Erich Kürschner (resistance fighter)

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Erich Kürschner (born November 7, 1889 in Loszainen , East Prussia; † January 3, 1966 in Berlin ) was a resistance fighter against National Socialism , a religious socialist and a Protestant pastor.

Life

The son of a primary school teacher studied theology, philosophy and art history in Königsberg, Vienna and London from 1908 to 1913. At the end of 1913 he was ordained a pastor in the Evangelical Church of the older provinces of Prussia and held pastoral posts in Eydtkuhnen , Zinsdorf and Mehlauken until 1928 . Kürschner joined the religious-socialist movement early on, had been a member of the SPD since 1921 and was warned by the church leadership in 1922 because of his political activities, which did not prevent him from joining the brotherhood of socialist theologians and running for the Reichstag in 1924 without success .

In 1928, Kürschner moved to Berlin, where he worked as a prison pastor in the Tegel prison and was active in the Berlin group of the Association of Religious Socialists in Germany (BRSD). In the controversy in the BRSD about Erwin Eckert's transition to the KPD in 1931, he belonged to the organizational majority in the BRSD, which advocated close ties with the SPD. At the same time he made contact with the Leninist Organization (ORG), the circle around Walter Loewenheim , in which he was accepted in 1932.

In 1933, after the NSDAP came to power , Kürschner was dismissed from civil service under the law to restore the civil service and worked in the following years as a funeral orator, alternative practitioner and transport worker. In addition, he took on an important function in the illegal resistance activity of the ORG, which is now called Neu Beginnen, and the associated illegal structures of the Berlin religious socialists. From 1934 to 1935 in " protective custody " for a few months , after the change in leadership in "New Beginning" in 1935, he was part of the organization's domestic management team with Fritz Erler , Kurt Schmidt and Oskar Umrath from the summer of 1936 . In the course of breaking up the Berlin Popular Front group around Otto Brass and Hermann Brill , the Gestapo also discovered the remaining new-start structures in Berlin that were cooperating with Brass and Brill, which led to Kürschner's arrest again in November 1938 and his conviction by the People's Court led to ten years in prison . He was imprisoned in Brandenburg-Görden .

After the liberation from National Socialism in 1945, he first worked in the Berlin magistrate and then temporarily headed Berlin's public libraries. Furthermore, Kürschner joined the SED , on whose church policy he had a certain influence from 1946 to 1947 as a member of the party's culture committee. Shortly afterwards he lost his party functions, but remained in the GDR after its establishment , for whose foreign ministry he worked as a research assistant from 1959 to 1962. On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1959 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Germany , November 12, 1959, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Furrier, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor, religious socialist and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH November 7, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Loszainen , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH 3rd January 1966
Place of death Berlin