Conrad Blenkle

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Conrad Blenkle (also Konrad Blenkle ; born December 28, 1901 in Berlin ; † January 20, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German politician ( KPD ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Born into a social democratic family, Conrad Blenkle grew up on Boppstrasse in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where his parents had a restaurant.

From 1908 Blenkle attended elementary school, from 1916 he learned to be a baker . In 1919 he became a member of the Free Socialist Youth , whose second chairmanship he took over in 1920, and in the same year he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He was one of the founders of the Communist Youth of Germany (KJD) in Berlin-Neukölln and subsequently became district chairman in Berlin-Brandenburg, which is why he gave up his job as a baker. In May 1924 Blenkle became chairman of the KJD, which in 1925 was renamed the Communist Youth Association of Germany . Blenkle chaired the chair for four and a half years.

At the fourth world congress of the Communist Youth International (KJI), Blenkle was elected to the executive committee of the organization in Moscow in 1924, of which he was a member until 1935.

He married and had a daughter with his wife Käte who was born in November 1924.

In October 1925, Blenkle was elected to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the KPD. In the course of resolving content-related differences within the leadership of the KPD, Blenkle had to give up his leadership positions in 1928 and henceforth worked on the party base. The background was that, even after the Wittorf affair, there were doubts about his "unwavering" loyalty to Ernst Thälmann . Between May 1928 and September 1930 Blenkle was a member of the Reichstag for the KPD . His parliamentary activity dealt primarily with the vocational training of young people.

As the editor of the KJVD newspaper Die Junge Garde, Blenkle was persecuted, convicted and punished several times for press offenses. After the Reichstag was dissolved, Blenkle went underground. On 4 February 1931 he was in Dusseldorf arrested and subsequently at one and a half years imprisonment convicted, he and December 29, 1932 in the prison wholesale Strelitz was serving.

As a member of the illegal KPD district leadership Berlin-Brandenburg, Conrad Blenkle fought against National Socialist rule from 1933 and emigrated to Saarbrücken and then to Amsterdam in early 1934 . In 1936 he returned to Bremen and supported the group from the workers' resistance, which had formed there around Klaus Bücking and Gustav Böhrnsen , as an instructor in the northern section of the KPD . He also had contact with the resistance group around Heinz Strelow in Hamburg.

In 1937 Blenkle moved to Zurich via Paris. He was arrested in Switzerland on November 23, 1937 and expelled to France . From 1938 he organized the resistance in Germany as a functionary of the North Section of the KPD in Denmark .

Arrested by the Danish police on December 16, 1941 after the German occupation of Denmark , Blenkle was transferred to the Gestapo in Hamburg and held as a " protective prisoner " in Fuhlsbüttel prison until July 1942 . On November 25, 1942, the People's Court pronounced the death sentence on Blenkle for preparation for high treason . The sentence was carried out on January 20, 1943 in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison .

Honors

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag

literature

Web links

Commons : Conrad Blenkle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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 on 23 August 2018]).
  2. ↑ Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933-1945. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1991, ISBN 3-7700-5162-9 , p. 123.
  3. ^ Jörg Wollenberg: Popular Front in Bremen ( Memento from April 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Conrad-Blenkle-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  5. ^ Website about the border troops of the GDR
personal data
SURNAME Blenkle, Conrad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blenkle, Konrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1943
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee