Erich Flatau

Erich Theodor Helmuth Flatau (born August 9, 1879 in Görlitz , † February 4, 1946 in Berlin ) was a German local politician and trade unionist . Flatau was for the SPD from 1921 to 1933 city councilor of Berlin, since 1929 as chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Berlin City Council , and 1930-1933 member of the Prussian State Council .

Life

Flatau was the son of the businessman Max Flatau and his wife Edwina. He first attended primary school in Dresden and later the secondary schools in Johannstadt and Pirna , which he left with the school leaving certificate . He became a clerk in his father's business and completed a degree in dramaturgy at the art college. In the following years he was dramaturgical secretary and administrator of a theater library in Pirna and Dresden.

He became a member of the German Stage Members' Cooperative and was its union secretary between 1900 and 1912. Flatau joined the SPD as early as 1909. In 1915, during the First World War , he was drafted, but released as incapacitated just two years later. As an employee at Siemens in Berlin, he was one of the founders of a workers' council during the November Revolution of 1918 . The employees chose Flatau as their central chairman . From 1919 he worked as a full-time secretary at the Central Association of Employees and from May 1920 as managing director of the local cartel Berlin of the General Free Employees' Association , an office that Flatau held until 1933. He was also a member of the board of the Berlin local committee of the General German Trade Union Confederation and the board of the Berlin district committee of the General German Civil Service Federation as well as the supervisory board of the union's own housing company GEHAG , the board of trustees of the trade union school, the Berlin film inspection agency and the administration of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin .

In 1921 Flatau became a city councilor for the SPD and from 1929 chaired the SPD faction in the Berlin city council assembly. On the occasion of the Sklarek scandal , on October 10, 1929, he gave a much-noticed speech in the Berlin city council meeting, which was printed and published in the same year by the SPD's own Vorwärts-Verlag ( on the "Sklarek scandal". Speech by city councilor Erich Flatau in of the Berlin city council on October 10, 1929. ) Also as city council member, he belonged to a large number of bodies, including the budget committee, the elders committee, the deputation for the arts and education and the deputation for vocational and technical schools. He sat on the board of the Volkshochschule Groß-Berlin and the German Association of Cities as well as on the supervisory board of the Städtische Oper and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra . In January 1930 Flatau was elected to the Prussian State Council, to which he officially belonged until July 1933.

But in early May 1933, after the National Socialists came to power, Flatau was arrested. He was deported to the SA prison in Papestrasse and later transferred to the police prison on Alexanderplatz , from which he was released in mid-May 1933. His appointment as managing director of the General Free Employees' Association was terminated without notice. In the period that followed , his house was searched several times and his savings account was also confiscated. In July 1933 he emigrated to Prague for several weeks , but returned to Berlin in September. After two years of unemployment, he only got a job as a lecturer in November 1935 and in 1937 as an office manager at the Reichsinnungsverband des Buchbinderhandwerk.

When the Second World War broke out , Flatau was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at the beginning of September 1939, along with 40 other union and SPD functionaries . At the end of September 1939 he was released home from the concentration camp on the condition that he report to the Secret State Police in Berlin immediately . He was able to resume his previous position at the Reichsinnungsverband des Buchbinderhandwerk. Throughout the entire Nazi era, he kept in contact with free trade union groups, including the trade unionist Bernhard Göring , who met illegally. From August to September 1944 Flatau was arrested again during the grating action and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was now 65 years old and suffered permanent heart damage.

After the end of the war Flatau took an active part in the democratic rebuilding. In June 1945 he and his wife rejoined the SPD and by the end of October 1945 he was a member of the Berlin-Tempelhof district committee of the Free German Trade Union Confederation . In January 1946 he became chairman of the district association management. In the same month he was admitted to the Tempelhof hospital for a tumor operation, which he did not survive because of the heart disease he had suffered. He died on February 4, 1946, at the age of 66, in the hospital in Berlin-Tempelhof. Erich Flatau had been married to Margarete Doliwa from Gleiwitz since 1908 ; the marriage remained childless.

literature

• Ingrid Fricke: Erich Flatau. In: Siegfried Mielke (ed.): Trade unionists in the concentration camps Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen. Biographical manual. Volume 2, Metropol, Berlin 2003, ISBN 978-3-89468-275-0 , pages 191-193.
• Joachim Lilla : The Prussian State Council 1921–1933. A biographical manual. With a documentation of the State Councilors appointed in the “Third Reich” (= manuals on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 13). Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 978-3-7700-5271-4 , pages 42-43.

Web links

• Ingrid Fricke: Erich Flatau in www.spd.berlin
• Erich Flatau (1879–1946) in www.dgb.de