Siegfried Aufhäuser (1 May 1884 – 6 December 1969) was a German politician and union leader who was chairman of the white-collar General Federation of Free Employees (AfA-Bund) from 1921 until 1933.
He quickly became engaged in political work for the group; around this time, he wrote an article for its newspaper criticising the antisemitism espoused by the rival National German Association of Clerks.
[1]: 28 After the outbreak of the First World War, Aufhäuser was spared from military service due to poor eyesight, and became heavily involved in work for Butib.
As leader of the largest white-collar organisation, the Cartel of Free Employee Federations (AfA), Aufhäuser now became an important figure on the national stage.
Here he called for the socialisation of industry, and denounced the SPD's plans for the election of a National Assembly, claiming it would undermine the labour movement by transferring the workers' newly-won power to the state.
Re-elected secretary with a resounding margin of 100 votes to one,[1]: 34 Aufhäuser was committed to linking white-collar workers with blue-collar unions without sacrificing their independence.
Despite this, Aufhäuser was largely unsuccessful in his attempts to bring the white-collar into the labour movement; a majority remained organised within bourgeois employees' federations.
His outlook was defined by class struggle: in his view, the SPD must use its electoral power to pursue the interests of the workers in a concrete manner in order to win their support, and only then would they have the strength to develop socialism.
At the SPD's Kiel conference in 1927, Aufhäuser and fellow left-winger Toni Sender led a minority group who opposed the plan to enter government after the upcoming elections.
They believed that coalitions with unreliable liberal and bourgeois partners would sacrifice workers' interests and cost support among the SPD's core constituency.
They argued that the party would be best served by remaining in opposition and using both parliamentary and extraparliamentary means to fight the capitalist state, rather than entangle themselves with it by entering government.
Tensions came to a boiling point after the onset of the Great Depression, and the government ultimately fell in March 1930 after a dispute over the unemployment insurance program.
Longer term, he also called for the nationalisation of resources, industry, insurance, and banking, the expropriation of land to support peasants, and the establishment of a planned economy.
After the resignation of the cabinet in May 1932 and Brüning's replacement by Franz von Papen, the SPD were no longer tied down by support for a right-wing government, but now feared reprisal from the increasingly authoritarian state.
Aufhäuser advocated the mobilisation of the Iron Front for a general strike in the event of an attack against the constitution, but the SPD and trade union leadership rejected this, fearing it would trigger a civil war which they would be doomed to lose.
He believed that the Nazis could be kept out of government and that the Reichstag's now theoretically anti-capitalist majority could pass legislation to restructure the economy and ease the economic situation.
Combined with efforts by the Iron Front to educate and persuade workers of all classes that the Nazi promise was a sham, Aufhäuser believed that the SPD could break their electoral coalition and win back mass support to preserve the republic.
The SPD also failed to mount a substantial challenge in the November election and, though the Nazis' support declined, Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933.
The March 1933 election saw Hitler's coalition win a majority among harsh persecution of the opposition, and the unions further ingratiated themselves to the Nazis, hoping to avoid the same fate.
Korthaase suggests that he did this not only for ideological reasons, but also to spare the union the "burden" of having a prominent Jewish leader, which made the AfA-Bund a high priority target for the emerging Nazi regime.
[1]: 43 He was elected to the executive committee of the Sopade, the SPD's organisation in exile, but clashed with the moderate majority who opposed his efforts to build a popular front with the communists.