Erich Melcher

Erich Melcher (born January 27, 1892 in Tzschernitz , Sorau district , † 1944 ) was a communist politician and trade unionist.

Life

Melcher completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith and then went on a journey through several European countries. In 1910 he joined the SPD in Hamburg and was active in the workers' sports movement. Drafted for military service in 1912, he was a non-commissioned officer during the First World War and was wounded several times. Because of his injuries, Melcher was assigned to the armaments industry in 1917, first to Stuttgart , then to Böblingen ; during this period he joined the USPD and the Spartacus group. During the November Revolution, Melcher was chairman of the workers' and soldiers' council in Böblingen, was one of the founders of the KPD in Württemberg at the beginning of 1919, and was chairman of the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV) in Stuttgart in 1919 until he was expelled in 1921 .

Act

After a short stay in Moscow, he worked in the central trade union department of the KPD, where he was responsible for the metal industry.He also headed the KPD's trade union work in the Berlin-Brandenburg party district and, together with Ottomar Geschke, was head of the transport department in 1923 , whose task was to prepare for uprisings ; from the beginning of October 1923 he was also a member of the Revkom central rebellion leadership of the KPD. After the failed Hamburg uprising in October 1923, Melcher first fled to Moscow and was arrested on his return to Germany in July 1924 and sentenced to four years in prison in December 1925 , but given an amnesty in August 1926. Melcher, who was a supporter of the “right” wing of the party around Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer , took over the leadership of the East Saxony party district in early 1927.

In the course of the renewed "ultra-left turn" of the KPD under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann and Heinz Neumann , Melcher was relieved of all party functions in April 1928 under the accusation of "connections with the SPD", which he himself denied Party excluded. He was now one of the co-founders of the KPO , held managerial positions here and in the spring of 1932 joined the KPO minority around Paul Frölich and Jacob Walcher at the SAPD , for which he also ran (unsuccessfully) for the Reichstag that year .

After the NSDAP came to power in 1933, Melcher was initially active as an illegal member of the resistance , but was arrested in 1934 and sentenced to 27 months in prison. Shortly after serving his prison sentence in 1937, he was arrested again and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp . Some KPD members also imprisoned there excluded him as a “party enemy”. In Buchenwald he belonged together with Fritz Ohlhof to a group of SAPD members who cooperated closely with the Trotskyists imprisoned there . On January 21, 1944 Melcher was transferred to Majdanek , in July 1944 he was sent on a death march to Auschwitz , which he only barely survived. Finally, on November 8, 1944, he was put into the SS Dirlewanger special unit ; his last message comes from near Budapest, where he probably perished too.

On October 1, 1951, he was pronounced dead.

literature

• Hermann Weber : Transformation of German Communism , Vol. 2, p. 217.
• Melcher, Erich . In: Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Peter Berens: Trotskyists against Hitler . Cologne 2007, p. 103.
• Theodor Bergmann : Against the current. The history of the KPD (opposition) . VSA-Verlag Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-87975-836-0 , p. 495.