Alexander Futran

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Alexander Owsej Futran (born August 18, 1879 in Odessa , Russia , † March 21, 1920 in Koepenick near Berlin ) was an engineer and a local politician for the USPD in Berlin who was murdered by members of the voluntary corps in the Kapp Putsch .

Life

Memorial stone on Futranplatz, in Berlin-Koepenick

Origin and history

Futran, son of a Russian petty bourgeois family, studied in Berlin , Munich and Karlsruhe and founded an engineering office with his brother Simon Futran. In November 1914, in protest against the war, Futran joined the newly founded pacifist Bund New Fatherland , to which Kurt Eisner , Albert Einstein , Ludwig Quidde and Gustav Landauer also belonged. The federal government advocated peaceful international understanding and was banned in 1916. As a Russian citizen initially interned during the First World War , Futran is said to have been appointed as Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Education after the November Revolution, but was removed from office after a short time. He is considered to be one of the founders and editors of the workers' newspaper Der Volksbote .

Alexander Futran was elected its chairman in 1917 by the members of the USPD in the city of Köpenick. At the same time he came to the municipal parliament as a city councilor.

The Köpenicker Bloody Sunday

On March 12, 1920 at around 10 p.m., the Ehrhardt naval brigade formed in front of the Döberitz camp to march on Berlin. In order to be able to ruthlessly break any resistance, Korvettenkapitän Ehrhardt assigned a 10.5 cm howitzer battery to the storm company marching in front.

While "Vorwärts" was printing the headline for the March 13 issue: "The Republic is in Danger!", Ehrhardt's troops were already standing at the Brandenburg Gate under the imperial war flag . The government of the "Weimar Coalition" under Chancellor Gustav Bauer , SPD had fled. With the slogan "Troop do not shoot troops!" General von Seeckt refused to use the Reichswehr to suppress the putsch.

Wolfgang Kapp took over the leadership of the putsch government. The fled government, SPD and trade unions called for a general strike. On March 14th and 15th, the general strike against the putschist government had reached a social breadth not seen before in Germany. The city of Köpenick at the gates of Berlin was also affected by the events. At first the city tour was confused here too. Hoped-for instructions on how to behave towards the putschists did not come from either the government or the parties. In this situation, workers and employees resorted to self-help and armed themselves. On March 15, the Albatros shipyard was attacked by around 20 armed workers and the soldiers stationed there disarmed. The alarmed police could only achieve through negotiations with the city councilor Otto Nickel (SPD) that he agreed to store the weapons in the 1st community school in the Amtsstraße. Due to the pressure of the workers, these weapons were finally given out to the workers under the control of the city councilor Alfred Rebe (KPD). In parallel to the spontaneous actions of the workers, negotiations were running in the Köpenick magistrate about the creation of a resident guard .

Since the dispute over the equal distribution of arms between supporters of the various workers' parties and the bourgeois parties could not be settled, a resident army was not formed. However, as rumors of troops looting in the area increased, the magistrate agreed to the reinforcement of the guards at the food depots by armed workers. On March 16, the "Socialist Defense Committee" was founded at Alter Markt 3, in the Fuchs bar, by representatives of the USPD and KPD. City councilor Alexander Futran became chairman, and city councilor Alfred Rebe (KPD) became the military leader. The committee's sphere of activity went beyond Köpenick - it affected the entire south-eastern apron of Berlin. Combat groups were formed and barricades were erected to defend the city entrances. The influx of armed forces was so great that a recruiting office under the direction of Richard Schulz (USPD) had to be set up in the Scheer restaurant on Köllnischer Platz. From here the fighters were distributed to the individual guards. A guard was posted at the school in Glienicker Strasse and a. the task of guarding the Bion grain mill on Grünauer Strasse. Another guard was at the school on Borgmannstrasse.

Futran's armed force consisted of around 1,000 armed men. Weapons were available: approx. 15 light machine guns, 10 heavy machine guns, 1050 carbines, approx. 100 pistols, 2 flamethrowers and 2 mine throwers.

The restless days were accompanied by rallies on Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz (today Futranplatz ). Speeches, mostly attended by workers, had been held regularly since 1918 in the Stadttheater ("Klein's Hotel") on Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz. Since the event room often turned out to be too small, thousands of people (around 20,000 craftsmen and industrial workers lived in Köpenick at that time) were standing in front of the bar and listening to Futran, who was well-educated and a popular speaker. Under his leadership, the USPD had become the strongest party in Koepenick, although it was probably no larger than the SPD with around 800 members.

