Erich Fähling

Erich Fähling's birth certificate

Erich Fähling (born November 15, 1899 in Berlin , † December 20, 1981 in Berlin) was a German communist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Erich Fähling (1979)

Fähling learned typesetter and grew up in the so-called " Red Wedding " at Hussitenstrasse 62 in the area around Kösliner Strasse in Berlin-Wedding . During the times of National Socialism he was married to Marie Luise Fähling , who was one of three women interned in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1933 . However, the actual target person for this detention was Erich Fähling.

From 1933 at the latest, Fähling was initially illegally active for the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD) and coordinated its operational work in Berlin. He was arrested on January 31, 1936, tried in September together with Wolfgang Knabe and Gerhard Beyer for preparing a treasonous enterprise and sentenced to 21 months in prison, which he served in Brandenburg-Göhrden . They had been accused of having taken in two officials in hiding and helped them escape.

Fähling later worked illegally for the KPD . He brought his colleague Gustav Wegener together with the communist functionaries Anton Saefkow and Franz Jacob .

The " Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein-Organization " (SJB-Gruppe) founded by Saefkow, Jacob and Bernhard Bästlein , also known as the "Free Germany" movement, was one of the largest resistance organizations from the workers' movement in Berlin at the end of the Nazi regime Urban area was active. A major focus of the illegal activities of the SJB organization was the establishment of illegal company groups - especially in the armaments industry . To support these company groups, the organizers had appointed instructors who provided the companies with pamphlets and other materials and enabled feedback. Fähling, as one of the instructors who worked as a typesetter in the Bertinetti book and offset printing company, joined the SJB Group in 1943 and maintained ties with companies in the east of Berlin, especially Hasse & Wrede in Berlin-Marzahn, and Siemens Plania AG and to Osram Warschauer Brücke. As a specialist, he also got involved in the manufacturing process of leaflets and was involved in the procurement of a printing press for the organization. The instructors also included Wilhelm Moll (Siemens & Halske), Hermann Michaelis (Siemens operating groups) and Gustav Wegener (Askania Werke, AEG, Bosse, Kabelwerk Schönow, Bramo Basdorf and others).

From the summer of 1943 Fähling worked as a cadre group leader under Saefkow, Jacob and Emrich in the extended KPD district leadership of Berlin. Around 100 men and women, almost all of them functionaries, were working illegally under an alias . A membership fee was refrained from; The costs incurred (for pamphlets, maintenance of illegals, etc.) were collected through money collections, donations and z. Partly covered by black market deals. By 1945 the Gestapo imprisoned several hundred communist resistance fighters in the Berlin area and elsewhere. More than 100 men and women, including Fähling, were able to go into hiding and thus avoided arrest.

Fähling lived in West Berlin from 1945 and until his death was a member of the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (SEW), a communist party in West Berlin closely connected to the SED and the DKP and led and financed by the SED . Fähling was the father-in-law of the historian, archivist and former director of the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin, Werner Vogel .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Oranienburg concentration camp: from 50,000 articles of the lexicon travel Furer, history, culture, geography, travel, monuments, landmarks, monuments in www.fair-hotels.de powerd by wiki pedia wikipedia. Retrieved November 23, 2018 . 
2. ^ Oranienburg concentration camp . In: Academic dictionaries and encyclopedias . ( deacademic.com [accessed November 23, 2018]).
3. ^ Wolfgang Knabe :: Kreuzberg memorial plaque for victims of the Nazi regime 1933-1945. Retrieved September 4, 2019 . 
4. ^ Frieder Böhne: On the 70th anniversary of the death of Wolfgang Knabe . Ed .: from “Our Leaf” 54. Sept. 201.
5. ↑ Stumbling blocks in Berlin | Places & biographies of the stumbling blocks in Berlin. Retrieved October 19, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Dr. Annette Neumann: Business cells of the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein organization . Ed .: https://www.igmetall-berlin.de/ . January 22, 2009.
7. ↑ Le KPD 1933–1945: Groupes de militants communistes et antifascistes (1933–1945). Retrieved October 19, 2018 . 
8. ↑ DEA - The Electronic Archive. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 20, 2018 ; accessed on October 19, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.