1897 during a protest election against Ernst Grenz when the latter was first elected to the Leipzig agitation committee. In 1898, Lipinski was a candidate in the constituency Oschatz Grimma, a stronghold of the conservatives, and lost the election. From 1903 to 1907, he was a member of the Reichstag. During the First World War, in 1917, he and the Leipzig SPD joined the

USPD The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (, USPD) was a short-lived political party in Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of anti-war members of t ...

, which represented the war a bit differently compared to the majority of social democrats. In March 1918, Lipinski was brought into custody on suspicion of "attempted

high treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its d ...

". However, the revolution started before the process could begin. Lipinski was the chairman of this party in Leipzig until 1933. Between 1917 and 1922 he was a member of the Central Committee party. In April 1917, Lipinski, with support from Arthur Lieberasch, was involved in a strike against the reduction of food rations. They were cautious as trade union leaders as they were also putting forward political demands: an end to censorship and the introduction of democracy. They also wanted to ensure that no striker would be arrested or conscripted. They spoke directly with members of the local ''Kriegamstelle'' (War Ministry), who agreed to increase food deliveries to Leipzig. This news was relayed to a mass meeting of 10,000 strikers at Leipzig Stötteritz. Lipinski, Lieberasch, and Hermann Liebmann were elected to go and meet with

Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg Theobald Theodor Friedrich Alfred von Bethmann Hollweg (29 November 1856 – 1 January 1921) was a German politician who was chancellor of the German Empire, imperial chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917. He oversaw the German entry ...

, Chancellor of Germany, the next day. However, when they went to Berlin, Bethmann Hollweg refused to meet them and they were dealt with by Wahneschaffe and

Wilhelm Groener Karl Eduard Wilhelm Groener (; 22 November 1867 – 3 May 1939) was a Würtemberg–German general and politician, who served as the final Chief of the Great General Staff and Reich Ministry of Transport, Reich Minister of Transport, Ministry ...

, head of the ''Kriegamst'', who showed sympathy but agreed to nothing. Meanwhile, the local union leaders stepped in to negotiate a series of concessions, including a reduction of the working week, and the imposition of overtime and Sunday work only for emergencies. The union leaders' readiness to accept the end of the strike without other concessions contributed to the working class' disillusion with them, and were regarded by many as social patriots. Lipinski was the People's Representative and chairman of the Council of People's Deputies in

Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...

from 15 November 1918 to 16 January 1919. One of his first goals was to introduce universal, equal, direct and secret proportional representation for men and women over the age of 21, which he proposed on 28 November 1918. During the November Revolution, Lipinski slowed down the action of the

Workers' and Soldiers' Council A workers' council, also called labour council, is a type of council in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces. In such a system of poli ...

in Leipzig and represented the "treacherous" role of Ebert, Scheidemann, and Noske. During the

Kapp Putsch The Kapp Putsch (), also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch (), was an abortive coup d'état against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to ...

, he betrayed the fighting workers in Leipzig by concluding a ceasefire agreement (similar to the "Bielefeld Agreement Severing") with the commander of the counter-revolutionary troops without their knowledge and consent, which ultimately led to the end of the fighting. In December 1918, Lipinski was a delegate to the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils. Between 1919 and 1920 he was a member of parliament in Saxony, where he was chairman of the Independent Socialists Group and Vice President of the

Landtag A ''Landtag'' (State Diet) is generally the legislative assembly or parliament of a federated state or other subnational self-governing entity in German-speaking nations. It is usually a unicameral assembly exercising legislative competence ...

. From 11 December 1920 to 2 February 1923 he was

interior minister An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a Cabinet (government), cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and iden ...

under Wilhelm Buck. In 1922, he rejoined the SPD and became a member of the Central Party Committee again from 1912 to 1916. Between 1920 and 1933, Lipinski was a member of the Reichstag, first for the USPD then for the SPD. On 22 March 1933, he voted in the Reichstag against

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

Enabling Act An enabling act is a piece of legislation by which a legislative body grants an entity which depends on it (for authorization or legitimacy) for the delegation of the legislative body's power to take certain actions. For example, enabling act ...

