Der Film "Die roten 20er Jahre - Der Rote Frontkämpferbund 1924-1929" ist eine Dokumentation über den Rote Frontkämpferbund, eine paramilitärische Organisation in der Weimarer Republik. Der Film wurde 1984 unter der Regie von Gerd Kroske produziert und zeigt historische Aufnahmen und Interviews mit ehemaligen Mitgliedern der Organisation.
00:26Member of the Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters.
00:39Hans Jendretzky, member of the Central Committee of the SED,
00:43Member of the Presidium of the People’s Chamber of the GDR.
00:48What is school material for today’s youth,
00:51was her youth, her everyday life, her life.
00:53Your past is part of our present.
00:57Their stories, a part of all of our history.
01:00Well, that was me now, we already had the blues band.
01:09And it is ultimately from the party,
01:12Grenzkurt was with us, the chairman was with us,
01:15from the district, from pear, and the district.
01:17The building chapel must be on, I don't know which day,
01:22must go to the station and pick up the comrade's wine,
01:27to be released from the bathroom there.
01:30Well, that was of course a great thing for us,
01:34because that was already the case, we had always known Max.
01:36And then Max came,
01:40the train station in front of Birne Square,
01:43by many people.
01:45Well, what was there on the square was scary.
01:49And then Max arrived,
01:51He cooked flowers, you cooked flowers.
01:53And there we had,
01:55it was, it was a carriage or was it a car?
01:58I can once again completely,
01:59Car.
02:00Car, still decent.
02:01Decent car, yes.
02:03And we as a band are,
02:06had marched to the People's House.
02:08We're from Max.
02:10The Volkshaus is there, full.
02:13And Max brought up on stage.
02:16We sat at the front as a band.
02:18We played our,
02:19our workers' songs.
02:23Max with his wife,
02:25there is still the comrade from the,
02:27from the local administration and the sub-district were present.
02:31Max was officially welcomed.
02:33We are picked up again by the Rhine.
02:36And the best thing was,
02:37Max got a plate like this to eat.
02:43Meat on it.
02:44So more meat than lots of potatoes.
02:47And throughout the whole,
02:49Max ate throughout the entire rally there.
02:53That, I saw him sitting at the front of the stage,
02:56I eventually came to Max
02:57and we said to each other for entertainment,
02:59have a look,
03:00But Max catches up on everything.
03:02Max snapped up the record.
03:05There was no sign of
03:06and his wife sat next to him.
03:09She ate little,
03:10I still know that,
03:11few.
03:12And Max was saved,
03:13he had no other roof,
03:14nothing to say.
03:17For us, I was already determined,
03:18This is Max for us when the monkey came.
03:21Subtitling by ZDF,
03:37Music
04:05This year the Red Front Fighters came to Berlin for their meetings every Whitsun.
04:10After the Berlin of the golden 20s.
04:12Music
04:35The golden 20s.
04:43Music
04:44Music
04:51Music
04:58Music
05:00Music
05:07Music
05:09Music
05:16Music
05:18Music
05:20Music
05:22Music
05:24Music
05:28Music
05:31Music
05:37Music
05:39Music
05:41Music
05:45Music
05:47The golden 20s.
06:04The first stable currency introduced in November 23, the Rentenmark, was backed by the lands and industrial enterprises.
06:12Whoever owned it owned everything.
06:13Those who only owned their labor had to be happy to be able to sell it for their bare livelihood.
06:19From 1924 to 1929, the German Reich had to pay reparations of 8 billion gold marks to the victorious powers of the First World War.
06:29Through customs duties and taxes on important food and beverages, the main burden was shifted onto the working people.
06:35At the same time, big capital was thoroughly rehabilitated with loans and bonds totaling almost 6 billion gold marks.
06:40The USA, which lent the lion's share of this sum to German industry, had a double interest in doing so.
06:47Germany had to become solvent and, above all, strengthen itself as the anti-Soviet spearhead of world imperialism.
