Ernst Langguth

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Ernst Langguth (born September 28, 1908 in Berlin ; † September 15, 1983 ) was a German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime and party functionary ( KPD and SED ).

Life

Langguth was the son of a carpenter and a seamstress. He grew up in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg with a brother and a sister. He came into contact with the Communist Party through his parents, who were both politically active . In 1919 he became a member of the communist youth group and in 1920 co-founder of the communist children's group “Prenzlauer Vorstadt”. In 1921 he became a member of the KJVD , in 1922 he was a delegate at the first Reich Congress of Communist Children's Groups in Suhl . In 1922 he also became a member of the Friends of Nature and in 1926 in the sports club "Fichte".

After attending primary school , he began an apprenticeship as a carpenter in 1922 and became a member of the German Woodworkers Association (DHV), and from September 1922 he was a member of the youth management of the DHV. In 1923/24 he was head of the KJVD group Helmholtzplatz in the Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg district and group leader of the "Friends of Nature". From 1926 he was unemployed and wandered through Germany. In 1927 he became youth leader of the workers' cycling association "Solidarity" for Berlin.

In February 1928 he became a member of the KPD and joined the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union . From October 1928, Langguth worked as a carpenter at the Schiller Theater. Here he was the founder of the operating cell of the KPD and the RGO , where he was supra-regional head of the “stage” section. He was also the political director of the RGO “IG Film-Bühne-Musik” for Berlin-Brandenburg.

In 1931/32 Langguth was deputy head of the KPD defense apparatus for the Berlin districts of Prenzlauer Berg, Weißensee and Pankow . At the end of 1932 he became head of the department for agitation and propaganda in the KPD sub-district “Prenzlauer Berg” and a member of the KPD operating cell in the Danziger Strasse gasworks . After the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” in 1933, he became the head of organization of the illegal Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg sub-district of the KPD.

On March 5, 1933, he was arrested by members of the SA and imprisoned in the SA barracks Hedemannstrasse in Berlin-Kreuzberg and in the Alexanderplatz police headquarters . After he was released from prison, he was ill for two months from suffering torture. He lived “illegally” with his sister in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. After recovering, he again participated in the resistance against National Socialism in the Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg subdistrict of the KPD. He became a member of the management again and took responsibility for editing illegal newspapers and leaflets, helping to create new illegal newspapers and reorganizing the illegal organization. He was also the editor of the newspaper Der Auseg .

In April 1934, Langguth was sent to Prague by the KPD because of the risk of arrest . There he was in the management of the KPD emigrant organization. In 1935 he became political leader of the KPD emigrants in Mährisch-Ostrau , where he was arrested and expelled after a short time. He then lived illegally in Prague for 37 months. During this time he took on other functions for the KPD, as organizational head of the KPD, from 1936 as section head for the KPD couriers to Germany in Teplitz-Schönau , then head of the solidarity movement in Czechoslovak companies for Germany. In 1937 he became organizational leader of the KPD emigration for the ČSR and a teacher at KPD party schools. Several times he was sent on courier trips to Berlin. At the beginning of 1938 he was appointed section leader of the KPD for Northern Bavaria , Vogtland and Thuringia , based in Aš . Following a denunciation , he was arrested again and expelled after several weeks in prison.

Because of this, he emigrated to England in November 1938 , where he became political leader of the KPD group in Bristol . In June 1941 he was interned as an " enemy alien " but released after a few months. Langguth was a forest worker in Wales after internment . From January 1942 he lived in Glasgow , where he was again head of organization, agit-prop and later political head of the KPD and political secretary of the " Movement Free Germany for Scotland". He also became an official in the Scottish trade unions and a member of the works council in the Scottish Consumers' Co-op, Transport Department, and a member of the Glasgow Trade Union Council.

Because of his active resistance work, he was sentenced to death in absentia by the People's Court for high treason .

Langguth married Ilse Schlesinger on September 16, 1944, with whom he had a daughter (born 1947) and a son (born 1949).

On August 22, 1946, Langguth returned to Berlin with his wife and became a member of the SED . He was appointed head of the FDGB secretariat in the state of Brandenburg . In January 1947 he became an instructor of the Berlin regional association of the SED for trade union issues in Berlin and then a member of the organization department. From January 12, 1948 he was district chairman of the SED, first in Berlin-Pankow and then in Berlin-Weißensee . From September 1949 to May 1950 he attended the party college of the SED . He then received the function of secretary of the committee of the National Front in Berlin. He then worked for a while in the central administration of the Land and Forestry Union and in an association of state-owned companies.

From 1955 to 1968 Langguth was a political employee in the Central Committee of the SED . Due to his many years of experience in illegal party work, he was deployed to support the political work of the KPD after the KPD was banned in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956.

For health reasons he later became a research assistant at the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED .

Langguth was buried in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde in the VdN Ehrenhain .

Fonts

  • Memories of Comrade Ernst Langguth about the party work of the KPD sub-district leadership Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg / Nordring in the period from spring 1932 to spring 1934. Published by the commission for research into the history of the local labor movement at the SED district leadership Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg; Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg 1980 online (PDF; 191 kB).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ on www.sozialistenfriedhof.de
personal data
SURNAME Langguth, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD and SED functionary
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1983