Ernst Schilling (KPD functionary)

Ernst Schilling (born October 25, 1901 in Berlin ; † November 25, 1954 in East Berlin ) was a German KPD functionary.

Life and activity

Schilling was the son of a single mum fur seamstress. He learned the bakery trade. From 1923 he was politically organized in the KPD.

In 1925 and 1926, Schilling was the chairman of the works council of a bread factory in Berlin-Weißensee. In 1927 he took over the function of a sub-district instructor of the KPD district leadership Berlin-Brandenburg. In 1931 he got a job with the Soviet trade agency.

As a member of the anti-militarist apparatus (AM apparatus) of the KPD, Schilling completed a course under the code name Moritz in 1932/33 at the Comintern's military political school in Moscow. In 1933 he returned to Germany, where the National Socialists had come to power in the meantime, in order to work illegally for the KPD, which had since been banned. In January 1934 he was sent to Czechoslovakia as a border section leader of the KPD .

After the occupation of the Sudeten areas , Schilling emigrated to Great Britain in November 1938 , where he worked for the Czech Refugee Trust from September 1939 to May 1940 . He then lived briefly as a farm and forest worker in Cumberland . From July to December 1940 he was interned as an " enemy alien " on the Isle of Man as a result of the outbreak of World War II . After his release from internment, he worked as a baker in London until 1947. There he became a member of the KPD party leadership in Great Britain and a member of the Free Germany Movement in 1943 .

The National Socialist police officers classified Schilling as an enemy of the state: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, would be detained by the occupying troops SS should be located and arrested with special priority.

In August 1947 Schilling returned to Berlin. He became a member of the SED and worked temporarily as a secretary before he was the first chairman of the central association of IG food and drink restaurants and a member of the FDGB federal board from 1949 to 1953 .

literature

• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).