06:54Pictures by Hans Baluschek and Otto Nagel.
07:20Broad sections of the artistic intelligentsia made the problems of the exploited their own.
07:27Their works are documents of our time for us today.
07:31Her view of the reality of that time has lost none of its revealing sharpness.
07:36At that time, they helped the proletariat to become aware of its class position.
07:39At that time, they helped the proletariat to become aware of its class position.
08:09At that time, they helped the proletariat to become aware of its class position.
08:39The number of unemployed rose from 800,000 in 1924 to almost 3 million in 1929.
08:54With this oversupply, labor remained a cheap commodity.
08:59German industrial production increased one and a half times.
09:01The most important chemical companies joined together to form the IG Farbenindustrie.
09:06The
09:08The
09:34In this Berlin came the Red Front fighters, the Red Young Front, the Red Navy
09:43and the Red Women’s and Girls’ League to their meetings,
09:46the celebratory highlights of a whole year of political hard work.
09:50The Berlin proletariat provided between 15,000 and 30,000 quarters annually for their class comrades.
09:57Proletarian apartments in tenement blocks in Prenzlauer Berg, Neukölln, Wedding.
10:04The RFB was founded as a protection and defense organization of the working class.
10:26As part of the overall communist movement, it became an anti-militarist and anti-fascist mass organization.
10:32At the last, the fourth Reich Meeting of the RFB, 200,000 people gathered in the Lustgarten.
10:47May 8, 1927 the same Lustgarten.
10:50The Stahlhelm, the most important right-wing militarist organization.
10:54One of 73 of this kind.
10:56The iron reserve of German militarism.
10:59These associations called their annual meetings the German Days.
11:04On May 10 and 11, 1924, they planned such a German Day in Halle, of all places.
11:11Three workers were killed while defending themselves.
11:13On July 28, 1924, the Halle KPD newspaper Der Klassenkampf wrote.
11:28The RFB, which is now being established, is the organization of proletarian front fighters,
11:35which, in contrast to the patriotic associations, has adopted the slogan “War on the imperialist warrior” on its banners.
11:42Two months later, the first local group of the RFB was founded in Halle.
11:50And the German day was, that was the Stahlhelm, primarily.
11:55And there was the dresser, the milk dealer Ulrich von Struppen,
12:00who then drove us as RFB and also the upcoming youth to Düsseldorf,
12:05who had bought the first Unknown.
12:08As strange as that sounds, right?
12:12And he had us, he was the one who put on this steel helmet,
12:15and we, the coming party, called for a counter-demonstration.
12:20And there were a huge number of steel helmeted men there, and above all they were in uniform.
12:28She also wore old uniforms.
12:31There is also a cavalry squadron.
12:33And on Fahnenstraße, there are houses today,
12:37Unfortunately, there were fences there, and we tore them down.
12:40And we are there with the dental plates, sometimes there were still nails in them,
12:45Of course, we have now only gone towards the Stahlhelm.
12:50And they went with their horses and blew the storm.
12:56And that was the terrible thing I felt about fat,
13:01how they blew the storm, that the horn players there on the railway elevated road,
13:04Then the riders came riding towards us,
13:09then we are of course made terpulent,
13:12and until we entered the Volkshaus,
13:14In the Volkshaus we then closed the animals, the heavy animals,
13:18and there we gathered in the national budget.
13:22That was, there was no more Zahnsplatte on the Bahnhochstraße.
13:28This was the first baptism of fire that we officially experienced as RFP in Sämmer.
13:34As at the German Day in Pirna and Halle, the police and legal associations
13:38against the RFP at every opportunity.
13:42But the workers learned to defend themselves better and better.
13:47In order not to walk defenseless through the streets and so on,
13:51Ours always had the sticks with them.
13:54But that only happened twice, and then they were banned.
13:59Not true?
13:59Because it would have been too dangerous if they had gotten together there.
14:04Because the sticks weren't just that strong, they were sometimes two or three times stronger.
