Artur Koenig (politician)

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Arthur King

Artur Koenig (also Arthur König ; born April 18, 1884 in Breslau , † 1945 (?) In Strausberg ) was a German politician ( KPD ). He was a member of the Reichstag , a member of the headquarters and chief cashier of the KPD.

Life

King graduated from elementary school . He worked in machine and paper mills, later also as a house servant and newspaper delivery man. After he had acquired extensive knowledge through self-study, he finally worked as a bookseller.

From 1904, König was unionized and joined the SPD in the same year . From 1912 he was employed in an SPD bookstore in Dortmund . During the First World War he was a soldier on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918 . In September 1918, König deserted and joined the Spartacus group. As a representative of Dortmund, König took part in the founding party conference of the KPD (December 31, 1918 - January 1, 1919) in Berlin . In 1920 he became chairman of the party in Essen and its full-time secretary. During the Ruhr War in 1920 he played an important role in the Red Ruhr Army .

On the VI. Party congress of the KPD (December 4-7, 1920 in Berlin), the unification party congress of the KPD and the left-wing USPD , and at the VII. Party congress in Jena in August 1921 , he was elected to the party's central committee. From 1922 he headed the KPD sub-district of Dortmund as secretary , in 1923 he became the organ leader of the upper district west and on May 17, 1923, as a representative of the left, he was co-opted into the headquarters of the KPD. After the failure of the “ German October ” in 1923, in January 1924, König took part in discussions with the Comintern leadership as a representative of the left in Moscow . At the Fifth Congress of the Comintern (June 17 to July 8, 1924), König was elected to the International Control Commission. At the district party conference of the KPD in the Ruhr area in March 1924, he gave the main speech for the Left. On the IX. At the party congress in Frankfurt am Main (April 7-10, 1924) he was elected to the headquarters and the main treasurer of the KPD. In May and December 1924, König was elected to the Reichstag for the KPD in the Düsseldorf constituency.

König invested the KPD's funds in various companies in order to achieve the highest possible profits for the party. At this time, however, König also resolved the financial difficulties in the initial phase of the magazine Sichel und Hammer , from which the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) emerged in 1925 . In 1925 he found out that he had made a loss of over 100,000 Reichsmarks . In the same year, König was deposed as cashier in 1925 and an investigation was initiated against him. At times there were rumors of feasts and embezzlement in the party. However, since he had not personally enriched himself, he was not expelled from the party, but had to resign from his Reichstag mandate in November 1925, and Agnes Plum took over for him . Afterwards, König no longer held any important offices for the KPD; he remained active in the advertising business for the KPD until the early 1930s. The Comintern tried to exploit the scandal surrounding its treasury management in internal party disputes against the left leadership around Werner Scholem and Ruth Fischer .

After 1933 he is said to have participated in the resistance against National Socialism and belonged to a group in Lusatia . According to Robert Neddermeyer , König was said to have been shot by the SS in Strausberg near Berlin in 1945 .

literature

  • Werner T. Angress: The time of struggle of the KPD 1921–1923 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-7700-0278-4 , pp. 288, 309 and 347.
  • Essen heads. Who was what Richard Bracht publishing house, Essen 1985. ISBN 3-87034-037-1
  • Branko Lazitch: Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern . Hoover Institution Press, Stanford 1986, pp. 222f.
  • King, 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 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurt Koszyk: German Press 1914–1945. History of the German press . Part III. Colloquium, Berlin 1972, p. 331.
personal data
SURNAME King, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES King, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD, KPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: 1945
Place of death Strausberg