Since it was not clear whether the uniformed men in town were holding their hats or not, they were disarmed and taken to the police prison, which was then still in the town hall. Later the 35 prisoners were transferred to the district court prison. From here, Futran organized the resistance against the Kapp Putsch . He became head of the Köpenicker defense committee that the units of the Reichswehr , which Köpenick to Berlin to support the insurgent Free Corps repulsed wanted to march. After a bogus telephone call on March 19 stating that the coup was over, Futran ordered the vigilante group to be disbanded.

When the news came from Adlershof that putschists had holed up in the large Johannisthal tank farm, Köpenicker, Grünauer and Bohnsdorf fighters hurried to the aid of the Adlershofers in their armed conflict with parts of the Lützow Freikorps . In addition to these activities by the armed groups, which - due to the lack of intelligence - were not coordinated, the magistrate and the defense committee tried again and again to obtain information about the political situation from Berlin. Since shootings were repeatedly heard in the vicinity of Koepenick, there was great uncertainty and unclear whether the military deployed was a volunteer corps or government troops.

In their assessment, Futran and his people tended towards irregular troops, but the 1st Mayor of Köpenick, Behnke, was of the opinion that government troops were on the march. In order to avoid an armed confrontation between the fighters of the Defense Committee and the government troops, Behnke urged Futran to lay down their arms. This stance was reinforced by city councilor Emil Lampe (USPD), who had been sent to Berlin to sound out the situation and who now announced that the coup had collapsed and that the general strike could therefore be suspended. Futran, who basically also preferred nonviolent action, then ordered against the will of Rebes and other militants to lay down their arms and assume that troops of the legitimate government of the city were approaching. On Sunday, March 21, 1920, the 2nd Company of the Reichswehr Rifle Battalion No. 15 from Lichterfelde, reinforced by so-called volunteers (mostly students), marched into Köpenick without a fight. Just like the putschists who entered Berlin on March 13 to overthrow the legitimate government, they wore white swastikas painted on their steel helmets, because the company had submitted to the putschist government on the previous days. When asked if they supported the rightful government, the soldiers replied that they were only for their officers.

The Köpenickers did not understand that the political situation had fundamentally changed within a few hours: After the collapse of the coup on the evening of March 17, Reich President Friedrich Ebert and the new Reich Defense Minister Otto Gessler had declared a state of siege. As a result, anyone found with gun in hand could be shot dead. This order also affected the armed workers who had come together to defend the Bauer government and Reich President Ebert. The associations that had marched out with the putschists a few days earlier and are now subordinate to the government took advantage of this situation to take action against the workers and take revenge for the defeat they had suffered in the coup.

On March 21, Futran was summoned to the town hall and immediately brought to court. As a Jew and a socialist, he had no chance of a fair defense before this court, which consisted of the company commander, Captain Egon von Loebell, Lieutenant Kubich, Sergeant Hedal, and Jacks, a volunteer. Lieutenant Kubich commanded the shooting of Futrans in the courtyard of the then branch of the Bötzow brewery at Grünauer Strasse 74 (today No. 21). The murder was glorified with a counter-revolutionary battle song by the Jäger Battalion in the 9th Potsdam Infantry Regiment , which Loebell's company took over in the same year. It culminated in the verse: "Next to Futran on the dung, there were many Bolsheviks ."

The murderers did not hesitate to desecrate Futran's corpse and to extort 200 marks from his wife, mother of three, on the pretext that her husband had been transferred to the Moabit prison . Futran's body was found in the courtyard of the Bötzow brewery on Grünauer Strasse.

Honors

On July 31, 1947, the square in Köpenick, which was laid out in 1894 and named after Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg , was renamed after Alexander Futran. The memorial stone that already existed here had been used for this purpose. Previous inscriptions were chiseled off, but new bronze letters and a portrait medallion above them were added. The inscription now reads:

"Alexander Futran. Our workers leader who was murdered in the Kapp Putsch on March 21, 1920. "

Another memorial stone in Berlin-Grünau commemorates the Köpenick victims of the Kapp Putsch .

Location of Futranplatz: 52 ° 26 ′ 47.8 ″  N , 13 ° 34 ′ 44.1 ″  E

For a while, a passenger ship called the Alexander Futran operated on Berlin's waters . Before 2004, the motor ship of the shipping company Spree & Havelschiffahrt Grimm & Lindecke, originally put into service in 1936 under the name Stolzenfels, was given the new name Pinguin after several renaming .

Works

  • Political relativism . Charlottenburg without a year

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Ehrhardt , Friedrich Frecksa (ed.): Captain Ehrhardt, adventure and fate. Berlin 1924, p. 175.
  2. ↑ Ship names on berliner-verkehr.de, accessed on November 25, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Futran, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Futran, Alexander Owsej (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (USDP)
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Odessa
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1920
Place of death Berlin