Anton Switalla

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Anton Switalla , actually Stachus Switalla (born October 6, 1896 in Koschmin ; † April 8, 1970 in Berlin ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism , a functionary of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He was major general of the People's Police and from 1959 to 1964 head of the cadre department of the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR.

Life

The son of a construction worker and a farm worker became an apprentice in a potash mine near Fallersleben after attending primary school in 1909 . From 1912 to 1915 Switalla went on a journey and worked in various professions. From 1915 to 1918 he fought on the Western Front in World War I and acquired the rank of private .

From 1918 to 1921 Switalla worked as a smelter in Hamburg . In 1920 Switalla joined the USPD , then the KPD and became chairman of the KPD local group in Schiffbek . In 1923, as head of operations in Schiffbek, he was significantly involved in the Hamburg uprising . In consequence of Switalla was arrested in 1924 and to five years imprisonment convicted. Switalla was imprisoned in Gollnow until December 1926 and was then released due to an amnesty .

In 1927 and 1928 he was secretary of the KPD district management Hamburg-Barmbek , 1928 to 1931 secretary of the sub-district management Harburg-Wilhelmsburg and from 1927 to 1933 a member of the district management of the KPD Wasserkante. In 1929 Switalla was sentenced to nine months in prison for " resisting state power " and served her in Hamburg-Altona . In 1931 Switalla stayed temporarily in the Soviet Union and attended a military political school in Moscow . From 1932 to 1933 he was secretary of the KPD leadership in the Altona sub-district .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , Switalla also supported the KPD in illegality and became political secretary in Bremen and later in Saarland . In 1935 Switalla emigrated to the Soviet Union and took Soviet citizenship. Until 1937 he was a union instructor for foreign workers in a locomotive plant in Voroshilovgrad . Between June 1937 and February 1939 Switalla took part in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the International Brigades . Among other things, he was political commissar of an officer's school in Pozo Rubio .

After fleeing to France in 1939, Switalla was arrested there. He was interned in the Saint-Cyprien , Gurs and Le Vernet camps until 1941 . Until May 1943 Switalla sat in the desert camp in Djelfa in Algeria . He was released in 1943, served briefly in the British Army and then emigrated again to the Soviet Union via Iran . In January 1944, Switalla became a seminar leader at the Antifa School of POW Camp No. 165 in Vyazniki .

On May 6, 1945 Switalla returned to Germany as a member of the Sobottka group . In December 1945 he became attorney general for Mecklenburg . From 1945 to 1949 he was a member of the state executive committee of the KPD / SED and from 1946 to 1950 first secretary of the SED district leadership in Schwerin . In 1950 Switalla joined the People's Police and was deputy chief of the People's Police in Saxony for political culture with the rank of VP Inspector until 1952 . Afterwards he was deputy head of the political administration in the main administration of the German People's Police (HVDVP) in Berlin until September 1955 . In 1954, Switalla temporarily moved to the State Secretariat for State Security . On August 30, 1955, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED decided to appoint Anton Switalla and Erhardt Hentschel as chief inspectors of the VP. He was then head of the main personnel department until August 1959 and, with the rank of major general, head of the cadre administration of the GDR Interior Ministry until 1964. In 1964 Switalla resigned from his functions for reasons of age and lived in Eichwalde until his death.

The Colonel of the MfS Eduard Switalla was his son.

Honors

literature

  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume I - Politics, economy, public life . KG Saur Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , p. 752 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Peter Erler :  Anton Switalla . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst: German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online [accessed June 15, 2012]).
  • Gottfried Hamacher with the assistance of André Lohmar, Herbert Mayer, Günter Wehner and Harald Wittstock: Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement, short biographies. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-320-02941-X online (PDF; 894 kB)
  • Andreas Herbst (eds.), Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 3: Lexicon of functionaries (= rororo manual. Vol. 6350). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16350-0 , p. 338.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Protocol No. 40/55 of the Politburo (Federal Archives)
  2. ^ New Germany of October 7, 1966 and April 13, 1970
  3. ^ New Germany of May 7, 1955
  4. ^ New Times of October 6, 1964
personal data
SURNAME Switalla, Anton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Switalla, Stachus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD and SED functionary, head of the management department of the GDR Interior Ministry
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Koschmin
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1970
Place of death Berlin