Alwin Günther

Alwin Günther (1st from left) at the award of the Karl Marx Order (1976).

Alwin Günther (born April 21, 1906 in Viernau ; † August 15, 1979 ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ), anti-fascist resistance fighter and trade unionist ( FDGB ).

Life

Günther, the son of a wood turner , attended elementary school and learned the trade of toolmaker . From 1920 he was active as an athlete in the Workers' Athletes Association. In 1924 he became a member of the KPD and was organized as a union from 1925. From 1920 to 1929 he worked as a tool lathe operator in Zella-Mehlis and then became unemployed. In 1928 he was political leader of the KPD local group in Viernau. In 1931 he went to the Soviet Union and worked there as a tool lathe operator in a Moscow machine factory. In 1932 he became a member of the CPSU and from 1932 to 1936 attended the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West in Moscow.

From 1936 to 1939 he took part in the Spanish Civil War as an interbrigadist , first as an adjutant in the Tschapajew battalion (under the name Julius Lackner ), and later as party secretary in the Thälmann battalion and in Valencia . In 1939 Günther was interned in France , then he emigrated to Switzerland and stayed illegally in Basel . For a time he was head of the KPD emigration in Switzerland. In February 1942 he was arrested with Paul Meuter and others and later sentenced to six and a half years in prison. He was first imprisoned in Witzwil prison and then in the Gordola internment camp in Ticino . Here, too, he continued his illegal work.

In October 1945 he returned to Germany, in the Soviet Zone , and became first secretary of the KPD district leadership in Suhl . In 1946/47 he was first secretary of the SED district leadership in Suhl and in 1947 first secretary of the SED district leadership in Erfurt . From April 1947 to December 1949 he was organizational secretary of the SED state leadership in Thuringia . In 1949/50 he was secretary of the SED district leadership in Erfurt. At the beginning of 1951, due to his emigration to the West and alleged connection to a Trotskyist group in Switzerland ( Noel Field affair), he was dismissed from his position by decision of the ZPKK and delegated to the national party school. In 1951/52 he was secretary of the FDGB regional board of Thuringia, then in 1952 secretary of the central board of IG Metallurgie . Between 1953 and 1958 he served as the first chairman of the central board of IG Metallurgie and was a member of the presidium of the FDGB federal board. From 1958 to 1968 he was chairman of the FDGB district committee in Suhl as well as a member of the SED district leadership and a member of the district assembly. From 1961 to 1979 he was chairman of the DSF district board in Suhl and chairman of the commission for the care of deserving party members.

Alwin Günther was married to Loni Günther and had two children.

Awards

• Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze (1955), in silver (1959) and in gold (1971)
• Fritz Heckert Medal in Gold (1972)
• Gold medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit (1974)
• Karl Marx Order (1976)

literature

• Federal Ministry for All-German Issues (Ed.): SBZ biography . Deutscher Bundes-Verlag, Berlin 1964, p. 123.
• Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who . Part II. Arani-Verlag, Berlin-Grunewald 1965, p. 102.
• Siegfried Schlewe: Alwin Günther. Life picture ( contributions to the history of the local labor movement in the Suhl district , vol. 1). Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement, Suhl 1986.
• Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990. Volume 1: Abendroth - Lyr. KG Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11176-2 , pp. 259-260.
• Andreas Herbst , Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, Jürgen Winkler (eds.): The SED. History, organization, politics. A manual. Dietz, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-320-01951-1 , p. 961.
• Gottfried Hamacher et al. (Ed.): Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement. Short biographies (series: Manuscripts / Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung; Vol. 53) (PDF; 894 kB) Dietz, Berlin 2005, p. 72.
• Andreas Herbst: Günther, Alwin. In: Dieter Dowe , Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990). Berlin 2009.
• Günther's estate in the Thuringian State Archives Meiningen.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice in Neues Deutschland from August 22, 1979.