Arrest and death

As a prominent Social Democrat and former Saxony interior minister, Lipinski was imprisoned during the

Nazi regime Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

from 1933 to 1935, before dying in 1936. Under the eyes of the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

about a thousand people gathered to pay him their last respects. Lipinski's grave is located in the Leipzig's southern cemetery.

Honours

Since 1992, one of the 96 memorial plaques for members of the Reichstag murdered by the National Socialists has commemorated Lipinski in the Berlin district of Tiergarten park at the corner of Scheidemannstaße and the Republic Square. In the lobby of the Board Room of the SPD party in the Bundestag, a text plaque pays tribute to the Social Democratic parliamentarians who were against the Enabling Act of the National Socialists on 23 March 1933. Since 6 November 1996, the Leipzig SPD house at Rosa-Luxembourg Strasse 19-21 is named Richard Lipinski's house. The renovated office, commercial and residential building were inaugurated by Inge Wettig-Daniel Meier in memory of the leading Social Democrats in Leipzig and Saxony. In 1945, a part of Kähte Kollwitz street was named after Richard Lipinski before the street name disappeared in 1962. In July 2000, the Leipzig city council renamed Ethel and Julius Rosenberg St ( Großzschocher) to Lipinskistraße.

Publications

Lipinski produced writings other than journalism. Social policy issues initially dominated his writing. He was the author of numerous political and socio-political writings, such as: * The industrial employment, 1894 * The rights and obligations of the tenant, 1900 * The employment of clerks, law and the courts of clerks, 1904 * The kingdom of Associations Act, 1908 * The police in Saxony, 1909 * The social democracy from its beginnings to 1913. * The People's Law School in Saxony, 1919 * Out of the church, 1919 * The struggle for political power in Saxony, 1926 * Documents on Socialist Law, October 1928 * The struggle for political power in Saxony, 1929 * The social democracy from its beginnings to the present (2 volumes, 1926-1929) He was the publisher of the annual "The leader of Leipzig" from 1899 to 1933. In 1893, he wrote a play titled "Peace on Earth". File:Dokumente zum Sozialisten Gesetz Frei.jpg, Documents on

Socialist Law Socialist law or Soviet law are terms used in comparative legal studies for the general type of legal system which has been (and continues to be) used in socialist and formerly socialist states. It is based on the civil law system, with majo ...

References

Sources

* * Manfred Hötzel, Karsten Rudolph: ''Richard Lipinski (1867-1936). Democratic socialist organizer and political power''. In:

Helga Grebing Helga Grebing (February 27, 1930 – September 25, 2017) was a German historian and university professor (Göttingen, Bochum). A focus of her work is on social history and, more specifically, on the history of the labour movement. Life Prove ...

, Hans Mommsen, Karsten Rudolph (eds): ''Democracy and Emancipation between the Elbe and Saale. Contributions to the History of the Social Democratic Labour Movement till 1933.'' Essen 1993, pp. 237–262. * Michael Rudloff, Adam Thomas (in collaboration with Jürgen Schlimper): ''Leipzig. Cradle of German social democracy.'' Leipzig 1996, pp. 72 ff. *

Mike Schmeitzner Mike Schmeitzner (born 29 July 1968, in Dresden) is a German historian. His focus is on twentieth century German history. Schmeitzner was born in the southern part of what was then the German Democratic Republic. His 1968 birth year meant that ...

, Michael Rudloff: ''History of Social Democracy in the Saxon parliament. Presentation and documentation 1877-1997.'' pp. 204 ff. * Jesko Bird: ''The Social Democratic Party district of Leipzig in the Weimar Republic. Saxon democratic tradition.'' Two volumes. Hamburg 2006th

External links