Ernst Froebel

Ernst Froebel (born October 29, 1912 in Berlin ; † March 19, 2001 ) was dedicated to international understanding and reconciliation with European neighbors.

Life

After completing elementary school at the age of 14, Ernst Froebel completed an apprenticeship in saddlery in Lower Lusatia, later he worked in the upholstery of a wagon factory in Berlin. He became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth and was in a youth group with Ulla Schröder, the daughter of the councilor communist Karl Schröder . On his 18th birthday he joined the SPD. Through contact with Schröder, he first became a member of the Social Science Association, and later of the Council Communist Red Fighters . In 1936 Froebel was sentenced to three years in prison for his resistance to National Socialism . Although declared "unworthy of defense", he was drafted into the penal battalion 999 in Tunisia. Soon afterwards he was taken prisoner of war. In 1947 he returned to Berlin, where he was again in contact with the former Red Fighters Circle and the circle around Alfred Weiland . On behalf of the Red fighters he worked entristisch in the Free German Youth , in their Central Council he was responsible for the Youth News Service (JUNA). In this position he provided the Red Fighters Circle with internal matters, strategies, etc. of the FDJ, which were used to criticize socialism based on the Soviet model in the Soviet zone of occupation . He initially rose to the position of second secretary in the FDJ's personnel department, but had to flee in 1949 after his activity was exposed to avoid arrest. He then took part in the development of the Socialist Youth of Germany - Die Falken , of which he was part of the state board in Berlin.

After his return he worked on reconciliation with the European neighbors. Among other things, he established contacts with the surviving women and children from Lidice in the Czech Republic, which was destroyed by the National Socialists in 1942.

As a contemporary witness, he conveyed to many young people the experiences he had made through the persecution during the Nazi era . After the war, Ernst Froebel traveled with young people to sites of National Socialist injustice in Germany and Europe. One of his travels took him to Lidice in 1984, where he and friends who were close to the Social Democratic Party of Germany brought the first 50 rose bushes from the western part of Berlin to Lidice. Each participant personally planted their rose as an expression of their commitment to Lidice. The friendships with the surviving women and children from Lidice date from this time. On his initiative, a rose bed with 50 roses from Lidice was inaugurated in front of the Reinickendorf town hall in Berlin in 1995. On a plaque are the words of Thomas Mann: “Germans, you should know. Horror, shame and remorse are the first things needy. "

Honors

For his tireless commitment to Lidice, the then Mayor of Reinickendorf, Detlef Dzembritzki, presented the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in May 1994 on behalf of the Federal President . He accepted it on behalf of all employees of the political education working group , which he founded.

In June 1994 Ernst Froebel was made an honorary citizen by the Lidice municipality. The honorary citizenship of Lidice was for him one of the greatest personal awards of his life.

Since November 2019, the main building at the Zeltlagerplatz eV Berlin Heiligensee has been called the "Ernst Froebel House" in honor and memory.

literature

• Olaf Ihlau : The Red Fighters. A contribution to the history of the labor movement in the Weimar Republic and in the “Third Reich”. Meisenheim am Glan 1969.
• Michael Kubina : About Utopia, Resistance and the Cold War. The untimely life of the Berlin councilor communist Alfred Weiland (1906–1978) , dissertation, Lit-Verlag, Hamburg 2000. ISBN 3-8258-5361-6 , online , with a preface by Manfred Wilke

Web links

• Homepage of the Working Group Political Education Past - Future eV

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Awarded by the Federal President on August 3, 1993; Information from the Federal President's Office