Der Funktionär: Eugen Loderer

Abstract

Klaus Kempter follows up his biographical sketch on long-time metalworker’s union chairman Eugen Loderer (1920–1995) with a reflection on Loderer’s being a member of the generation of the so-called “forty-fivers”, which has frequently been under the focus of attention in recent years. It becomes evident that – irrespective of its anti-capitalistic rhetoric and its reception by the public – IG Metall under Eugen Loderer practiced essentially pragmatic politics of representing labour interests, not unlike supposedly more conservative trade unions under the leadership of other “forty-fivers”. Loderer and his contemporaries, then, link to the older tradition of the  "Gewerkschaftsbeamten” and thus make the generation of determined socialists of the in-between years (Otto Brenner, Willi Bleicher, and others) appear as an exception in trade union history.