Fritz Wandel

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Gottlob Friedrich ("Fritz") Wandel (born on May 2, 1898 in Ebersbach an der Fils ; died on April 29, 1956 in Reutlingen ) was a German regional politician and active in the resistance against National Socialism at the beginning of the Nazi regime . As sub-district leader of the Württemberg regional association ("district") of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the administrative area of ​​the Oberamt Reutlingen (or the later district ), he was a member of the Reutlingen municipal council from 1931 to 1933 and from 1945 to 1948 , after the liberation from National Socialism temporarily also one of the three deputies of the mayor in the function of the housing office manager .

On January 31, 1933, as the main speaker of the rally, he was one of the leaders of the Mössingen general strike , the only workers' uprising in the German Reich against the " seizure of power " by Adolf Hitler and his party, the NSDAP . For his role in this action, he was subjected to repression by the rulers for the entire duration of the Nazi dictatorship , initially formally and legally sentenced in solitary confinement (1933 to 1937), then interned in Dachau concentration camp (1937 to 1943) at the instigation of the Gestapo. , and finally in military service with the Penal Division 999 during the last two years of World War II (1943 to 1945).

Live and act

Development into a representative of the Reutlingen workers' movement

Fritz Wandel came from a working-class family that was initially based in Ebersbach an der Fils. He was the first born of eight children. When Fritz was around two years old, the family moved to Reutlingen, a town about 50 km to the south-west with an up-and-coming mechanical engineering and textile industry .

He was considered intelligent, but had to drop out of school after his father's death in 1910 at the age of 12 in order to contribute to the livelihood of the remaining family with day labor.

In 1916 he was drafted into the military of the German Empire and was an infantryman in the First World War . He became a prisoner of war , from which he returned to Reutlingen in 1919 - after the end of the war, the fall of the emperor and the establishment of the Weimar Republic in Germany.

In the 1920s, Wandel worked most of the time in the Maschinenfabrik zum Bruderhaus . He joined the union and became a member of the KPD. His talent for rhetoric and his strong political commitment contributed to the fact that by the end of the 1920s he developed into one of the most important representatives of the Reutlingen labor movement of that time.

In 1923 he married Klara Wurster, who later ran a local restaurant. The marriage resulted in a son (born 1923) and a daughter (born 1929).

In the local elections in 1931, Wandel, who had meanwhile been appointed sub-district leader of the KPD in the Reutlingen Oberamt, was elected as a candidate of the KPD in the Reutlingen municipal council.

Resistance to National Socialism and imprisonment in a concentration camp

When Wandel became aware of the KPD's call for a general strike against the dreaded dictatorship on January 30, 1933, the day the Nazis " seized power " under Adolf Hitler, he tried to spread this call in the region. On the following day, January 31, 1933, he was asked by Martin Maier, the chairman of the Mössingen KPD local group, to accompany him to Mössingen to provide political support for the general strike. Change followed this call and acted as the main speaker at the Mössingen general strike in the following actions in front of three industrial companies in Mössingen .

After this first collective action of resistance against National Socialism in power was quickly smashed by the riot police, alerted by a company director, a change to a police search was announced. He remained in hiding for about five weeks until he was discovered, arrested and taken into custody in early March 1933. In October 1933 he was sentenced to 4½ years in solitary confinement, which he “served” in the Rottenburg correctional facility . Following this imprisonment, the rulers continued to regard him as a communist anti-Nazi opponent and was initially interned as a so-called " protective prisoner " for five months in the Welzheim Gestapo camp before he was transferred from there to the Dachau concentration camp , where he spent approx. was held prisoner for six years. Just a few weeks after his unexpected release from "Dachau" - after the attempt by the Gestapo to hire him (in the event of non-cooperation) under threat of repression against his family as an informant in Reutlingen resistance circles, without any useful results - Until the end of the Second World War , the Penal Division 999 was forced to participate in the armed forces of the Nazi regime . During this mission he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he was released in his capacity as a communist and anti-fascist shortly after the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht .

Post-war period, reconstruction

After the war and the Nazi dictatorship, Wandel was again a Reutlingen councilor for the KPD between late 1945 and 1948. As the “third deputy” of the new mayor Oskar Kalbfell ( SPD ) and head of the housing office , initially appointed temporarily by the French military administration (later elected by the residents) , he played a key role in rebuilding democracy in the city ​​of Reutlingen, which was under French occupation .

