[Anfrage an Dullo zur Gewerbsmäßigkeit; S. 142]

Emil Lederer: Question to Dullo on “Gewerbsmäßigkeit” (1921)

This recorded commission intervention asks Mayor Dullo to clarify the scope of a legal category governing socialization. Lederer tests Dullo’s interpretation against a concrete case: shoemakers organized in a producers’ cooperative.

Ich möchte nur eine Anfrage an Herrn Oberbürgermeister Dullo richten, nämlich ob nach seiner Interpretation des Gesetzes die Produzentengenossenschaften, von denen wir vorhin sprachen, also Schuster, die in einer Produzentengenossenschaft zusammengefaßt sind, in Anspruch nehmen können, nicht „gewerbsmäßig“ zu sein, daher nicht sozialisiert zu werden.

English translation: I would merely like to put a question to Mayor Dullo, namely whether, according to his interpretation of the law, the producers’ cooperatives we discussed earlier—that is, shoemakers united in a producers’ cooperative—can claim not to operate “on a commercial basis” and therefore not to be socialized.

The conceptual move is to connect cooperative organization with a possible exemption from socialization. Lederer requests clarification rather than asserting that exemption; the supplied turn contains no answer from Dullo.