Richard Stumpf
Because the diary comprehensively represented the internal situation in the fleet from the perspective of a regular sailor, it has been documented in full length by the enquiry commission of the German Weimar Republic parliament (Reichstag) in its investigation report.
[1][2] He wrote a war diary that spanned over six books, shedding light on the internal situation and especially on the relationship between officers and enlisted men.
This is why the enquiry commission of the German Reichstag[3][4] included the text in full length in its investigation report (though making anonymous certain names).
[5] Huck, Pieken und Rogg established an exhibition titled: "Die Flotte schläft im Hafen ein (The fleet falls asleep in the harbour)", presenting Stumpf's notes alongside another diary.
He read several books, various newspapers and discussed the political and military developments in detail with his environment, which is reflected in corresponding thoughts and comments in his diary.
"[7] Arrogance accompanied by strategic inability caused Stumpf to wish that one day the officer caste could be forced to take on an honourable profession and perform a useful activity.
The sailors wished to be able to pay back the officers the constant humiliations and harassments that these could perpetrate under the protection of the strict military discipline.
He described the events in detail and then noted: "If, in the past, someone had told me that it would be possible for people to be sentenced to jail or executed in Germany without having committed a crime, I would have looked upon him as a fool.
Conservative and right-wing extremist politicians (many naval officers were ideologically close to the latter),[10][11] claimed that Liebknecht was a Jew, in order to exploit anti-Semitism against the leftist movement.
On the occasion of the unrest in the Navy in summer of 1917 Stumpf sees the labour leader in a different light: "Now I gradually realize why some people fight the military and its system with such determination.
"[8][12] Stumpf also addressed once the commandment of the Bible, "Thou shalt not kill" and revealed some pacifistic tendencies, but time and again he expressed clearly conservative views when he ranted about the "perfidious Albion" (England) or against France's rapacity, when he showed satisfaction that England had finally to sacrifice rivers of blood, and he wanted to combine the last forces for the defence of the fatherland.
In one of the enquiry commission's hearings Stumpf had a discussion with Adolf von Trotha, who was Chief of Staff of the German Imperial High Seas Fleet at the end of the First World War.
Betz explicitly confirmed that the vast majority of naval officers in the High Seas Fleet humiliated and abused the sailors and stokers with constant harassment and offensive remarks.
When in the beginning of the 1920s an intense debate about the stab-in-the-back myth began, Stumpf realized that his diary could contribute to the elucidation of the role of naval officers, and he handed it to Joseph Joos of the Centre Party (Germany), who recognized the value of the records and ensured they were read before the enquiry commission of the German Weimar Republic parliament (Reichstag).
In 1927 the USPD-MP Wilhelm Dittmann published an abbreviated version under the title: "Warum die Flotte zerbrach – Kriegstagebuch eines christlichen Arbeiters (Why the fleet broke up - war diary of a Christian worker)"[19] Dittmann added a preface, in which he stated that not any outside revolutionary influences have led to the disaster but the conditions in the fleet itself.
Horn, born in Vienna (Austria), encountered the diaries in the context of his research on the unrest in the Imperial Navy and the German Revolution.
[21] Daniel Horn evaluated the historical significance of the diary in his introduction by listing the reasons which led the enquiry commission of the German parliament to include Stumpf's diary as the only personal memory in its report: While the other persons giving testimony before the enquiry commission were officers and politicians, anxious to defend or substantiate their actions respectively their position, Stumpf was a worker, who had served as a common sailor in the Navy and his records mirrored his feelings and views at that time, without being influenced by the discussions which ensued later.
Thus the diary constitutes an invaluable historical source of the individual but also the collective mentality of the lower ranks in the Imperial Navy.
[20] According to Horn the diary provides a coherent explanation, not only why the conscripted sailors mutinied against their officers, but also why Germany lost the war, why the German empire collapsed and why it was overthrown by revolution.
Sailors and stokers rebelled because they suffered from hunger and deprivation, because they were abused by their officers, because they wanted peace and because they were denied democratic rights.
[20] Huck, Pieken and Rogg see echoes of a classic drama as the diary describes hubris (arrogance) and fall of the world power ambitions of the German Empire manifested in the naval armaments.
[1] Indeed, the person of Richard Stumpf reflected the fact, that the well trained workers who literally starved for education (as can also be seen in the working-class youth of that time) and constantly continued their education, did no longer want to be treated as children or animals by whippersnappers with a limited intellectual horizon, who sometimes found only access to their officers posts through the money of their parents.
[1][2] In 1925 Stumpf attended meetings of the left-liberal German Democratic Party and through the intervention of the Nuremberg Mayor Hermann Luppe he got a job in his old profession and a flat.
[26][27] After the unemployment due to the global economic crisis Stumpf finally found a job as a hostel warden of the "Mainzerhof" of the Kolping Society in Heiligenstadt in Thuringia (Germany).
[1][2] Under the German Democratic Republic regime, he was arrested after the uprising of 17 June 1953 and accused of anti-democratic activities: he had established relationships with Jakob Kaiser who stayed in West Berlin and given information to the bishop in Fulda on the occupying power and other organisations.
Wilhelm Deist mentioned the diary at various points of his historical work, for the first time in 1966 in his publication " Die Politik der Seekriegsleitung und die Rebellion der Flotte Ende Oktober 1918 (The politics of the Maritime Warfare Command and the rebellion in the fleet in late October 1918)".
[30] In 1992, the Freiburg (Germany) historian and peace researcher Wolfram Wette published contributions to the history of everyday routine of war in the German military since the early modern period and included extracts from Stumpf's diary.
In 2014, the German Navy Museum in Wilhelmshaven devoted Stumpf a major exhibition: Die Flotte schläft im Hafen ein – Kriegsalltag 1914-1918 in Matrosentagebüchern (The fleet falls asleep in the harbour – everyday war-routine 1914-1918 in sailors' diaries).
Impressively constructed exhibits generated easily interpreted statements from Stumpf's diary alongside notes from a typescript of Carl Richard.
