Arthur Dahlke

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Arthur Dahlke (born February 28, 1887 in Spandau , † December 8, 1952 in Berlin ) was a German politician of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In 1920/21 he was a member of the Berlin city council and after the Second World War he was a covert informant of the East Office of the SPD in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and fled to West Berlin in 1947 due to imminent arrest .

Life

Dahlke, the son of a locksmith , started training as a typesetter in a bookshop in Berlin after elementary school . In 1906 he went on a journey through several countries. During the First World War , Dahlke was conscripted and worked in the royal rifle factory in Spandau until he was drafted in 1917 . After the end of the First World War, Dahlke was a member of the workers' council in Spandau and in 1919 a member of the Spandau city ​​council .

In 1919 Dahlke became editor of the USPD newspaper Freiheit and employee of the Berlin local administration of the German Metal Workers' Association (DMV). In 1920 and 1921 Dahlke was a member of the USPD parliamentary group in the Berlin city council.

In 1920 Dahlke turned back to the SPD and was editor of various SPD newspapers in several cities until 1929. In 1929 he became an employee at the Berlin-Northwest employment office in Spandau. In 1931 he started his own bookstore, which he ran until the Nazis came to power in 1933. After that, Dahlke was unemployed until 1938. In 1938 he was committed to the Reich Labor Service and drafted into the German armed forces in 1944. At the end of World War II Dahlke came in Belgium in British captivity , from which he was released 1946th

In January 1946 Dahlke returned to Berlin and became a member of the SPD and after the compulsory merger of the SPD and KPD into the SED in the same year, a member. On the mediation of Max Fechner , Dahlke was from April 1946, with Anton Plenikowski, equal head of the state politics and state administration department in the central secretariat of the SED party executive in East Berlin .

Since the end of the war, Dahlke had established contacts with the SPD in West Germany and West Berlin. He covertly worked as an informant for the SPD's east office, which was supposed to support resistance against the SED dictatorship . In November 1947, Dahlke was warned of the threat of arrest by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the USSR (NKVD) and fled to West Berlin. From 1948 to 1952 he was an employee at the employment office in Berlin-Wedding and at the German salaried workers' union , most recently at the salvage and supply office in West Berlin.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Kubina, From Utopia, Resistance and Cold War , LIT Verlag Münster, 2001
personal data
SURNAME Dahlke, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (USPD / SED), informant of the East Office of the SPD
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Spandau
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1952
Place of death Berlin