14:11In the early days, the RFP was mainly made up of former front-line soldiers from the First World War.
14:17Hence the name, the Red Front Fighter.
14:20The majority were non-partisan.
14:23The aim was to counter the resurgence of German militarism.
14:26But it couldn't be done with fists alone.
14:28Military education and political training were organized and led by the communists in the RFP.
14:35Imperialism.
14:37Command regulations.
14:38Its proletarian internationalism and its application.
14:42Estimate distance.
14:44Soviet Union as the first proletarian state.
14:47Jiojitsu.
14:47So, our weapon was our discipline, our consciousness.
14:53Those were our fists.
14:57Which of course we were also trained and practiced through military sports and so on.
15:01But the strongest weapon we had was our unity, our solidarity, our discipline.
15:06Yes, and our ideological superiority over the other organizations.
15:12That was our strongest weapon.
15:15And we have tried a lot.
15:19We brought the agitation to the countryside through our country marches.
15:25We have distributed old newspapers, magazines, and also new ones that were current, talked to the public, and so on.
15:40Sometimes we also made mistakes and they looked away from us.
15:46Even that they started the round and rushed the pounds.
15:50But that didn't stop us. Sometimes it was just like that, that our comrades said, when they asked us where we were going on our next march, that they demanded that we go back to the village to the farmers, then we would go again.
16:08As a band, we initially played Russian music with Russian help.
16:14We drove around for days.
16:17Someone got me a release or something.
16:19He was fed by the comrades wherever we went.
16:22We drove to Oschatz, to Riesa.
16:26We were so encouraged that I once fell off the stage during the dance music, from Münchigkeit.
16:32Yes, there were times when the band members were completely unemployed.
16:39All unemployed.
16:40And when the march was over, I had no more shoes.
16:45No.
16:45That we just came to this and once consulted with the shoemakers, that we would offer an exceptional price for 35 pairs of shoes, what is the original idea...
17:02No, we were supposed to buy the shoes, Max.
17:03What?
17:04We were supposed to buy the shoes, but they didn't have the leather.
17:06We should have given everyone the shoes, so now we can't buy them like that.
17:11We did, we had the shoes part years ago.
17:13The organization had to do that.
17:17But for that they had to play again.
17:20Then we had the money.
17:25Rural agitation, recruitment of new members, newspaper sales, election assistance for the KPD, military sports, field exercises, political training.
17:35That was everyday life at the RFB.
17:38The membership fee was 15 pfennigs and 5 pfennigs for the unemployed.
17:43With weekly wages at that time of 20 to 25 marks, this meant a sacrifice for most working-class families.
17:50The RFB members also bore the costs for the uniforms themselves.
17:54He joined and voluntarily submitted himself to the orders of his leaders and the discipline of the organization.
18:00The protection of the class, a principle of the party, was its most important task.
18:04On October 25, the German princes demanded their billions in compensation for the 1918 revolution.
18:19The KPD called for a referendum against the princely compensation.
18:24Under mass pressure, the SPD leadership had to support expropriations of princes.
18:28In the local groups, where the influence of the SPD headquarters was not so noticeable,
18:33Communists and social democratic comrades worked together
18:36and although the referendum did not achieve the necessary majority,
18:40KPD and SPD won more votes than in any other election.
18:44August 1928.
18:51The KPD organizes the Anti-War Days.
19:05The highlight was the Central German meeting of the RFB in Leipzig,
19:09in which about 60,000 red front fighters took part.
19:11It was the time when the SPD government of Hermann Müller decided to build the Panzerkreuzer A.
19:25Just as in political actions against the construction of armored cruisers and the compensation of princes
19:29The RFB, under the leadership of the communists, organized the working masses in the class struggle.
19:34Welcoming the VI Congress of the Communist International in Moscow
19:45An RFB delegation delivered the picture of its fourth meeting in Berlin.
19:50It was the visually visible expression of the RFB’s internationalist stance
19:54and friendship with the Soviet Union.