In 1945, Wandel was still trying to come to terms with the time as a prisoner under National Socialism by writing down his experiences from the concentration camp and giving a lecture at various public events in the Reutlingen area between October and December 1945. He published this time - and eyewitness report in 1946 in his book " A path through hell ... Dachau - how it really was ". It was one of the first post-war literary documentaries about the Dachau concentration camp to be published by a former prisoner from this camp. As a member of the international camp community of surviving Dachau prisoners , he signed the Buchenwald oath and initiated the founding of Reutlinger in 1947 together with Albert Fischer, a former prisoner of the Buchenwald concentration camp , and Emil Bechtle , a brother of the communist resistance fighters Reinhold and Wilhelm Bechtle District Association of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN), whose first chairman was Wandel.

In 1948 he resigned from his political offices due to illness and worked for a few years as an employee of the Reutlingen cemetery administration. During the time he was active there, in 1952 he was encouraged to erect a memorial for the victims of National Socialism in Reutlingen at the place in the Unter den Linden cemetery where 128 perished forced laborers from different European countries were interned in Reutlingen labor camps were burned. Up to the present place at the memorial every year on All Souls' Day of Remembrance and regional Mahnveranstaltungen VVN BdA -Kreisverbandes instead.

Fritz Wandel died a few days before his 58th birthday at the end of April 1956.

Journalistic work

Quote from the editorial foreword of the book:
" After his return from Russian captivity, the former communist city councilor Fritz W andel - Reutlingen gave a shocking report on his experiences in the Dachau concentration camp in November 1945 in the overcrowded federal hall in Reutlingen and in numerous places in the neighborhood Years as a political prisoner, having previously suffered 4 1/2 years in prison. Extensive reviews of this factual report appeared in the “Mitteilungen der Militärregierung in Reutlingen”, “ Schwäbisches Tagblatt ” and other newspapers. Since then, there has been an increasing demand from the audience that the report should be printed and distributed in the original form, which is shocking due to its simplicity, as it was written, since every German face these things and grapples with them seriously must. In fulfillment of this wish, the report is presented below. "

literature

  • City Administration Reutlingen / School, Culture and Sports Office / Local History Museum and City Archives (publisher): " Reutlingen 1930 - 1950. National Socialism and the Post-War Period "; Catalog and book with background descriptions for the 1995 exhibition of the same name, ISBN 3-927228-61-3 .
  • Paul Landmesser, Peter Pächler, IG Metall Reutlingen (publisher): “ We learn as we move forward! - Documents on the history of the labor movement in Reutlingen 1844 - 1949 ”; Distel-Verlag, Heilbronn 1990, ISBN 3-923208-25-1 .
  • Hermann Berner, Bernd Jürgen Warneken (editor): “There was nothing there except here!” The “red Mössingen” in the general strike against Hitler ; Talheimer Verlag, Mössingen 2012, 360 pages, ISBN 978-3-89376-140-1 (extended new edition of a study published by Rotbuch Verlag in 1982 under the same title by a research group of the Ludwig-Uhland-Institute for empirical cultural studies at the Eberhard-Karls- University of Tübingen )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Digital version of the original leaflet of the KPD Württemberg with the call for a general strike against Hitler as a PDF file ( memento of the original from April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stadt-moessingen.de
  2. ↑ comprehensive article from January 30, 2008 on the situation and the events surrounding the Nazi seizure of power in Reutlingen in 1933, by Dr. Heinz Alfred Gemeinhardt, head of the Reutlingen City Archives ; on the role of change in the Mössing general strike see the end of the third paragraph (online at reutlingen.de)
  3. ↑ cf. Process files for the Mössing general strike as digital reproduction in the online offer of the Baden-Württemberg State Archive, State Archive Sigmaringen
  4. ↑ Manfred Maul-Ilg: Takeover and conformity at the local level ; in Reutlingen 1930–1950. National Socialism and the Post-War Period. (P. 43) Published by Reutlingen City Administration / School, Culture and Sports Office / Local History Museum and City Archives
  5. ^ "Enlightenment is necessary" , article in the Reutlinger Generalanzeiger dated November 21, 2011 about the commemoration of the VVN-BdA at the memorial for the victims of National Socialism in the cemetery on Unter den Linden
  6. ^ Fritz Wandel: A path through hell ... Dachau - as it really was (editorial foreword, p. 3), taken online from antikbuch24.de
personal data
SURNAME Change, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Change, Gottlob Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD) and resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Ebersbach an der Fils
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1956
Place of death Reutlingen