Congratulations on membership: Gerhard Nenner, chairman of the local branch IG BCE, jubilee Otto Arnold and Ralf Erkens, district manager Rhein-Main (from left).
© Schuba
Honoring anniversaries, that happens regularly. “But 80 years, that’s a very rare anniversary,” said Ralf Erkens, District Manager of the Mining, Chemical, and Energy Rhein-Main industrial union, when he congratulated Otto Arnold from Offenbach in his apartment near the Senefelder district. What the union does not emphasize on this occasion: For such an anniversary a special historical perspective is necessary.
Offenbach – In 1941, when he started his professional life, the basis for the current award was laid for the born Dietesheimer born in 1926, who moved to Offenbach with his parents and five siblings at an early age. “You weren’t asked: as soon as you started to work, you entered,” says Otto Arnold. However, he did not become a member of a trade union in the true sense of the word; he was appropriated by the German Labor Front, which the National Socialists succeeded in replacing the workers’ unions that were smashed in 1933.
The Union
The Mining, Chemical and Energy Industrial Union (IG BCE) has only existed in its current form since 1997. It emerged from the individual trade unions for mining and energy, chemical-paper-ceramics and, particularly relevant for Offenbach, leather.
This leather trade union (GL) was founded in Kornwestheim in 1949 for the three western occupation zones of Germany, before it did not exist under this name. Like all free trade unions, the National Socialists had smashed their predecessor organization. In their place came the German Labor Front, a forced community of workers and employers under the umbrella of the NSDAP.
The beginnings of GL go back to 1872, when the General German Saddlery Association, the General White Tanning Association of Germany and the General Shoemaker Association were founded in Berlin. This resulted in the German Leather Workers’ Association, which is open to all workers in leather production, in 1893. In 1912 all the individual leather trade unions had around 100,000 members. tk
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But his membership must have impressed him, because he has remained loyal to IG BCE to this day. This was created in 1997 through the merger of G Bergbau and Enerm with IG Chemie-Papier-Keramik and the leather union. Otto Arnold has been a member of this since it was re-established in 1949.
Arnold worked for 33 years for the Offenbach shoe factory Rheinberger, mostly as a cutter for the uppers of the boots, initially “for an hourly wage of 2.27 DM.” Later it led him to the jeans manufacturer Levi Strauss in Heusenstamm.
Arnold was married for 67 years and has now lived in his apartment on the ground floor of an apartment building for 58 years. But Arnold is still standing well on his own two feet and regularly goes to the nearby supermarket to go shopping. Arnold cannot name a secret recipe for fitness at this old age, but he suspects that his years of work at Levi Strauss in Heusenstamm, for example, contributed to this: every day he made his way to work in wind and weather by bike and in 15 years around Disputed 50,000 kilometers.
The local branch of IG BCE is also happy about “such a fit colleague”: Chairman Gerhard Nenner brings a bouquet of flowers. There is a certificate, medal and badge of honor with a gold border from the district association. handed over. In view of the current situation, there were also two masks with the union logo printed on them. “Unfortunately, you can’t hug,” says Nenner. But that should be made up for in 2022, when a collective honor again celebrates the anniversaries, which were a bit narrower than usual due to Corona. “Very impressive,” says Erkens, the “80 years of solidarity” that Arnold showed the union, “and it would be nice if solidarity made sure that you jump over the 100.”
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By Jan Schuba
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A 95-year-old is reluctant to spoil the joy of being honored. So we are sincerely sorry for Otto Arnold from Offenbach: But his union has done himself and him no favor by honoring him for eight decades of membership. Because to get to this number of years, a good portion of historical oblivion is necessary.
On the relevant key date, 1941, there could be no question of a union as it was understood up to eight years ago and today. Who 15-year-old Otto had to join was the German Labor Front, subordinate to the NSDAP, which brought together employees and employers. Free trade unions had been brutally crushed by the Nazis from 1933 onwards, and workers’ representatives had been persecuted and murdered.
Does the mining, chemical and energy industrial union, which was only re-established in 1949, see itself in the tradition of a Nazi organization that turned international solidarity into a national one? An unbelievable mistake. Just as if in 1965 the Bundeswehr had honored an officer for 25 years of dedicated work in Germany’s armed forces.
IG BCE could have spared the senior the embarrassment. Honoring him for a proud 75 years would not have been correct either, but it probably would not have attracted attention.
By Thomas Kirstein
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