August Dreesbach

Hermann Josef August Dreesbach (13 August 1844 – 25 November 1906) was a German shop owner, concentrating on cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products, who became a political agitator and then a politician, a political journalist and a pioneer of what became the country's Social Democratic Party (SPD). As Bismarck's contentious anti-Socialist Laws were allowed to lapse during 1890, Dreesbach was elected to membership of the ”Reichstag” (imperial parliament) in Berlin in February 1890, representing the electoral district of Mannheim. He remained a member, albeit with a break between 1893 and 1898, until his death, by which time he was among the best known of the SPD leaders on the national stage. It was estimated that 30,000 people took part in his funeral and cremation ceremonies, conducted in Mannheim on 2 December 1906.

Life and works Provenance Hermann Josef August Dreesbach was born and grew up in Düsseldorf, where he attended middle school and then completed an apprenticeship in carpentry-joinery. His craft skills were much in demand during the second half of the nineteenth century, and as a young man he supported himself for several years as an wandering journeyman, during which time he lived and worked across Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, Tirol and Austria. He came to appreciate the spirit of social and political freedoms available to citizens in those southern lands, beyond the direct influence of Prussia. He would later make his home in the Upper Rhine region rather than in the region in which he had grown up, and which since 1815 had been controlled from Berlin as the Prussian Rhine Province. In 1875 he became the chairman of the Mannheim branch of the “Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei” (SAPD / Socialist Workers’ Party), formed that year through a merger of the ADAV with the ”Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands ” (Social Democratic Workers’ Party), which was more powerfully represented in the industrial northern cities of Germany. The two organisations had much in common, but the potential for further growth of constitutional socialism would be held back by a series of so-called Anti-Socialist Laws passed by the government in Berlin during and after 1878.

In 1877 Dreesmann was appointed “Schriftleiter” (effectively managing editor) of the party's newly founded newspaper for the region straddling both sides of the Rhine, the “Pfälzisch-Badisches Volksblatt ”. A pilot edition was published on 1 September 1877. The newspaper then appeared on a weekly basis, published in Mannheim each Saturday between 5 January and 26 October during 1878. It was suppressed in response to the Berlin government's Anti-Socialist Laws, and the “Pfälzisch-Badische Preßverein” which had printed and distributed it was wound up. His direct rival for the seat was an existing incumbent, the prominent local businessman Philipp Diffené of the NLP (Liberal Party), who had previously out-polled him in the city council elections. In the 1890 general election, Dreesbach secured election with 14,549 votes, as against 11,987 for his rival.

In the 1893 general election, standing for election against Ernst Bassermann of the NLP (Liberal Party) in the single-member Mannheim electoral district, Dreesbach lost his Reichstag seat. He secured re-election in 1898, however. It was not unusual, at that time, to serve as a member of the Baden Ständeversammlung and of the imperial parliament in Berlin simultaneously. Nevertheless, in 1903 Dreesbach resigned his membership of the state parliament in order to concentrate his time and energies nationally, on his Reichstag responsibilities and opportunities. The city authorities named a street after August Dreesbach in Mannheim-Neckarau. In 2006 historian-publisher Dr. Anne Dreesbach founded the “August Dreesbach Verlag” ("August Dreesbach publishing house") in Munich one hundred years after the death of its name giver. In naming her business, the director proprietor paid tribute to the “integrity and steadfastness in support of his beliefs” for which August Dreesbach can be remembered.