Albert Callam

Albert Callam (born January 31, 1887 in Stolp , Pomerania ; † March 1, 1956 ) was a German party functionary ( KPD ) and publishing director. He played a decisive role in the development of the press and printing works of the KPD in the Weimar Republic .

Life

Callam, the son of a construction technician, was an orphan from the age of eleven. He worked as a bricklayer and tiler in various cities in Germany and Switzerland . In 1907 he joined the SPD . Until 1914 he was politically active together with Fritz Heckert in Switzerland. From 1915 to 1918 he had to do military service as a soldier . In 1916 he joined the Spartacus group in Chemnitz and became a member of the USPD in 1917 and the KPD in 1919.

Until 1933 he was managing director of KPD publishing houses and printing works, among other things he was the first managing director of the Kämpfers in Chemnitz and managing director of the Neue Zeitung in Jena (1923). At times he also headed the publishing house of the KPD's central organ, Die Rote Fahne . At the VIII Party Congress in Leipzig in 1923 Callam was elected to the KPD's revision commission.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Callam continued to work illegally for the KPD. He was arrested on April 30, 1933 in Breslau and held in the Esterwegen concentration camp until February 1934 . In May 1934 he emigrated to Prague and in 1937 to France . Here he was responsible for printing illegal materials from the KPD's foreign leadership that were smuggled into Germany. He was an employee of the Deutsche Volkszeitung in Paris , responsible for printing. Callam also acted as managing director of the press correspondence German information published by Bruno Frei . Callam was interned in Le Vernet in September 1939 and then from May 14, 1941 to October 18, 1941 in the Les Milles camp (camp number 1872).

Callam managed to leave the country via Spain and Portugal to Mexico in December 1941 . There he was a member of the Free Germany Movement and from 1942 to 1946 he was the publishing director and managing director of the magazine Free Germany .

In May 1946 he traveled with Alexander Abusch and Paul Merker on a Soviet ship to Germany via Vladivostok . They arrived in Berlin in July 1946. Callam became a member of the SED and was temporarily managing director at the Berlin publishing house .

literature

• Günter Albrecht (ed.): Experienced history seen and described by contemporaries . Volume 2: From the fall of the Weimar Republic to liberation from fascism . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1972, p. 487.
• Wolfgang Kießling : Alemania Libre in Mexico . Volume 1: A Contribution to the History of Anti-Fascist Exile (1941–1946) . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1974, pp. 59, 87, 143, 260 and 314.
• Werner Röder (Ed.): Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933 . Volume 1: Politics, Economy, Public Life . Saur, Munich 1980, p. 107.
• Dieter Schiller et al .: Exile in France . Reclam, Leipzig 1981, pp. 79 and 121.
• Wolfgang Kießling: Exile in Latin America . Second, expanded edition. Reclam, Leipzig 1984, pp. 211, 247, 256, 324, 348, 354, 575 and 577.
• Sibylle Hinze: Antifascists in Camp Le Vernet. Outline of the history of the Le Vernet concentration camp 1939–1944 . Military Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-327-00508-7 , pp. 210 and 264.
• Doris Obschernitzki: Last Hope - Departure. The Les Milles brickworks 1939–1942. From the camp for unwanted foreigners to the deportation center . Hentrich and Hentrich, Teetz 1999, ISBN 3-933471-06-0 , p. 206.
• Gottfried Hamacher et al. (Ed.): Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement. Short biographies (series: Manuscripts / Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung , Volume 53) . 2., corr. Edition. Dietz, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-320-02941-X , pp. 40f.
• Callam, Albert . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , pp. 162f.