Erich Steinfurth

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Memorial stone, Königstrasse, in Berlin-Wannsee

Erich Steinfurth (born August 10, 1896 in Mittenwalde ; † February 1, 1934 in Berlin-Wannsee ) was a German politician, from 1929 to 1933 member of the Prussian state parliament for the KPD and resistance fighter against National Socialism . The poem John Schehr and Comrades by Erich Weinert is dedicated to him, among others with John Schehr .

Life

Erich Steinfurth successfully completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith after attending school . After the end of the First World War, he got a job in the Berlin Reichsbahn repair shop (RAW) near the former Berlin-Grunewald freight station . He worked there until his dismissal in 1923. At the same time, he was a member of the works council and the district works council.

Steinfurth's political career began in 1918 in the USPD , with whose majority wing he joined the KPD in late 1920.

In 1923 Steinfurth and other railroad workers actively opposed the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch in Munich and was therefore sentenced to two years in prison in 1924 . After his release he took over the management of the Red Aid , a solidarity and self-protection organization for mainly communist workers, in the Berlin-Brandenburg district from 1925 . From 1929 he was a member of the central board of the Red Aid. In October 1929 Steinfurth moved into the Prussian state parliament as his successor . In 1932 he was elected as a member of parliament and was a member of the Prussian state parliament until his arrest at the end of March 1933. In this capacity, he successfully campaigned for the support of political prisoners and their families.

Steinfurth lived at Friedlander Strasse 129 in Berlin-Adlershof at this time .

assassination

He was arrested on March 25, 1933 and taken to the prison in Berlin-Plötzensee . After severe abuse, he was then transferred to the Sonnenburg concentration camp , from where he managed to illegally transmit information to the KPD leadership about the inhumane conditions in this detention center.

On the night of February 1 to February 2, 1934, he was shot "on the run" by the Gestapo at Schäferberg in Berlin, along with Eugen Schönhaar , Rudolf Schwarz and the incumbent KPD chairman, John Schehr , after the Gestapo spy Alfred Kattner on February 1 had been shot on behalf of the KPD. Police commissioner Bruno Sattler was responsible for carrying out the murder .

Honor

Memorial plaque on the house at Friedlander Strasse 139, in Berlin-Adlershof

In 1934 the writer Erich Weinert commemorated the Gestapo assassination with his poem "John Schehr and Comrades":

And drag them into the dark forest.
And twelve times it pops and reverberates.
There they lie with their eyes extinguished,
three close shots each in the neck,
John Schehr and comrades.

tomb

After the Second World War , his remains were reburied and buried in the Socialist Memorial at Berlin's Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery. His grave is on the ring wall of the memorial that was inaugurated in 1951.

  • Various memorial plaques were put up in his honor.
  • There is a memorial stone for the four murdered resistance fighters on the Kilometerberg . Commemorative events for the four resistance fighters have been held there since 1954.
  • Streets were named after him, for example in 1962 in Berlin-Friedrichshain as well as in Chemnitz , Eberswalde and Teltow .
  • The railway construction regiment 2 of the National People's Army stationed in Walddrehna was named Erich Steinfurth.
  • The railway workers' clubhouse at Berlin Ostbahnhof was given the honorary name Erich Steinfurth in 1962 and there was a memorial plaque on his home in Adlershof, which was removed in 2007.
  • A feeder trawler with the fishing identification number ROS 417 of the "Artur Becker" series also got its name.
  • In Mittenwalde, his former house at Burgstrasse 11, which before 1990 also bore the name Erich-Steinfurth-Strasse , is a listed building.
  • The Central School of Political Administration of the Deutsche Reichsbahn was named after Erich Steinfurth.
  • From 1967 to 1990 there was the Erich Steinfurth children's sanatorium in Zinnowitz , today only a ruin.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Hans Maur : Memorials of the workers' movement in Berlin-Friedrichshain , ed. by the district management of the SED, district commission for researching the history of the local labor movement in cooperation with the district commission for researching the history of the local labor movement at the Berlin-Friedrichshain district management of the SED. 1981, p. 49
  2. ↑ Ronald Sassning : Thälmann, Wehner, Kattner, Miele. Difficult truths . (PDF; 109 kB) In: Utopie Kreativ , issue 114, April 2000, pp. 362–375
  3. ↑ John Schehr and comrades. A murder, a myth and the consequences . ( Memento of March 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Feature on MDR Figaro , March 2, 2013
  4. ↑ https://www.mdr.de/kultur/radio/ipg/sendung873370.html
  5. ^ Website of the socialist cemetery
  6. ↑ Monument on the Kilometerberg ( Memento from February 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ New Germany , February 2, 1954
  8. ↑ Erich-Steinfurth-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  9. ↑ The memorial plaque landed on the rubble i. In: Neues Deutschland , 6./7. October 2007, weekend edition
  10. ↑ List of monuments of the state of Brandenburg, district of Dahme-Spreewald. ( Memento of February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 4.63 MB) p. 163
personal data
SURNAME Steinfurth, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politicians and Nazi victims
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Mittenwalde
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 1934
Place of death Berlin-Wannsee