Alphonse Kahn

Alphonse Kahn (born May 13, 1908 in Hamburg , † July 30, 1985 in Koblenz ) was a German lawyer of Jewish origin and a communist resistance fighter against National Socialism . After the end of the Nazi regime, he continued his anti-fascist engagement in leading positions. In the founding phase of the Federal Republic of Germany , Kahn was one of the first to be affected by the anti-communist “ Adenauer Decree ”.

Life

Alfons Kahn (he Frenchized his first name in exile) came from a social democratically oriented German-Jewish family. He graduated from high school in 1928 during his commercial training at an evening school and in the same year began studying law and economics in Freiburg im Breisgau , Berlin , Paris and his home town of Hamburg. At the beginning of the 1930s he became a member of the "Free Scientific Association" and the Red Aid , for which he worked as legal advisor . In 1932 he organized himself in the KPD.

At the end of February 1933 he escaped the incipient persecution of communists by living with a false identity. At the end of October 1933, when he was threatened with arrest and warned, he fled Germany. With the help of law professors from France, he managed to escape via Belgium to Paris, where he worked as a businessman to finance his living. There he worked with the confederation Confédération générale du travail . There, and later in the internment camps, Kahn also organized political theater and cabaret events.

In September 1939 he was interned in the Le Vernet camp and later in Tombebouc and other camps. He managed to escape internment and join the Resistance . He received French personal papers and was able to find a job as an accountant with the German occupation authorities as a “Frenchman”, which enabled him to help the Resistance. There he not only received information relevant to the military, but also had the opportunity to help numerous members of the Resistance to get new papers and paid work. He also took part in sabotage activities by his resistance group. In 1943 he joined the Free Germany Movement for the West .

When he was threatened with exposure in March 1944, he was warned in good time. The western leadership of the KPD around Otto Niebergall organized for him the "escape" to Germany and the occupied territory of Czechoslovakia, where he rejoined the resistance movement of the National Committee Free Germany .

After the end of the Nazi regime, Kahn continued his anti-fascist and democratic struggle under the changed conditions. He became one of the founders of the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime in the French Zone. He rejoined the KPD and became its appointed representative in the subcommittee of the mixed commission on constitutional issues in the provisional state parliament. In his party he was elected to the state leadership of Hesse-Palatinate and later to the state leadership of Rhineland-Palatinate. When the VVN Pfalz was founded on February 1, 1947 in Ludwigshafen, Kahn was the main speaker.

In 1946, Kahn became a member of the board of directors in Ludwigshafen am Rhein , where he was head of the state care center for the victims of fascism . In 1947 he moved to Koblenz, where he became a consultant in the compensation department of the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Economics and Finance and at the same time head of the State Office for Reparation. In 1949 he was appointed judge at the State Compensation Court of Rhineland-Palatinate.

With the Adenauer decree of 1950, according to which leftists judged to be "unconstitutional" were to be dismissed from the public service, "the wind" turned "around" in state institutions. "The Nazi opponents were ousted, and the vast majority of those were allowed to return to the state offices that Hitler had served." Senior officials of the federal German state compensation authorities also disappeared from their positions, including several Jewish officials with different party orientations, “who were themselves victims of Nazi persecution”. They were replaced by non-Jewish officials who “took predominantly tough positions against those who had previously been persecuted”. In addition to Marcel Frenkel (North Rhine-Westphalia), Ludwig Loeffler (Hamburg), Curt Epstein (Hesse) and Philipp Auerbach (Bavaria), Alphonse Kahn was also among those who were eliminated . In May 1951 he was removed from the state service because of his membership in the KPD. He then worked as a lawyer for several companies.

Politically and legally, he continued to actively support his general, legal and compensation policy convictions. He was a member of the presidium of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime , the Association of Democratic Jurists and Deputy Chairman of the Interest Group of Former German Resistance Fighters of the Countries Occupied by Fascism (IEDW). After the KPD was banned in 1956 and a communist party was re-established in 1968, he became a member of the DKP .

Fonts

• with Marcel Frenkel , Philipp Auerbach , Leo Zuckermann : Handbook of reparation . Koblenz 1949 ff.
• with Walter H. Seiter: Hitler's blood justice. A chapter of the German past that has yet to be mastered. With an introduction by Norman Paech and an afterword by Heinz Düx . Publisher: Association of Democratic Jurists, Interest Group of Former German Resistance Fighters in Countries Occupied by Fascism, Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime - Association of Antifascists. Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1981.
• They are not people! As a young lawyer in the non-partisan investigative committee, in: Helmut Heins and others, Bruno Tesch and companions - memories of the "Altona Blood Sunday". Published by the WN-Bund der Antifaschisten Hamburg, Hamburg 1983

Web links

• Alphonse Kahn on the Koblenz Memorial website
• Reference to archival access: Federal Archives, German Antifascists in Exile: Vol. 2, BArch, NY 4072/153, see: [1]

Individual evidence

1. ^ Commission for the history of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate: The minutes of the Council of Ministers of Rhineland-Palatinate. Mainz 2007, p. 562.
2. ↑ Chanson-Café Europa - chanson concerts against forgetting. (PDF; 130 kB).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Alphonse Kahn , mahnmal-koblenz.de , website of the Förderverein Memorial for the Victims of National Socialism in Koblenz
4. ↑ Rainer Hudemann: Beginnings of reparation. French zone of occupation 1945–1950. In: History and Society . Journal for historical social science, 13/1987, pp. 181–216, here: p. 205.
5. ^ Klaus J. Becker: The KPD in Rhineland-Palatinate 1946-1956. Diss. Univ. Mannheim 1999, v. Hase and Koehler, Mainz 2001, ISBN 978-3-7758-1393-8 , p. 291
6. ↑ Boris Spernol: The "Communist Clause ". Reparation Practice as an Instrument of Anti-Communism . In: Stefan Creuzberger / Dierk Hoffmann (eds.): "Spiritual danger" and "Immunization of society". Anti-Communism and Political Culture in the Early Federal Republic . Munich 2014, pp. 203-236, here: pp. 203 f.
7. ^ Gunter Hofmann , Helmut Schmidt . Soldier, Chancellor, Icon, Munich 2015.
8. ↑ Gilad Margalit: The post-war Germans and "their gypsies". The treatment of the Sinti and Roma in the shadow of Auschwitz . Berlin 2001, p. 122.
9. ↑ Gilad Margalit : The post-war Germans and "their gypsies". The treatment of the Sinti and Roma in the shadow of Auschwitz. Berlin 2001, p. 155; Boris Spernol: The “Communist Clause ”. Reparation Practice as an Instrument of Anti-Communism . In: Stefan Creuzberger / Dierk Hoffmann (eds.): "Spiritual danger" and "Immunization of society". Anti-Communism and Political Culture in the Early Federal Republic . Munich 2014, pp. 203-236, here: p. 235.
10. ↑ free library beta