Ernst Schneller

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Memorial plaque on the house at Schnellerstr 70a, in Berlin-Niederschöneweide

Ernst Schneller (born November 8, 1890 in Leipzig ; † October 11, 1944 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a German teacher, member of the Reichstag and member of the Saxon state parliament for the KPD .

Life

The son of a railroad worker and former soldier attended a teachers' seminar until 1910, after a temporary absence from this he worked as an assistant teacher from 1911 to 1913 and as a teacher in various Saxon cities from 1913. In 1914 Schneller volunteered for the military due to his nationalist attitude at the time and had been an officer since 1916, most recently in 1918 in the function of a battalion adjutant. During the November Revolution he was a member of the workers 'and soldiers' council of his unit in 1919 as a teacher in Schwarzenberg / Erzgeb. where, as an ex-officer, he initially met with rejection, but this changed after he joined the SPD , which he also represented on the local council. During the Kapp Putsch , Schneller, who was experienced in military matters, organized the resistance in Schwarzenberg; a little later he joined the KPD, as it impressed him with its consistent approach.

KPD deputy

From 1921 to 1925 Schneller had a seat in the Saxon state parliament for the KPD. Here he spoke to numerous minority motions of the KPD, which concerned his area of ​​expertise, the pedagogy . He advocated a comprehensive revolution in education, with the production school at the center . With a wealth of facts, he also defended his parliamentary group's motions to combat the misery of children by introducing free school meals , free school supplies , free medical and dental examinations for school and preschool children, and clothing for school- leavers . In addition, Schneller was head of the Proletarian Hundreds in 1923 . In the fall of 1923, Schneller, who was then part of the party leadership led by Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer , was briefly imprisoned after the Hamburg uprising .

Schneller was dismissed from school service in November 1924 at his own request and ran for election in constituency 30 Chemnitz - Zwickau , became a member of the German Reichstag in Berlin in December 1924 , to which he was a permanent member until 1933, and later head of the Reichsparteischule of the KPD "Rosa Luxemburg" in Schöneiche-Fichtenau . Internally after 1924 he was initially one of the supporters of the leadership around Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow , but after he had been elected to the Central Committee in 1925 , he switched to the new leadership around Ernst Thälmann . Within the communist movement he was therefore seen by many as a turning neck ; Due to his constant fluctuations towards the respective party leadership, Nikolai Bukharin, for example, described him as a “politically characterless subject”. In 1927 he became Polleiter of the Erzgebirge-Vogtland district and one of four members of the central political secretariat, in 1928 a candidate (substitute member) of the Executive Committee of the Comintern . In 1927/28 he was committed to uncovering the Phoebus scandal and has been in contact with the Bund der Köngener since then .

Karl Retzlaw , who knew him, wrote in his biography: "The type of" Kartothekowitsch "was faster, extremely hardworking, inaccessible to the point of arrogance, he never had time."

After Schneller supported the suspension of Thälmann from his party offices during the Wittorf affair in 1928 , he lost his seat in the Central Committee in 1929 and was only entrusted with subordinate tasks until the autumn. For the Reichstag elections after Hitler came to power, he designed a sticky note on which he denounced the SA terror and which he signed with his full name.

time of the nationalsocialism

On February 7, 1933, Schneller took part in the meeting of the Central Committee of the KPD in the sports store Ziegenhals near Berlin. After the Reichstag fire , he was on 27./28. Arrested in Berlin in February 1933 and taken to Moabit remand prison. In April 1933 he was transferred to the Sonnenburg concentration camp and from July 8, 1933 he was in custody in Prison II in Leipzig. On November 9, 1933, he was sentenced to six years in prison and five years of loss of honor for inciting high treason . On November 16, 1933, he began his sentence in the Waldheim prison , where he was temporarily held in solitary confinement until 1939.

