Adolf Baier

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Adolf Baier (born September 30, 1907 in Oberkirch / Baden, † October 30, 1982 in Berlin ) was a trade union official and communist functionary from Pforzheim .

Life

Baier was a locksmith and in 1929 became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the metalworkers' association in Pforzheim.

In 1933 he was imprisoned from March to May without charge or trial. Before being arrested again, he fled to France in July 1933 and attended a party school there. He organized the transport of illegal pamphlets to Germany and changed over the border several times to support the establishment of anti-fascist organizations in Baden .

In 1936 he went to Spain and fought in the International Brigades for the Defense of the Republic against the Franco military coup . He was wounded three times, was withdrawn from the troops in 1937 for "special work" (Servicio de Información Militar) and was able to flee to Norway via France after the victory of the putschists supported by Hitler .

In Sweden , Baier was involved in sabotage activities by the Wollweber Organization against war transports of the Wehrmacht , for which he was arrested in 1941 and sentenced to several years in prison. Released in August 1945, he returned to Pforzheim in October 1945 with the support of the KPD. Here he became chairman of the denazification commission and helped to set up free trade unions and was the first chairman of the newly founded metal industry union . His name appears under the first collective agreement that was concluded in Pforzheim in 1945. On behalf of the KPD he set up a courier service, the apparatus "Philipp", which kept the connection to the SED headquarters in Berlin. Baier's greatest success was the organization of the illegal border crossing of thousands of young people from the Federal Republic of Germany to visit the World Youth Festival in 1951 in (East) Berlin. In 1952 he and his family moved to the GDR on the instructions of the party , attended the party college of the SED and, as Richard Stahlmann's successor , was entrusted with the management of the traffic department of the SED Central Committee . He was responsible for illegal border work, the courier system and for the transport of money for the maintenance of the KPD by the SED. During one of his numerous illegal trips through western countries in early 1965, he suffered a serious traffic accident on the autobahn not far from Nuremberg, in which his driver died. He was imprisoned for several months in the prison hospital of the Munich-Stadelheim prison. In June the arrest warrant was overturned without charge and Baier was transported to the GDR in an ambulance. In his place, Josef Steidl was appointed head of the traffic department in early 1966 . As a pensioner received Baier 1977 the Patriotic Order of Merit of the GDR and in 1982 the honor Clasp to the Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold.

tomb

His urn was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland , October 5, 1982, p. 3
personal data
SURNAME Baier, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberkirch
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1982
Place of death Berlin