Arthur Ullrich

This article describes the politician Arthur Ullrich. For the soccer player see Artur Ullrich ; on the lawyer see Arthur Ulrich .

Arthur Ullrich (born March 26, 1894 in Görlitz , † June 16, 1969 in Dresden ) was a German politician. He was a member of the KPD in the Reichstag . From 1933 to 1945 he was imprisoned in several concentration camps. After the Second World War he was a functionary of the SED .

Life

Arthur Ullrich's father was a bricklayer, his mother a housewife. When the father died in 1897, he left three more children with him and their mother as a destitute widow. From 1900 to 1908 Ullrich attended elementary school in Görlitz. He successfully completed his subsequent apprenticeship as an electrician at Strobach in 1912. At the same time, Arthur Ullrich qualified in the form of evening and Sunday courses at the mechanical engineering school. This was followed by his wandering , as was customary in his time after learning a trade. He lived through the First World War from 1915 to 1918 as a soldier. From 1913 to 1915 and from 1918 to 1921 he worked for the Strobach company. In 1922 he moved to the Roscher machine factory as a mechanical engineer, and from 1934 to 1937 he worked again at Strobach.

Influenced by his war experiences, he began to act as chairman of a soldiers' council in 1918 . At the same time he became a member of the union and the USPD . As an employee of the weekly Freie Wort , his political work intensified. In 1920 he was one of the initiators of the unification with the KPD and did three years of leadership work for the communist movement in Görlitz in this party. As early as 1920 he became head of the KPD local group. From 1922 to 1924 he was also a member of the Cottbus district management of the KPD and from 1925 to 1933 he worked in the Breslau district management . From 1924 as a city councilor, he was the second KPD candidate in the constituency of Liegnitz in all Reichstag elections and was finally elected to the Reichstag in 1933 . When the fascists came to power in January 1933, Arthur Ullrich was immediately involved in reorganizing political work into illegality.

In April 1933 he was arrested and deported to the Breslau-Dürrgoy concentration camp . He was later imprisoned in the Esterwegen concentration camp , one of the Emsland camps. After his release from prison in 1934 he was one of the leaders of the Görlitz resistance group "Peter" together with Ernst Wüsten , the youngest brother of Johannes Wüsten , a Görlitz artist and anti-fascist, and Liesbeth Rösner . It was the fifth and largest resistance group and had formed after Johannes Wüsten emigrated to Prague . Under Arthur Ullrich's direction and in collaboration with the student Ernst Wüsten, the group disseminated resistance literature and promoted the illegal establishment of the KPD. In 1937 Arthur Ullrich was arrested again and sentenced to one year in prison; after serving his sentence, he was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp . Here he took part in the resistance work in a camp electrician. When most of the SS guards had fled the approaching 3rd US Army , he was involved in the prisoners taking over the camp.

After his liberation, Ullrich returned to Görlitz, became chairman of the KPD district organization and was head of the personnel office of the Görlitz city administration from June to August 1945. After the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD in 1946 to form the SED , he was parity from 1946 to the beginning of 1949, and from 1949 sole chairman of the SED. From 1946 to 1949 he was a city councilor. From 1948 to 1958 he was a member of the secretariat of the SED regional leadership in Saxony and the office of the SED district leadership in Dresden. 1951/52 he was chairman of the council of the Meissen district. From 1949 to 1952 he acted as chairman of the state party control commission of Saxony, from 1952 to 1958 as chairman of the district party control commission of Dresden of the SED. From 1958 to 1960 he was chairman of the revision commission of the SED district leadership in Dresden .

Awards and honors

• Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver (1955) and Gold (1965)
• Karl Marx Order (1969)
• Order " Banner of Labor "
• A street in Görlitz-Rauschwalde is named after Arthur Ullrich.

literature

• Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990 . Volume 2: Maassen - Zylla . KG Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-11177-0 , p. 950.
• Ullrich, Arthur . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Erich Feuerriegel: From the history of Görlitz street names . Volume 2: Streets and squares related to history . 1st edition. Stadtbild-Verlag, Görlitz 2008, ISBN 978-3-939655-80-0 .