Paul Wittich (politician)

Paul Wittich (1877–1957) was a Carpathian German social democratic politician in Slovakia (then part of Austria-Hungary and later Czechoslovakia). He was a prominent labour leader in Pressburg (today known as Bratislava). During a few days around New Years Eve 1919, he led a workers militia that vied for control of the city. After the integration of Pressburg into Czechoslovakia, he sat in the national parliament.

Wittich emerged as the main leader of the social democratic movement in Pressburg following the departure of Heinrich Kalmár to Budapest. Wittich was the editor of the weekly newspaper Westungarische Volkstimme (a regional organ of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary) between July 1905 and May 1914, and then again from September 1914 to 1918.

In 1907 Wittich was imprisoned after having called for reform of the electoral system.

In November 1914 Wittich was elected to the Pressburg town council, being the first social democrat to be able to win a seat in that body. His constituency was the Theresienstadt ward, an urban working class and multi-cultural district with a large Jewish population. Wittich's campaign had three main themes; the introduction of a progressive income and property tax, autonomy from central and county government control and electoral reform (seeking to scrap the system that automatically accorded seats to the 'virilists').

At the end of the First World War, Wittich emerged as a key political leader in the city. In the first week of November 1918, the German-Hungarian Workers Council was formed, with Wittich as its leader. Soon thereafter, Wittich represented the Pressburg National Council and Pressburg at a meeting with the Hungarian National Council in Budapest. On 9 November 1918 Wittich was part of a delegation that met with the Czechoslovak envoy Vlastimil Tusar in Vienna, to discuss the future of Pressburg.

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