Alfred Kettig

Alfred Kettig (born September 23, 1903 in Staßfurt , † December 3, 1951 in Dessau ) was a German politician ( KPD ) and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . He was a member of the Landtag of the Free State of Anhalt .

Life

Kettig, the son of a blacksmith and a housewife, attended eight-year elementary school and then completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith in the Royal Prussian Berlepsch-Maybach mine in Staßfurt from 1917 to 1920 . In December 1918, Kettig joined the German Metalworkers' Association . Already during his apprenticeship he was involved as a youth representative in the function of the youth shop steward in his company. Kettig was also a member of the local cartel of the General German Trade Union Federation and was also involved as a youth representative. In 1920 Kettig was dismissed from the company for participating in a strike by potash miners. He then went to Unterbreizbach for assembly. In neighboring Philippsthal , Kettig organized a group of the Socialist Proletarian Youth (SPJ). In the same year he went to Nordhausen in Thuringia , where he worked for the construction and refrigeration industry Gepphardt und König. After organizing a strike here, he soon lost his job again. Kettig then worked as a conveyor man in the Immenrode potash mine near Wolkramshausen . A few months later he returned to Staßfurt and got involved in his old company as a welfare worker.

In the same year he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and was temporarily its second chairman in the Staßfurt branch. Kettig had previously led a group of the Socialist Proletarian Youth in Staßfurt. In 1920 he became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). Later he was sub-district manager of the KJVD in Staßfurt. Kettig was unemployed from 1922 to 1928. In 1922 he was delegated by the KPD to the Red Unemployment Committee. Initially, he was a youth representative there, and later became an honorary head of the unemployment counseling center. In August 1923, Kettig joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and initially actively participated as a youth representative. From 1925 to 1932 he acted as first chairman or political director of the subdistrict Staßfurt, Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, Thale of the KPD, and he was also a member of the KPD's Magdeburg-Anhalt district committee. On May 20, 1928, Kettig was elected to the Landtag of the Free State of Anhalt, to which he belonged until 1932. In 1932/33 he was an employee of the Kampfbund against fascism .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Kettig continued to work illegally for the KPD. On March 11, 1933, he was arrested in Aschersleben and transferred to Halberstadt . Kettig was one of the first 42 prisoners taken by the SA to the Oranienburg concentration camp . Because of high treason , however, accused his procedure had to be dropped by the Supreme Court in Leipzig due to lack of evidence. Kettig was not released, however, but remained imprisoned as a " protective prisoner " in the Oranienburg concentration camp.

As a former member of the KPD in the Anhalt state parliament, he was particularly harassed. Together with eleven other former members of the KPD and SPD - including Paul Kmiec (KPD), Friedrich Ebert junior (SPD) and Ernst Heilmann (SPD) - Kettig was driven through Oranienburg by SA men in front of the population and forced to issue election posters, Remove the remains of posters and stickers from past election campaigns. After Gerhart Seger , a former SPD member of the state parliament, managed to escape from the Oranienburg concentration camp in December 1933, Kettig was treated and guarded particularly severely. Together with Heilmann he had to do penal work.

At the beginning of 1934, Kettig was transferred to the Roßlau concentration camp , and in August 1934 to the Lichtenburg concentration camp . Finally, in October 1934, he came to the Columbia-Haus concentration camp in Berlin . The guards publicly flogged Kettig and other comrades for alleged mutiny. Then Kettig was mistreated for weeks and in February 1935 transferred back to the Lichtenburg concentration camp for so-called "special training". This training consisted of excruciating "sports exercises". After that, Kettig had to do heavy duty in the laundry and in a work gang. On December 12, 1935, Kettig was released from the Lichtenburg concentration camp. From 1935 to 1937 he had to work as a street sweeper and cleaner for public toilets in Staßfurt. From 1937 he worked in the soda factory in Staßfurt . Here he made contact with communists and social democrats again. Kettig was denounced and arrested again in 1940. He was sentenced to one and a half years in prison and imprisoned in Magdeburg . During his imprisonment he had to search for and dig for duds in the Magdeburg area. After his release from prison in September 1942, Kettig worked for Walter Müller in Magdeburg in a small company. During this time, Kettig made contact with Hans and Albert Schlee, Walter and Arthur Bobe, Philipp Danz, Friedrich Rödel and Fritz Bruse. Together they founded the “Bund Free Germany” group and established connections to numerous other resistance groups. On January 5, 1944, Kettig was pressed into the penalty battalion 999 in Baumholder . His unit was used from June 1944 in the Balkans for mine-laying and road safety. In the autumn of 1944 he was transferred to northern Greece, where he had to work in the armory. While the Wehrmacht was in retreat , the SS arrested him on February 17, 1945 in Sarajewo for his leading position in the “Bund Free Germany” group and transferred him to Magdeburg. On April 3, 1945, he was handed over to the Gestapo , who took Kettig, who was suffering from malaria and weakened, to a court hospital.

Liberated by US troops on April 13, 1945, Kettig organized the reconstruction of the KPD in Magdeburg, then in Staßfurt. He became organizational secretary of the Magdeburg subdistrict of the KPD, then an instructor in Zerbst . Kettig was also given the task of preparing the unions' agreement. He was honored for his commitment at the first district conference of the newly founded Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB). From 1946 Kettig worked as an instructor for the SED district leadership in Dessau. At the end of 1946 he took part in a course to train district party school leaders. In 1947 he became head of the newly founded business school of the Polysius company in Dessau, and from 1948 he was the training manager of the consumer cooperative in Dessau. From October 1949 he acted as first secretary of the SED's works party organization at VEB Filmfabrik Wolfen .

Kettig died on December 3, 1951, at the age of only 48, due to his poor health from years of imprisonment, abuse and service in the penal battalion.

literature

• Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdL The end of the parliaments in 1933 and the members of the state parliaments and citizenships of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-7700-5189-0 , p. 80.
• Kettig, Alfred . 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 , p. 445.
• Andreas Schmidt: "... ride with you or be thrown off". The compulsory unification of KPD and SPD in the province of Saxony / in the state of Saxony-Anhalt 1945–1949 (= research on the latest history , volume 2). LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7066-9 , pp. 54f.

Web links

• Andreas Möller: Kettig, Alfred . On the page “The political prisoners of the Oranienburg concentration camp” of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation.