Erich Schmidt (resistance fighter)

Erich R. Schmidt (born August 4, 1910 in Berlin , † July 22, 2008 in Easthampton near New York) was a German politician ( SPD ) and a leading member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) at the end of the Weimar Republic . He was expelled from the SPD on June 11, 1933. He was active in the resistance group “ New Beginning ” during the Nazi era and fled to the USA in 1940 .

Life

Erich Schmidt was the son of a glove maker; his mother was the future city councilor Anna Schmidt . He learned the trade of printer. In 1928 he became a member of the SPD and in 1931 chairman of the Socialist Workers' Youth of the Greater Berlin district. In 1933 he came into conflict with the Reich Executive Committee of the SAJ and the SPD because he was preparing the Berlin organization of the SAJ for illegal work. The board of directors of the SAJ in the Reich and the SPD tried at this time to refrain from all actions that could provoke a ban on the SPD by the National Socialists . Because of this conflict, Erich Schmidt was expelled from the SPD on June 11, 1933.

Before that, he joined the resistance group “New Beginning”. As part of their political objectives, he campaigned for young comrades to remain in the SPD in order to prevent migration to the SAP and thus further fragmentation of the labor movement.

He was arrested in 1933. By mistaking his name he was released and took the opportunity to flee to Switzerland. There he was active in the European resistance against the National Socialists. In 1937 he married Hilde Paul in Switzerland, whom he knew from his time in Berlin. They had a son, Henry , who was a professor of German literature but who did not survive his father. In the same year he moved on to France and in 1940 fled on foot across the Pyrenees to Lisbon and from there to the USA on an emergency visa from the Jewish Labor Committee . The main focus of his life was in New York from 1940 to 1990. He found work as an offset printer. He was politically active in the Council for a Democratic Germany (CDG), from 1957 he was also chairman of the Friends of German Labor . After the war he was in contact with Willy Brandt , but never returned to Berlin

He died on July 22, 2008, shortly before the age of 98.

Fonts

• My youth in Greater Berlin: Triumph and misery of the labor movement 1918–1933 . Bremen: Donat-Verlag, 1988.
• My years of emigration: 1933–1940. Berlin - Bern - Paris . Rostock: Verlag Jugend und Geschichte, 1994.

Web links

• Manfred Rexin: The tragedy of the labor movement. An emigrant remembers his youth in Berlin at the beginning of the 1930s. Die Zeit, May 11, 1990, accessed June 25, 2016