August Winnig


August Winnig was a German politician, essayist and trade unionist.
Early involved in trade unionism and editorship, Winnig held elected and public offices from 1913 to 1921 as a Social Democratic Party member. As Generalbevollmächtigter for the Baltic Provinces in 1918, he signed the official recognition of the Latvian Provisional Government by the German Empire that ended German claim over the region, despite being an opponent of that renouncement. He was nominated Oberpräsident of East Prussia in 1919, and pressured the Weimar Republic to create an autonomous eastern State in the Baltics.
After his participation in the Kapp putsch of 1920 against the Weimar Republic, Winnig was removed from his positions by the regime and expelled from the SPD. He then became more involved into national socialist revolutionary thinking and, along with Ernst Niekisch, joined the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany to turn their theories into a political programme. The ASP failure of the 1928 German federal election led Winnig to abandon his revolutionary programme.
Initially welcoming the Nazis in 1933 as providing the "salvation of the State" from Marxism, his Lutheran convictions led Winnig to oppose the Third Reich for its neo-pagan tendencies. In 1937, he wrote a best-selling essay named Europa. Gedanken eines Deutschen that gives a cultural rather than racial theory of Europe, diverging from the official Nazi doctrines on race, although his book contains antisemitism. Winnig writes in his autobiographies that he went from being a national socialist to a Christian conservative during the Nazi rule over Germany. He died in Bad Nauheim on 3 November 1956.

Early life and trade unionism

August Winnig was born in 1878 in Blankenburg, the youngest son from a large and poor family. He attended elementary class, before he learnt bricklaying. Winnig joined the Social Democratic Party at 18-year-old in 1896 and was a member of the Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 46 from 1900 to 1902.
In 1905, he became editor of Grundstein in Hamburg, the newspaper of the Maurergewerkschaft and, in 1913, leader of the national Bauarbeiterverband.

Elected and official positions

After acquiring the citizenship of Hamburg in 1913, Winnig was elected as a SPD member of the Landtag of Hamburg and kept his siege until 1921.
, with Winnig's signature. 26 November 1918.
From 1917 to 1918, Winnig was appointed Reichskommissar for East and West Prussia and Generalbevollmächtigter to the Baltic Provinces. As holder of the later position, he signed on 26 November 1918 the official recognition of the Latvian Provisional Government by the German Empire that ended German claim over the region, what is known by the Latvians as the Vinniga nota. In order to comply with the demands of the Baltic Germans for a broader representation in the new institutions, Winnig delayed the withdrawal of German troops from Latvia and supported the formation of Freikorps in the region, with promises of land and settlement.
In January 1919, after being appointed Oberpräsident of East Prussia by the Weimar Republic, Winnig devised a plan for the creation of an autonomous State in the Baltics that would include Livonia, Kurland, Lithuania and East and West Prussia, with the false assumption that the victorious powers of WWI would concentrate their demands on Germany itself and let alone a separatist eastern State. He wrote that "the East Prussian separatism was a special form of expression of national indignation", with the intention of entering into war against Poland to achieve statehood.
Although Winnig and the Baltic German landowners had in mind the integrity of the Reich, they talked about a "break away from Berlin" as a mean of exerting pressure on the rest of Germany to achieve their project. For instance, Winnig mentioned at the regional conference of the East Prussian SDP the threat of an ineluctable separation if the Reich did not take necessary measures regarding East Prussia. On 4 March 1920, Winnig published a memorandum on the East Prussian question and raised an abundant catalogue of demands at the East Prussia Conference on 9 March 1920, in order to obtain concessions from the Prussian and German governments for his autonomy demands.
The failure of his separatist project led Winnig to participate in the failed Kapp putsch of 13 March 1920 against the Weimar Republic. He was then removed from public office by the regime and expelled from the SPD, in which he belonged to the "social-imperialistic" wing.

Revolutionary period under the Weimar Republic

After his expulsion from public office by the Weimar Republic, Winnig became more involved in national revolutionary writings and is considered by Armin Mohler to be one of the most influential thinkers of the Conservative Revolution.
Winnig was, along with Ernst Niekisch, co-editor of Widerstand, a magazine launched in 1926 to advocate National Bolshevism.' Winnig wrote in defence of the German workers, plunged into poverty by the post-WWI German economic situation, and denounced what he called the "Versailles Diktat". According to him, German nationalism had to embrace the workers as they were fulfilling the "German task", having replaced the role of the aristocracy.'
Gregor Strasser unsuccessfully tried to bring Winnig into the Nazi Party during the mid-1920s. In 1927, Winnig became instead a member of the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany. With the recruitments of Winnig and Nieskisch, the party intended to expand its influence outside Saxony and attract more nationalist voters. Winnig claimed that the ASP would provide the foundation for a "new Socialism", with the workers at the front of a movement for the national liberation. He theorised a national socialism based on trade unions, criticising the anti-German influence of bourgeois intellectuals on the workers' movements and writing about the "infiltration by foreign elements" in the leadership of the SPD.
Winnig was an ASP candidate for the Reichtag during the 1928 German federal election. The party suffered a crushing defeat with only 0.2% of the votes. After the ASP published a revised party programme on 12 October 1928, from which the national-revolutionary elements were removed, Niekisch and Winnig both resigned their membership and Winnig quickly abandoned their revolutionary programme. He later joined the Conservative People's Party in 1930.

Nazi rule and later life

Initially welcoming the Nazis in 1933 as providing the "salvation of the State" from Marxism, his Lutheran convictions led him to oppose the Third Reich for his neo-pagan tendencies. He then withdrew from politics and went into "inner emigration".
In his essay Europa. Gedanken eines Deutschen, published in 1937, Winnig gives a definition of Europe that diverges from the official Nazi doctrine on race, although also strongly tainted by antisemitism. Writing about "spatial ties" and "cultural community", he claims that the greater nations of Europe, along with the other less powerful peoples of the continent, all come from the same superior civilisation, a legacy of Rome, the Ancient Germans and Christianity. However, he excluded Bolshevik Russia from that definition, which he believed to be the world of the Jews and the Untermenschen that only fascism could protect Europe from. Printed at 80,000 copies, the book became a best-seller in Evangelical circles.
Winnig wrote in his autobiographies that he went from being a national socialist to a Christian conservative during the Nazi rule over Germany. He died in Bad Nauheim on 3 November 1956 at 78.

Works

Essays