Alfred Levy (politician)

Alfred Levy (born January 6, 1885 in Hamburg , † May 28, 1938 in Butowo , Soviet Union ) was a German communist politician.

Life

Levy, who came from a strictly religious Jewish merchant family with many children, attended the Talmud Torah School , which he left without a degree. Levy opposed religious upbringing at an early age, but later always attached importance to the statement that he was non-denominational and not religious . After leaving school, he completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter and book printer and went on a hike after graduation . a. to France, Italy and the Habsburg Empire. In 1904 in Mannheim he was one of the founders of a socialist youth organization, was the editor of their organ Junge Garde and temporarily employed by the local social democratic people's newspaper . In 1909 Levy returned to Hamburg, where he worked in his former teaching company and married Anna Vieregg . His son Hans was born in 1911 .

Levy was drafted into the military in 1915 and served on the Western Front and in Romania during World War I , where he was seriously wounded. After a stay in the hospital he was used as a guard and in supply. As an opponent of the SPD's truce policy , Levy left the party in 1916 and was elected to the soldiers 'council in Brussels at the beginning of the November Revolution and to the soldiers' council in Hamburg after returning to his home town. There Levy joined the USPD in 1918 . In the following year he joined the KPD , here Levy, who had found a job with the welfare authority and later with the employment office, was mainly active in socio-political issues and in educational work.

During the riots that followed the Kapp Putsch , Levy took part as leader of a demonstration. Levy was arrested and sentenced to a three-year prison term because the demonstration ended in armed fighting. Due to the commitment of Erich Ziegel and his candidacy for the Hamburg citizenship , Levy was released early. In 1921 Levy moved into the state parliament as a successor (to which he belonged until 1927), where he expressed himself in debates mainly on socio-political issues. After Levy is leading in the Hamburg uprising was involved in October 1923 he was arrested on November 3 and January 1925 Urbahns process condemned as one of the main accused to four years' imprisonment, which he served until his amnesty in May 1926th As a temporary supporter of the inner-party left opposition around Hugo Urbahns against the party leadership around Ernst Thälmann , Levy was no longer put up as a candidate for the mayor elections in 1927. Levy remained in the KPD and was involved in organizing strikes, for example in the Zwickau textile industry and in the Hamburg harbor, where he worked temporarily as a showman .

After the NSDAP came to power , Levy was arrested at the end of March 1933 and initially held in the remand prison on Holstenglacis and, after being sentenced to three years in prison for preparation for high treason, temporarily held in Wittmoor concentration camp. In the following years Levy, who suffered from a serious stomach disease and therefore received several exemptions , was imprisoned in various prisons. In 1935 he was taken to Eppendorfer Hospital for a serious operation . From there, Levy managed to escape, went into hiding for a short time in Hamburg and finally fled via Berlin to Prague in June of the same year. The following year he moved to Moscow , where he gave a speech on the local radio in 1936 on the occasion of the execution of Etkar André .

In 1938 Levy fell into the Stalinist purges , was arrested by the NKVD in March , expelled from the KPD, sentenced to death and shot in Butowo. In 1957, Soviet agencies posthumously rehabilitated Alfred Levy.

literature

• Short biography in Frank Müller: Members of the citizenry. Victim of totalitarian persecution. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Published by the citizens of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Hamburg 1995, DNB 944894100 , pp. 54-56.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 , pp. 454–455 online .