Karl Siegle

Karl Friedrich Siegle (born September 25, 1881 in Ditzingen , † November 27, 1947 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( SPD ), trade unionist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Life

Siegle was a son of the Ditzingen master carpenter Wilhelm Heinrich Siegle and his wife Katharina, nee. Stove. Karl Siegle learned the trade of carpenter after attending elementary school . He found jobs in Stuttgart , Frankfurt am Main , Mainz and Cologne as well as in Switzerland . In 1900 he joined the German Woodworkers' Association (DHV) and the SPD a year later. Between 1901 and 1903 he did his military service in Ludwigshafen am Rhein . In 1907 Siegle went to Berlin .

After the First World War , in which he had participated as a soldier , he worked full-time for the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) in Berlin. Siegle was from May 1, 1919 to September 30, 1920 authorized representative of the Berlin administration of the DHV. He was also a member of the central strike leadership during the Kapp Putsch . On November 1, 1920 he became secretary of the ADGB local committee in Berlin, responsible for social matters, in particular health insurance , employment offices and housing . On July 15, 1923 Siegle was elected deputy chairman of the ADGB local committee in Berlin. He was also a member of the executive committee of the Berlin-Brandenburg state employment office.

In 1925 he was elected to the Friedrichshain District Assembly. During this time he was chairman of the supervisory board of Gemeinnützige Heimstätten AG (Gehag), the largest housing association of the free trade unions in the Weimar Republic , and a member of the board of the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse Berlin. Between 1929 and 1933 he was a city councilor in Berlin. In his position as secretary and member of the board of directors of the ADGB in Berlin, he wrote numerous articles that appeared in both Vorwärts and the trade union newspaper.

After the National Socialists smashed the unions in May 1933, Siegle lost his union offices. After the SPD ban in June and the ordinance on the security of government of July 1933, his mandate was also withdrawn and his work as a city and district councilor was prohibited. Siegle was placed under Gestapo surveillance and his apartment was searched several times. He was finally arrested on December 16, 1933 and was incarcerated in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp in Berlin . On January 6, 1934, he was taken to the Oranienburg concentration camp , where he was held until January 16, and then taken to the Berlin-Moabit remand prison. Siegle spent a total of nine months in custody . Siegle was accused of distributing illegal literature and keeping in contact with the International Trade Union Confederation. On August 25, 1934, the Berlin Superior Court acquitted him for lack of evidence of charges of “preparing a treasonous enterprise ”.

After his release on August 29, 1934, he continued his illegal work. Together with other trade unionists, he continued to distribute the magazine Sozialistische Aktion , published by the exile executive committee of the SPD, the Sopade . It was not until the end of 1936 that Siegle found work again and became a representative for a private health insurance company . This made it easier to camouflage his resistance activities, as he could now travel unobtrusively. He belonged to the group around Otto Brass and Hermann Brill , which at the end of 1936 formed the so-called ten-point group , later the resistance group Deutsche Volksfront . In January 1937, Siegle, Otto Brass and Fritz Michaelis, went to a meeting with the Sopade party executive in Prague to report on the illegal resistance in Germany and to advocate cooperation with communists. Siegle was arrested again on October 10, 1938 and charged with attending the Prague meeting before the People's Court . Again the charge was “ high treason ”. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on September 29, 1939, his co-defendants Hans Seidel and Fritz Michaelis to three and five years, respectively, and remained imprisoned in Berlin-Tegel police prison until April 29, 1941. After his release he found work in an office in the Berlin electrical industry. In June 1944 he took a long vacation to visit his family in Württemberg . As a result, he escaped the " Gewitter Operation " following the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 . Warned from Berlin, Siegle and his wife hid in various villages near Stuttgart .

After the end of the war both of them went to Ditzingen, Siegle's home community. However, they returned to Berlin in August 1945. Siegle joined the re-established SPD and became chairman of the denazification commission in the Lichtenberg district . In 1946 there was a corruption scandal in this commission and Siegle was suspected of perverse law and passive bribery . Although he denied the allegations, he was expelled from the SPD. At the same time, Siegle's health deteriorated significantly. Since his release from prison in 1941, Siegle suffered constant stomach pains and also had heart problems. On November 27, 1947, he died of heart failure after gastric surgery . The exclusion from the party had been revised shortly before his death.

literature

• Björn Lampe: Siegle, Karl (1881–1947). German Woodworkers Association . In: Siegfried Mielke (ed.): Trade unionists in the concentration camps Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen. Biographical manual . Volume 2. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89468-275-2 , pp. 397-399
• Hans-Joachim Fieber (Ed.): Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 . Volume 7 (letter S): Saalinger – Szymczak . Trafo Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89626-357-9 , p. 204.
• Christine Fischer-Defoy (Ed.): Put in front of the door. Berlin city councilors and members of the magistrate persecuted during National Socialism from 1933 to 1945 . Active Museum Association, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-018931-9 , p. 347f.

Web links

• Björn Lampe: Siegle, Karl (1881–1947) . Short biography on the website of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation (The political prisoners of the Oranienburg concentration camp).