Edwin Morgner

Edwin Morgner (born November 1, 1884 in Meerane , † January 31, 1943 in Moscow ) was a German politician . He was a co-founder of the KPD .

Life

Morgner, the son of a working-class family, learned the profession of lathe operator from 1899 to 1903 . In 1902 he joined the SPD . After wandering, during which he had worked in Solingen and Cologne , among other places , he lived in Gera from 1905 to 1909 . Morgner was a member and functionary of the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV). From 1907 to 1909 he was significantly involved in strike actions of the DMV and was therefore put on a "black list" of entrepreneurs. In 1907 he married Gertrud Müller . In the same year their daughter Hildegard cameto the world. The young family moved to Jena in 1909, where Morgner found a job as a lathe operator in the optical works of Carl Zeiss Jena . Here he found connection to the revolutionary left around Emil Höllein .

In 1916 he was one of the founders of the Spartakus group in Jena. Morgner was also a delegate to the founding party congress of the KPD in Berlin at the end of 1918 . Together with his wife he founded the KPD local group Jena in January 1919 in the “Zum Löwen” trade union building. Edwin Morgner was elected chairman of the local group. From 1918 to 1921 Morgner was a member of the workers' council in the Zeiss works. The 5th party congress of the KPD in November 1920 elected him to the Central Committee for Thuringia. In 1921 Morgner left Jena to work as an inspection officer for machine tools in the Soviet commercial agency.

From 1931 Morgner lived again with his wife, who from 1927 to 1929 had been secretary and partner of Reichstag member Emil Höllein. Edwin and Gertrud Morgner traveled to the Soviet Union in March 1932 . Here Morgner worked as a specialist for machine tools and inspector for the control of imported machines from Germany. Recognized as a political emigrant, he was released from his position in July 1938 - according to official information because of staff cuts. He then worked as an inspector for cutting tools in a Moscow company. Morgner turned to Soviet authorities several times, unsuccessfully, because of this underqualified occupation. On the night of September 11, 1941, he was arrested by the NKVD in Moscow ; the details of his arrest and death are still unknown.

Honors

In Jena-Lobeda , Edwin-Morgner-Strasse (today: Theobald-Renner-Strasse ) was named after him, and in Gera the electronics vocational school.

literature

• Hermann Weber (Hrsg.): The founding party congress of the KPD. Protocol and materials . European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 327.
• Hermann Weber: "White spots" in history. The KPD victims of the Stalinist purges and their rehabilitation . ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-88332-166-4 , p. 107.
• Monika Zorn (ed.): Hitler's twice killed victims. West German final solution of anti-fascism in the area of ​​the GDR . Ahriman, Freiburg i. Br. 1994, ISBN 3-89484-401-9 , p. 236.
• Morgner, Edwin . In: Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , p. 611.
• Eberhart Schulz: Against war, monarchy and militarism. The way to the revolution days 1918/1919 in Jena ( building blocks for Jena city history , volume 12). Hain-Team, Jena 2008, ISBN 978-3-930128-90-7 , pp. 17, 30 and 159f.