19:55Marcel Cachin, editor-in-chief of the French Humanité,
20:03thanked the delegation on behalf of the Congress.
20:07The chauvinistic Mie was alien to the red front fighter.
20:10Trained in daily struggle, he learned to recognize, hate, and expose the class enemy.
20:15Expression!
20:41Expression!
20:42As long as the RFB existed, the transport worker Ernst Thälmann was at the head of this proletarian defense organization.
20:54And then we met them somewhere in the RFB pub.
20:57I was already discussing things with the workers.
21:00And there was something evaluated with us.
21:01We explained the party's policies through a simple discussion with the workers.
21:06How we as the Upper Federal Trade Union must discuss with the non-party workers.
21:12This was an excellent thing and, above all, Teddy had a wonderful gift.
21:16He not only talked, but he was also a very good listener.
21:20Listen very patiently, yes.
21:22And with him, every worker could speak freely and openly, yes.
21:27And that's why he was so popular, yes, because he really knew how to suffer people, yes.
21:33He knew how to touch people properly.
21:34The RFL has no weapons other than those of socialism and the knowledge of the proletarian revolution and its victory.
21:45The bourgeoisie relies on its bayonets.
21:48She only forgets one thing.
21:49The people who carry the bayonets are workers.
21:52And when the bayonet in the hand is joined by socialism in the brain,
21:56then bourgeois bayonets become proletarian power.
21:59Ernst Thälmann.
22:00Winning the masses over to avert an impending fascist war,
22:04This was the most important task of the RFB at the end of the 1920s.
22:08But things turned out differently.
22:10In December 1928, the Berlin police chief issued a ban on demonstrations for all organizations.
22:18This was primarily directed against the work of the party
22:22and against the development that the Red Front Alliance was striving for in preparation for May 1, 1929.
22:29The proletariat has taken over the streets and will not let them be taken away.
22:49Even stupid Filisters may be outraged by this demonstration,
22:53wrote the social democratic newspaper Vorwärts about the May Arrows in 1908.
22:5721 years later, the Social Democratic police chief Sörre Giebel banned the May Day demonstration.
23:05Nevertheless, 200,000 people took to the streets.
23:07This May 1st is of great historical significance for our working class.
23:31Because this Sörre Giebel Police, as we called it after the police chief,
23:37This Sörre Giebel police shot into a closed event of the Berlin pipe fitters in Neukölln.
23:44Some deaths and injuries have already resulted.
23:47And this spread like wildfire to all parts of the city
23:51and resulted in the workers taking to the streets to demonstrate
23:56and then clashed with the police.
24:00The Sörre Giebel Police
24:05The Sörre Giebel Police
24:35Under pressure from Reich Minister Silbering, the last German state banned the RFB on May 14th.
24:41The events of May 1st were only a long-awaited reason for the ban.
24:45At the end of the 1920s, the RFB exerted increasing attraction on social democratic workers.
24:53The ban was intended to isolate the KPD from the masses.
24:56In reality, however, obstacles were placed in the way of the anti-fascist united front.
25:01The SA, SS and Stahlhelm remained untouched.
25:04The RFB went illegal.
25:11As is well known, the key positions in the Reich government and also in the Prussian government were occupied by right-wing Social Democrats.
25:21Especially the Interior Minister, Severing and the Prussian Kreschinski.
25:26These two ministers were primarily responsible for the ban.
25:31We were the ones attacked, we were the ones who were to be left behind as victims.
25:36And so this ban, also on the right, as it is so beautifully called, was made.
25:40And so the ban, so to speak, on crossing on the right, as the saying goes, is in effect during the joint period of May 1st.
25:51And so the ban, so to speak, on crossing on the right, as the saying goes, is in effect during the joint period of May 1st.
26:05And so the ban, so to speak, on crossing on the right, as the saying goes, is in effect during the joint period of May 1st.
26:21The result of Bloody May: 33 dead.
