Alfred Baumann (politician, 1895)

Alfred Baumann

Friedrich Alfred Baumann (born October 18, 1895 in Lützen ; † February 12, 1961 there ) was a German politician , editor , columnist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Organized in the SPD from 1913 , he switched to the USPD in 1919 and finally joined the KPD in 1921 . Alfred Baumann performed important functions in the socialist youth movement, the party and the trade union.

Until 1933 he worked, among other things, as the main cashier of the KPD, sub-district leader in the Merseburg-Querfurt area and as a parliamentary group leader of the KPD's municipal council in the city of Lützen. He was also the editor-in-chief of the KPD's local newspaper “Roter Beobachter”, which appeared until mid-1933. As an advocate of the labor movement, he was persecuted by the judiciary of the Nazi regime and was imprisoned in a concentration camp. After the liberation from National Socialism in 1945, he devoted himself to the development of democratic administrative bodies, took on leading functions in economic development and took an active part in the unification of the KPD and SPD parties to form the SED .

Until his death he was a member of the district and district commission and local leadership of the SED in the city of Lützen.

family

Alfred Baumann was the son of the farm laborer Karl Friedrich Baumann (* 1863; † 1896) and Friederike Baumann, b. Thieme (* 1863; † unknown).

On May 22nd, 1920 he married Ottilie Just. From this marriage the sons Ernst Baumann, Hans Baumann and the daughter Sonja Baumann were born.

Professional background

School, apprenticeship, job until 1933

Alfred Baumann attended elementary school in Lützen from 1903 to 1910 and began an apprenticeship as a building, furniture and coffin carpenter in 1910 with master carpenter Franz Voigt in Lützen, which he successfully completed in 1913. Until his entry into the military in 1915, he worked for the cabinet maker Artur Hubert in Leipzig .

In 1915 he was drafted into the military, in the 2nd bicycle company, Jägerbataillon 4. When the November Revolution broke out, he refused service, so he retired from the military in 1918 without promotion.

Between 1918 and 1921 he worked as a shop steward in the woodworking workshop building 22. He was dismissed without notice due to his participation in a general strike , the suppression of the Kapp Putsch , and the fighting for Leuna in the course of the March fighting .

After his dismissal in 1921, he worked as an oven worker in the Öbles Schlechtewitz fireclay factory and in the Lützen sugar factory. This was again followed by the dismissal for organizing a strike.

In 1922 he found work in his original profession at the furniture joinery Wilhelm Borsdorff in Merseburg. Due to the appointment by the district management of the KPD to the sales point manager of the consumer and savings cooperative Merseburg, he quit his job in 1927. In the course of his cooperative activities he was delegated to the Soviet Union in 1929 . He worked as a sales point manager until 1931 and resigned himself due to operational restrictions.

Professional career 1933–1945

Alfred Baumann was unemployed until 1935. In the meantime, there was a compulsory vocational retraining with the glider pilot group. By accepting emergency work in Lützen (raft ditch feasting), he was able to free himself from forced labor.

On March 5, 1933, Alfred Baumann - as well as numerous other comrades - was arrested for violating the Truce Act and taken to the Naumburg judicial prison, where he spent 4 months. He was then for 6 months until his release in the Lichtenburg concentration camp , Prettin laid.

After his release he worked as a motorway builder, lime kiln worker and finally as a carpenter again. He was dismissed in 1936 on the grounds that he was unworthy of participating in the March fighting in this company. A four-day interrogation followed.

From 1936 to 1945 he worked in his old company - Borsdorff in Merseburg. In 1939 he was drafted into military service and removed from the Wehrmacht in 1940 . Between 1943 and 1944 he was forced to carry out cleanup work in the bombing areas in Duisburg and Nuremberg .

Time as mayor 1945–1950

In 1945 the KPD's Halle district management appointed him mayor of Lützen and, at the same time, district mayor of the Soviet commander's area of ​​Lützen. Due to an anonymous political attack, he voluntarily resigned from his office in 1950. During his time as mayor, 1948–1949, he also studied at the German Administration Academy Forst Zinna .

Worked for Wismut AG 1950–1957

In 1950, at his own request, he followed the call to “Functionaries to Wismut nach Aue ”, where he and his son Ernst worked on a voluntary basis as a carpenter for the roller construction in shaft 158, object 1, until the end of 1950. He was then appointed full-time first secretary of shaft 147, object 1. From August 1951 he took on leading positions as assistant to the director at HO Wismut and then as general manager of Aue. In 1951 he was appointed director of Object 90 in Gera. He had to resign from office in 1952 due to heart damage caused by oxyd gas poisoning.

