Erwin Beck (politician)
Erwin Beck (born April 17, 1911 in Berlin , † April 26, 1988 in West Berlin ) was a German educational politician and social democratic resistance fighter .
Life
Erwin Beck came from a family of craftsmen in Berlin, and his grandfather was already a social democrat. Beck's father continued the grandfather's small glazier business. After completing school, he began an apprenticeship as a bookseller, which he had to break off for economic reasons, as his family could no longer support him financially and he had to work in his father's business.
Erwin Beck became a member of the Jungbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold in 1926 and then also in the SAJ in 1927 . His role models at a young age included Paul Levi , Karl Schröder and Kurt Löwenstein's socialist pedagogy . He was also active in the social science association , from which the anti-fascist resistance group of the Red Fighters arose.
Manfred Rexin reported on his commitment in 1933 : Together with others, he tried in 1933 to protect the association's material and funds from the threat of attack by the brown rulers. This earned him the resentment of a party leadership that desperately held on to the fact that only legality could save social democracy. In addition to his activities for the Red Fighters, he was also connected to the resistance group New Beginning .
After the Gestapo had succeeded in unmasking the Wattenscheid group of Red Fighters and beat out the names of their liaison couriers to Berlin from those arrested, Erwin Beck was arrested in November 1936. In October 1937, the Berlin Court of Appeal issued a “judgment” against Erwin Beck for “preparation for high treason ” over a prison sentence of two years and three months. In March 1939 he was released from prison and placed under police supervision, at the same time he was declared unworthy of defense. In November 1942, however, he was drafted into Penal Battalion 999 and taken to Tunisia via Antwerp, southern France and Naples, where he was taken prisoner by the British in May 1943.
In June 1946 he returned to Berlin and took over the management of the Kreuzberg youth welfare office. At the same time he also became a member of the main youth committee of the city council of Greater Berlin . After the separation of the western sectors of Berlin , he was appointed by Ella Kay to head the youth promotion office in the new main youth welfare office. At the same time he was on the Berlin state board of the socialist Jung-Falken .
Beck was district councilor for youth in Kreuzberg from 1955 to 1975 . He was a co-founder and long-time board member of the Franz Neumann Archive (FNA) and from 1974 to 1986 President and then Honorary President of the International League for Human Rights eV As a member of the Marxist Working Group in the SPD (MAK), he was able to explain why for him very plausibly the alleged Stalinist communism was deeply conservative.
He was one of the few social democratic youth politicians who showed solidarity with the young comrades of the SDS in 1966/67 . As an anti-militarist , it was a matter of course for him to personally take part in the demonstrations against the Vietnam War . In the dispute about this with his party leadership, he repeatedly emphasized that the labor movement and thus the SPD is a child of the Enlightenment.
Beck was one of the staunch opponents of the professional bans . He was an early promoter of the children's shop movement and a supporter of self-administered youth projects such as the Georg-von-Rauch-Haus and others.
After his retirement he was from January 1977 to 1979 Member of the Berlin House of Representatives . In 1981 he was appointed city elder of Berlin .
In 1985 he was the main speaker at the rally on the site of the Topography of Terror , where he spoke as a former prisoner in the Gestapo house prison and spoke out against the plans of the Senate to use this site to use the planned six-lane Autobahn 106 as part of the To have the west bypass built.
At the funeral service for him on May 6, 1988 in the Wilmersdorf crematorium, the following spoke as friends and companions: Manfred Rexin (head of the FNA), Walter Momper (state chairman of the SPD), Günter König (district councilor for youth and sport, Kreuzberg) and Helmut Gollwitzer ( Member of the Board of Trustees of the International League for Human Rights, Section Berlin). Beck has a grave of honor for the city of Berlin in the Luisenstadt cemetery .
literature
- Werner Breunig, Andreas Herbst (ed.): Biographical handbook of the Berlin parliamentarians 1963–1995 and city councilors 1990/1991 (= series of publications of the Berlin State Archives. Volume 19). Landesarchiv Berlin, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-9803303-5-0 , p. 82.
- 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.
- International League for Human Rights (Berlin) / Franz Neumann Archive (ed.): Memories of Erwin Beck 1911–1988, Berlin 1988
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Beck, Erwin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German politician (SPD), MdA and resistance fighters |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 17, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 26, 1988 |
| Place of death | West Berlin |