26:25Let us remember, Halle 1925.
26:28Police raid on a KPD election meeting in the Volkspark.
26:40Among the eight victims was RFP comrade Fritz Weineck, known as the little trumpeter.
26:46The number of fighters against exploitation and militarism who lost their lives in the Weimar Republic and during fascism is large.
26:52Companies, schools, sports facilities, ships, barracks, military units and officer schools bear names such as
27:08Fritz Weineck, trumpeter of the Heilenser RFP band.
27:16Edgar André, RFP leader of the Wasserkannte district.
27:20Ernst Schneller, member of the federal leadership of the RFP, leading military politician of the KPD.
27:27Ernst Thälmann, first federal leader of the RFP, chairman of the KPD.
27:33Many of them died in the war.
27:36In prisons, in concentration camps.
27:40Some survived.
27:41Also Emil Paffrath, who came from the concentration camp to the notorious penal battalion 999.
27:48There were about 18 communists in the company.
27:52The other was 12 changes.
27:55Some of us were Nazis who were acting.
27:57And the ordinary soldiers were mostly a few criminals,
28:01Some of them still had to make plans for 10 or 15 years.
28:06And we were in a small group of 18 communists.
28:09But we did, we were also in a number of RFP comrades.
28:13And we have not forgotten what we learned under Thälmann’s leadership in the Red Front Gerb Association.
28:19Namely friendship with the Soviet Union.
28:22And that was clear to me when we received the order,
28:25yes, we are getting to the eastern form.
28:28That was clear to me, and we still have that in the party,
28:30where we then discussed with the comrades, yes, at the next opportunity we will defect.
28:36But the prerequisite was that we protected ourselves from those who thought differently than we did.
28:42And so this year there were a number of ideological disputes with them,
28:46which we had to lead very skillfully.
28:47Because on the Heuberg, when I was barely 14, three comrades were
28:51were publicly shot, yes, executed, on the MWG stand,
28:55because of the Wehrmacht's substitution work, yes.
28:58So you had to work very carefully.
29:01But nevertheless, they were now the majority of those in office, yes,
29:05to our side, yes, and our upper world bracket, those were,
29:09who was, he is afraid of us.
29:11He knew we could shoot well.
29:13And we have also discussed this, yes, should we learn the craft of arms,
29:16with the Nazis.
29:18I always told the comrades, yes, well, yes,
29:21Yes, we have to learn from parts, yes, we must also learn the craft of weapons,
29:24if we have the opportunity.
29:26Even under the conditions of the fascist war.
29:29But we don't have to become good soldiers in the ideological sense.
29:32Good soldiers technically, they have to be good shooters.
29:34Our upper world guard knew that we could shoot well, yes.
29:38For example, I was trained mainly on the MG42,
29:44Yes, and was the best machine gunner in the company.
29:46Yes, and we knew we might need that one day.
29:51And if we, if they hadn't known that we can shoot well,
29:54then we wouldn't have been able to take them by surprise like that.
29:56Then they would have finished us off, yes.
29:59But we knew we had no inhibitions.
30:02Yes, for us the question was not whether a German was allowed to shoot at German.
30:05At that moment the question was, them or us, yes.
30:08Yes, and for us the question was how we had contact with the Soviet Army,
30:11then there is no other choice for us than to defect to the, to the, to the Soviet Army.
30:17And we succeeded in doing that.
30:18It should be added that Erich Richter was the co-founder of the RFP Chapel in Pirna.
30:33Hansjen Dretzky, RFP leader of the Berlin-Brandenburg GAU.
30:37In our photo he is speaking at a RFP meeting in Teltow.
30:40Emil Paffrath, Reich leader of the Red Youth Front during the illegal period.
30:50Here two years earlier in an exchanged Komsomol uniform.
30:56Max Weinhold, leader of the RFP under Pirna district.
31:03Many officials in our republic have gone through this school of class struggle.
31:07Their past became part of our present.
31:12Their stories are part of all of our history.
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