By decision of the central executive committee of the industrial union Wismut, he took on tasks as an instructor in Karl-Marx-Stadt , u. a. as deputy head of department and first consultant of the central board. He also worked at the union and political level of the central executive committee as a circle leader in the party apprenticeship year, group organizer and departmental party secretary. From 1956 he worked as chief inspector in the main personnel office of the Soviet-German General Directorate. He gave up this post after a serious industrial accident.

Political career

Activities up to his arrest in 1933

In November 1913 Alfred Baumann became a member of the Social Democratic Party, local group Lützen and at the same time a member of the woodworkers' association, paying agency Lützen. He was entrusted with the management of the socialist youth in the Lützen area. From 1919 to the end of 1920 he was a member of the USPD , joined the KPD on January 1, 1921, and worked as a senior functionary on a voluntary basis on a local, district and district scale until March 5, 1933. There he held functions as the main cashier, youth leader, polling officer of the local group Lützen, area manager, and functionary in the cultural and sports movement.

From 1929 to 1933 Alfred Baumann was parliamentary group leader of the city council of the KPD in Lützen. From 1931 to 1932 he headed the Merseburg-Querfurt subdistrict and was the editor in charge of the local newspaper “Roter Beobachter”, which appeared until February 1933. For the local elections on March 5, 1933, he stood up as the top candidate of the district list. He was arrested before the election was over.

Illegal activities until 1945

Baumann's illegal activities began during the ban on the KPD between 1923 and 1924. Under the leadership of Bernhard Koenens , the party held illegally secret meetings and training courses on the outskirts of the city. From December 1931 to February 1933 the local newspaper "Roter Beobachter" appeared illegally. Their publication could not be prevented in the Weimar Republic, despite the mobilization of all instances. After Baumann's arrest in 1933, the printing works' machines were brought to safety from the Nazis. Alfred Baumann was brought to the Merseburg police barracks with other comrades and later transferred to the Lichtenburg concentration camp in Prettin. He was released on December 23, 1933.

In 1936 he made illegal contact with former employees of the district. Together with another comrade, Baumann was sent to the Duisburg bomb area in 1943 for the purpose of clean-up work. After he was forcibly sent to Nuremberg in 1944, he and former comrades formed a new group. They maintained constant information among themselves and kept in contact with Russian prisoners of war whom the group got to know during the forced labor.

Together with former comrades of the KPD, Baumann planned to rebuild the local group of the KPD Lützen. On May 1, 1945 - Lützen was under American occupation - he illegally held a May Day celebration in his apartment with the aim of drawing up initial guidelines for party work. The first regional conference for Lützen was held in mid-May. Alfred Baumann was elected political director there. After the party work became known to the Americans, Baumann was able to evade arrest and remained illegally underground until the Americans withdrew. With the occupation of the area by the Red Army , Baumann took over the leadership of the KPD and the anti-fascist movement.

Municipal activities in the Merseburg district until 1950

When the Soviet authorities moved in, Alfred Baumann was active as a consultant and organizer of the anti-fascist front. As district leader of the KPD, he organized the district committee - the later district administration. He became a member of the district and district soil commission and worked on behalf of the district president Otto Gotsche on the land reform of the administrative district. In the district administration he became deputy chairman of the "Social Committee", member of the "District Committee of Victims of Fascism ", local chairman of the People's Solidarity and chairman of the "Volksbühne und Volkshochschule" established by Baumann.

Municipal and political work at Wismut AG

During his work at Wismut AG in Objekt 1, Baumann was a member of the Object Party leadership, in the party apprenticeship year a circle leader for CPSU advanced students, a member of the propagandist activists, as well as an honorary lecturer for history at the mountain seminar. After the local elections in 1950, he made his experience in local politics available to the city administration of Johanngeorgenstadt . Until he was called to the Wismut HO he was chairman of the main committee - connected to the finance, control and complaints committee.

As director of HGL Gera , he worked with the Objekt-Party and the Objekt 90 union management. He continued to work as a circle leader and lecturer, led in Gera u. a. a 6-week day school course to prepare for the third year of the party apprenticeship and worked with the Soviet facility management. In Karl-Marx-Stadt he worked with the district leadership and the regional party leadership. He also held a 4-week seminar for the 4th year of party training in 1954 in Karl-Marx-Stadt.

Awards

Alfred Baumann at the award of the "Patriotic Order of Merit" in silver

• 1960 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• Medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
• Medal for participation in the armed struggles of the German working class from 1918 to 1923
• Name of the local school in Lützen in "POS Alfred Baumann" (posthumous)

Writings / columns

• November Revolution 1918 in Lützen (Weißenfelser Heimatbote)
• The rebuilding in the city of Lützen after the collapse of the Hitler regime with the help of the Soviet Union (Weißenfelser Heimatbote)

Web links

Commons : Alfred Baumann (politician, SED)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files