Hermann Duncker

Hermann Ludwig Rudolph Duncker (24 May 1874 – 22 June 1960) was a German Marxist politician, historian and social scientist. He was a lecturer for the workers' education movement, co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany, professor at the University of Rostock, and rector of East Germany's trade union academy.

Biography

Duncker was born in Hamburg as a son of a businessman and teacher. He studied music at the Leipzig Conservatory, then history, economics and philosophy at the University of Leipzig. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1893. In 1898 he married Käte Duncker (née Döll) who was then a teacher, but also became a socialist politician, journalist and feminist. The couple had three children: daughter Hedwig (1899–1996, physician), and sons Karl (1903–1940, Gestalt psychologist) and Wolfgang (1909–1942, journalist and film critic).

In 1900, Duncker started teaching at the Leipzig workers' educational association. In 1903 he completed his Ph.D. under supervision of Karl Bücher and Karl Lamprecht. In the same year, Duncker became a journalist at the SPD-affiliated Leipziger Volkszeitung. In 1904, he founded a "workers' secretariat" (information and advice centre for the labour movement) in Leipzig, and in the following year in Dresden. In 1907, the family moved to Stuttgart from where Hermann Duncker toured the country as an itinerant teacher for workers' education. In the US, Duncker joined the Council for a Democratic Germany in 1944. He became rector of the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) academy in Bernau bei Berlin in 1949. Almost blind by that time, he held that position until his death.