Alexander Schwab

Alexander Schwab (born July 5, 1887 in Stuttgart , † November 12, 1943 in Zwickau ) was a German communist politician and publicist.

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on Keithstrasse 8 in Berlin-Schöneberg

The son of a Kapellmeister studied philosophy , German studies , ancient languages, economics and sociology at the universities of Rostock , Jena , Heidelberg and Freiburg im Breisgau and was active in the free student body . After successfully completing his doctorate , he taught at the Free School Community of Wickersdorf and was one of the leading figures in the Free German youth (in 1913, he participated in the meeting on the Hoher Meissner ). Initially a war volunteer in 1914, Schwab was retired due to a lung disease, married the daughter of an admiralty, Hildegard Felisch, developed into an opponent of the war and joined the USPD in 1917 and the Spartakusbund in 1918 , where he became friends with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht .

As part of the Berlin KPD -Linken, he was one of the founding members of the KAPD in 1920 , on whose board he was temporarily represented and which he attended the III. Represented the Comintern Congress in Moscow . After his close friend Karl Schröder was expelled from the KAPD, he also left the KAPD in 1922 and withdrew from direct politics until the end of the 1920s. In the following years he worked as a journalist and mainly dealt with economics and architecture, for example in the magazine of the German Werkbund Die Form . From 1928 onwards, Schwab took part in discussions of the Social Science Association and later of the Council Communist Red Fighters , at first irregularly, then more frequently, and since 1929 he was the press chief of the Reichsanstalt für Arbeitsvermittlung and unemployment insurance .

After power had been transferred to the NSDAP , Schwab was released in April 1933 and held in protective custody for six months . After his wife's release and the death of his wife, he and Franz Jung founded an economic correspondence service in 1934 and reorganized the illegal work of the Red Fighters resistance movement, which he took over. In the context of the arrest of the organization management by the Gestapo in November 1936, Schwab was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for the high treason trial before the People's Court against the Red Fighters in October 1937. In the years that followed, he was imprisoned and tortured in the Brandenburg , Sonnenburg and Börgermoor concentration camps . According to official information , Schwab died of pneumonia in November 1943 in the Zwickau prison .

Alexander Schwab was the father of Hans Schwab-Felisch .

Works

• Furniture consumption and furniture production in Germany , Berlin: Siemenroth 1915 ( digitized ).
• Albert Sigrist: The book of building. Der Bücherkreis , Berlin 1930. (pseudonym)
• various articles in the magazine Arbeiter-Jugend. Hagen 1920–23, Giesen 1927.

literature

• Sarah M. Schlachetzki: "The question belongs here, but no longer the answer" - Alexander Schwab, business journalist and architecture critic in gloomy times. In: Work - Movement - History , Issue I / 2018, pp. 63–75.
• Diethart Kerbs : Lifelines. German biographies from the 20th century. With an afterword by Arno Klönne. Essen, Klartext-Verlag 2007. ISBN 3-89861-799-8
• Diethart Kerbs: Alexander Schwab (1887-1943). Architectural theorist, political educator, councilor communist, writer and resistance fighter. In: International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement (IWK). Berlin 2005, 4, pp. 487-495. ISSN  0046-8428 ( excerpt )
• Schwab, Alexander . 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 .

further reading

• Hans Manfred Bock : Syndicalism and Left Communism from 1918-1923. On the history and sociology of the Free Workers' Union of Germany (Syndicalists), the General Workers' Union of Germany and the Communist Workers' Party of Germany. Marburg treatises on political science. Vol. 13. Meisenheim / Glan 1969.
• Hans Manfred Bock: History of the 'left radicalism' in Germany. One try. Frankfurt / M. 1976.
• Olaf Ihlau : The Red Fighters. A contribution to the history of the labor movement in the Weimar Republic and in the “Third Reich”. Meisenheim am Glan 1969.
• Peter Friedemann, Uwe Schledorn: Active against the right. The Red Fighter - Marxist Workers' Newspaper 1930–1931. Essen 1994. ISBN 3-88474-033-4
• Jan Foitzik: Between the fronts. On the politics, organization and function of left political small organizations in the resistance from 1933 to 1939/40. Bonn 1986. ISBN 3-87831-439-6

Web links

Commons : Alexander Schwab  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Alexander Schwab in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center