Blutmai (Berlin, 1929)
1929년 베를린 피의 메이데이
The bloodshed in Berlin from 1 to 3 May 1929. When the Communist Party of Germany held May Day demonstrations in defiance of a ban on open-air gatherings imposed by the Social Democratic police chief Karl Zörgiebel, the police fired on demonstrators and residents. Some thirty civilians were killed and about 200 injured, mostly in the working-class districts of Wedding and Neukölln. The communists presented it as proof that social democracy had turned into "social fascism", and the split between the two workers' parties deepened.
In depth
Background
On 13 December 1928 the Berlin police chief, the Social Democrat Karl Zörgiebel, banned all open-air meetings and demonstrations, citing repeated clashes involving the Red Front Fighters' League (RFB) and the Nazi Sturmabteilung; in March 1929 the Prussian interior minister Albert Grzesinski extended the ban to all of Prussia. It was the period in which the Comintern called social democracy "social fascism", and Ernst Thälmann's KPD attacked the ban as an attempt by the Social Democrats to gag the workers "with fascist-dictatorial means" and kept calling for May Day marches. Zörgiebel reaffirmed the ban; the Social Democrats, who had kept up the tradition of May Day marches, thus stopped them on their very fortieth anniversary.
Three days of clashes
On the morning of 1 May the communist mobilisation fell short: about 8,000 people gathered in small processions of 50 to 500 in Wedding and Neukölln. The police dispersed them with truncheons and, for the first time, water cannon; as the day went on, street battles developed in which the police used firearms and armoured cars. The violence lasted until the afternoon of 3 May. Thirty-three civilians were killed (32 to 38 by various counts), almost all by police fire; none of the first 25 victims belonged to the KPD. Some 1,200 people were arrested but only 66 were charged, and no police officer suffered a gunshot wound. There was no official inquiry into the police violence and no officer was charged.
Consequences
Prussia banned the Red Front Fighters' League on 3 May, and the ban was soon extended nationwide. The name "Blutmai" comes from the KPD's strike call of 2 May denouncing "Zörgiebel's Blood May". A month later the KPD's Twelfth Congress declared the riots a turning point in German political development and resolved that an immediately revolutionary situation was approaching. Thälmann cited the events as conclusive proof of "the transformation of social democracy into social fascism". The SPD leaders' justification of the police violence confirmed to the communists that they were social fascists, and the split between the labour parties ultimately benefited the Nazis. In 1932 Trotsky wrote that to fight the Nazis he would make practical agreements even with Zörgiebel, making the episode a byword in the united-front debate.