In July 1939, Schneller was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he was part of the management of the illegal KPD organization there. In March 1944, the SS guards found leaflets and a radio belonging to the group, whereupon the resistance group was infiltrated with informers . After the group was largely broken up on August 11, 1944, 150 prisoners were taken to an isolation barracks. On October 11, 1944, 103 of them were transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp and 27 prisoners - mostly communists - were shot, among them Schneller, Mathias Thesen , Ludger Zollikofer , Rudolf Hennig and Gustl Sandtner .

family

Ernst Schneller was married to Hilde Schneller (1894-1989) and left behind a daughter who was taken into the family by Pastor Arthur Rackwitz , as well as a son Helmut Schneller , who wrote under the pseudonym Hans Rascher, among other things, for the Berlin cabaret Die Distel was active.

Honors

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag

In the GDR there were schools in many places, in Berlin-Alt-Treptow the Ernst Schneller barracks , in Johanngeorgenstadt a youth hostel and in Zwickau the college of education as well as in numerous other places, for example in the Berlin district Treptow-Köpenick , streets after Ernst Schneller named. The FDGB rest home in Petzow am Schwielowsee bore his name. There was also the central reception and observation home with an attached special children's home in Eilenburg , which was named after Schneller. On September 3, 1973, the "missile troop unit of the NVA 'Ernst Schneller'" was set up. A postage stamp was also issued in his memory. Most of these honors have been revoked since 1990. However, there are still Ernst Schneller Streets in Leipzig, Heidenau (Saxony), Halle (Saale), Erfurt, Jena and other cities. Schnellerstraße in Berlin-Niederschöneweide is also named after Ernst Schneller. The largest yacht - a 150 m² sea cruiser - owned by the GST naval school "August Lütgens" in Greifswald-Wieck also bore his name . The sports sailor was in the service of GST from 1954 to 1989/90, was then relocated from Greifswald to Anklam , where it was given the new name Wappen von Anklam . The Ernst Schneller Medal was also donated for achievements in the Society for Sport and Technology .

In 1977 GDR television made a biographical film about Schneller in which he was portrayed by Horst Schulze and his wife Hilde by Renate Blume . Schneller also made several appearances in the television biography of GDR television about Thälmann (1986). He is portrayed there by Wilfried Pucher .

Since 1992 one of the 96 memorial plaques for members of the Reichstag murdered by the National Socialists has been commemorating Schneller near the Reichstag in Berlin .

On October 11, 2014, the memorial “Sound of Memory / La voix du souvenir” by the artist Eva Susanne Schmidhuber was inaugurated for the 27 prisoners shot 70 years earlier, including Ernst Schneller, at the Sachsenhausen Memorial . It was selected at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee as part of an artistic competition that was carried out together with the relatives of the murdered.

Fonts (selection)

literature

  • Saxon State Parliament, negotiation minutes 1922–1926
  • Wolfgang Kießling : Ernst Schneller. Life picture of a revolutionary. Dietz, Berlin 1960 (further editions 1972 and 1974).
  • Wolfgang Kießling: Ernst Schneller. A biography. (Miniature edition). Offizin Andersen-Nexö, Leipzig 1977.
  • Wolfgang Kießling: Ernst Schneller - Ten years of struggle, ten years of revolution. Dietz, Berlin 1981.
  • Faster, Ernst . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

Commons : Ernst Schneller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Retzlaw: Spartakus - Aufstieg und Niedergang, Memories of a Party Worker, New Criticism Publishing House, Frankfurt 1971, p. 347, ISBN 3-8015-0096-9
  2. ↑ http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/608_1
  3. ↑ List of participants
  4. ↑ White spots , No. 3, p. 18 (PDF; 5.0 MB)
  5. ↑ Hermann Langbein: ... not like sheep to the slaughter - resistance in the National Socialist concentration camps. Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 227f.
  6. ↑ Schnellerstraße on berlin.kauperts.de
  7. ^ Lutz Mohr : School ships under sail and engine. On the history of the GST Naval School August Lütgens Greifswald-Wieck . Elmenhorst: EDITION POMMERN 2012, ISBN 978-3-939680-07-9 , p. 68
personal data
SURNAME Faster, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher and politician (KPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1944
Place of death Sachsenhausen concentration camp