Adolf Schmidt (politician, September 1886)

Adolf Schmidt (born September 12, 1886 in Neunkirchen (Saar) ; † April 28, 1980 in Penzberg ) was a German politician, USPD / KPD member of the Bavarian State Parliament from 1920 to 1924, resistance fighter against National Socialism and concentration camp prisoner .

Life

Adolf Schmidt, son of a miner, learned the profession of typesetter after completing his school career. In 1907 he became a member of the SPD . After the wandering he settled in Kempten in 1913 . He took part in the First World War and became a member of the USPD in 1917 after being wounded in the war. In addition to Wilhelm Deffner as the first chairman, he became the second chairman and managing director of the workers 'and soldiers' council in Kempten and editor of the Allgäu People's Guard . In February 1919, at the head of the workers' council in Kempten, he called for the executive to be handed over. After the suppression and dissolution of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council, he was sentenced by a court martial for high treason to three years imprisonment in Niederschönenfeld in June 1919 , where he was imprisoned with Ernst Toller , Ernst Niekisch , Erich Mühsam and others. In 1920 he was nevertheless elected a member of the Bavarian State Parliament, but was only able to exercise the mandate from 1922 after he was enthusiastically received at the Kempten train station after his release and taken to the citizens' hall in the demonstration. After a serious heart disease, he retired from political work in 1924 and also resigned from the KPD, which had since emerged from the VKPD and USPD. In 1928, however, he became political leader of the KPD sub-district in the Allgäu .

After the “ seizure of power ” in 1933, protective custody followed and in December 1933 he was sentenced by the Munich Higher Regional Court to 18 months in prison for preparation for high treason. He then remained imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp until 1937 . After his release he was a typesetter and proofreader in Kempten. After the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , he was arrested again and sent back to the Dachau concentration camp. He experienced the end of the war as a free man in Kempten. At the head of released prisoners from the concentration camp subcamps in the Allgäu, he demanded that the occupying powers have rights to participate in the reorganization and made arrests on his own. He was appointed by the US military administration as deputy mayor in Kempten and then from May 1945 to May 1946 as district administrator of the Kempten district . Then he became head of the care center for politically persecuted people in Kempten. In 1951 he retired as a city worker. After the death of his long-time first wife, he married Betty März, the widow of Ludwig März , who was shot on the night of murder in Penzberg, and died in Penzberg in 1980.

literature

• Schmidt, Adolf . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

• Markus Naumann, Dieter Weber: "Adolf J.Schmidt (1886-1980) revolutionary, member of the state parliament, opponent of the Nazis and first district administrator in Kempten after the Second World War. Only Bavarian district administrator with the KPD party book". Article in the "Allgäuer Geschichtsfreund", sheets for local research and local care, No. 114, ed. from Heimatverein Kempten eV, 2014, pp. 85–160, 17 illustrations.

• Christian Kreikle: "Volksgemeinschaft" instead of class struggle. The lost struggle for a social republic and the rise of National Socialism in the Allgäu 1918–1933 / 34, 2 volumes, Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften, Saarbrücken, 2012.

Web links

• Biography of Adolf Schmidt in www.baseportal.de; Retrieved May 16, 2012
• Adolf Schmidt in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History