Bohumil Laušman

Bohumil Laušman (born August 30, 1903 in Schumberg , Austria-Hungary , today: Pardubický kraj , Czech Republic ; † May 9, 1963 in Prague ) was a politician of the Czech Social Democratic Party ČSDSD ( Česká strana sociálně democická ) , who was among other things minister several times as well as was temporarily deputy prime minister. After his family was arrested by the communist regime, he fled to Austria. In 1953, however, he was kidnapped by the Czechoslovak secret service and sentenced to a long prison term in 1957.

Life

Burial place of Bohumil Laušman in Chrudim

Bohumil Laušman was initially a bank employee and joined the 1878 founded Czech Social Democratic Party ČSDSD ( Česká strana sociálně demokratická ) in as a member. For this he became a member of the National Assembly (Národní shromáždění) on May 19, 1935 and belonged to it until March 21, 1939. During this time, between 1938 and 1939, he also served as general secretary of the short-lived National Workers' Party NSP (Národní strana práce) and emigrated to France at the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 and later to the United Kingdom . Between 1940 and 1945 he was an active member of the Czechoslovak National Council in London and after his return in autumn 1944 he became a representative of the ČSDSD and worked in the government-in-exile in Banská Bystrica for matters relating to the liberated areas. He stayed in the Low Tatras mountains after the Slovak national uprising in October 1944 and became a member of the military council of the main staff of the guerrilla movement in Czechoslovakia. In March 1945 he took part in a meeting in Moscow on the composition and program of the government of the National Front (Národní fronta Čechů a Slováků) .

On April 5, 1945 Laušman became Minister of Industry in the government of Zdeněk Fierlinger I and an honorary citizen of Svratka . On October 21, 1945 he was elected member of the Interim National Assembly (Prozatímní Národní shromáždění) and member of the Presidium of the ČSDSD. From November 6, 1945 to July 2, 1946, he also served as Minister of Industry in the government of Zdeněk Fierlinger II . Despite his close ties to Prime Minister Zdeněk Fierlinger , he belonged to the right wing within the Czech Social Democratic Party. He was a member of the Constituent National Assembly (Ústavodárné Národní shromáždění) between May 26, 1946 and May 29, 1948, and after the election on July 2, 1946, he was also Minister of Industry in the Klement Gottwald I government . On November 16, 1947, at its congress in Brno , the Social Democratic Party took a step towards greater independence from the Communist Party KSČ ( Komunistická strana Československa ) and elected him as the successor to Zdeněk Fierlinger as chairman and general secretary of the CSDSD. He was then replaced as Minister of Industry on November 25, 1947 by Ludmila Jankovcová .

In February 1948 there was a meeting in his house of ministers who had resigned in protest against the communization of the police, at which he tried in vain to mediate. Bohumil Laušman criticized both the non-communist ministers and the measures taken by the communists. On February 25, 1948 he became Deputy Prime Minister in the Klement Gottwald II government and was able to overthrow the harshest critics of the Communists within the Social Democratic Party. However, in March 1948 he himself was deposed as chairman of the ČSDSD and replaced by Blažej Vilím . On June 15, 1948, he lost his post as Deputy Prime Minister and became director of the Slovak Electricity Works in Bratislava. In 1949 he went into exile in Yugoslavia and from there to Austria , where he worked for the Czechoslovak section of Radio Free Europe . In December 1953 he was kidnapped there by agents from the State Security Agency (Státní bezpečnost) and the Soviet KGB and sentenced to 17 years in prison in 1957 after several years in custody. He died six years later while in custody.

Publications

• Pravda o Slovenském národním povstání (1951)
• Kdo byl vinen (1953)

Web links

• Wojciech Roszkowski, Jan Kofman: Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century , p. 1897 et al., Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-3174-7593-4
• Entry on Parliament's homepage
• CV in totalita.cz
• Governments of the Checkoslovak Republic 1945–1992

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Without enthusiasm . In: Der Spiegel from February 14, 1951