Eugene Fairhair

Memorial stone, Königstrasse, in Berlin-Wannsee

Eugen Schönhaar (born October 29, 1898 in Esslingen am Neckar , † February 1, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Schönhaar completed an apprenticeship as a core maker , during which he joined the workers' youth movement in 1912 . During the First World War he was sentenced to three months in prison in 1916 for speaking out against the war. In 1917 he was called up for military service. After the end of the war he sympathized with the Spartacus group and joined the KPD .

One year later, Schönhaar was elected to the headquarters of the Communist Youth in Germany . From 1921 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International . From 1924 to 1927 he worked in the Central European Office of International Workers' Aid in Berlin, from where he was sent to the United States in 1928 . After his return, he began to work in the central committee of the KPD in Berlin.

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists he removed from the spring of 1933 to work illegally continued. As a result of the overflow of Alfred Kattner , who was active in the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus , the party headquarters of the KPD and thus had connections to the Central Committee and its leaders, Schönhaar was arrested with other KPD functionaries in November 1933 and on the night of 1 . Shot on February 2, 1934, together with John Schehr , Rudolf Schwarz and Erich Steinfurth by the Gestapo , allegedly on the run at Berlin's Kilometerberg , after the Gestapo spy Alfred Kattner was shot on February 1 on behalf of the KPD. Police commissioner Bruno Sattler was responsible for carrying out the murder .

Honors

tomb

After the Second World War , Eugen Schönhaar's remains were reburied and buried in the Socialist Memorial at Berlin's Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery. His grave is on the ring wall of the memorial that was inaugurated in 1951.

Since 1954, memorial events for Eugen Schönhaar and the three other resistance fighters who were murdered there have been held on Kilometerberg in the Berlin-Wannsee district . There is also a memorial stone for the four resistance fighters.

In the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg , Eugen-Schönhaar-Strasse was named after him.

A feeder trawler with the fishing identification number ROS 416 of the "Artur Becker" series also got its name.

A stumbling block was laid for him in Esslingen .

family

His son Carlo Schönhaar (1924–1942) was also an opponent of the Nazi regime. He and his mother fled to Switzerland after his father was arrested. From there they were expelled after a short time. They fled on to France, where Carlo joined a French resistance movement in 1941 and was betrayed by a Gestapo spy in the spring of 1942 . He was sentenced to death in a fast-track trial and shot with other French resistance fighters in Paris on April 17, 1942 .

His wife Odette Schönhaar also joined the French resistance movement and was arrested the day after Carlos was arrested. After 17 days in La Santé prison in Paris and six months in Gestapo imprisonment in Berlin, she was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp , where she was imprisoned until liberation by the Red Army in April 1945. After the war, Odette Fairhair returned to France and worked for L'Humanité , the central organ of the French Communist Party.

literature

• Nikolaus Brauns : Get red help! History and activities of the proletarian aid organization for political prisoners in Germany (1919-1938) . Bonn 2003, ISBN 3-89144-297-1
• Nikolaus Brauns: The man in the background. Eugen Schönhaar as the organizer of the labor movement and the Red Aid. In: Sabine Hering, Kurt Schilde (ed.): Die Rote Hilfe. The history of the international communist "welfare organization" and its social activities in Germany (1921–1941) . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2003, ISBN 3-8100-3634-X , pages 201-210
• Luise Kraushaar et al .: German resistance fighters. Volume 2. Dietz Verlag: Berlin 1970, page 193ff.
• Friedrich Pospiech : Eugen Schönhaar and son Carlo. Communists - resistance fighters - murdered by the Nazi regime in 1934/1942. Two lives for the freedom of Germany and France. 2nd edition, o. O. 2001
• Fair hair, Eugene . 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 : Eugen Schönhaar  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography Eugen Schönhaar , Brandenburg Memorials Foundation
• Dagmar Weinberg: A family in the resistance . In: Esslinger Zeitung , January 22, 2011.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ronald Sassning : Thälmann, Wehner, Kattner, Mielke. Difficult truths . In: Utopie Kreativ , issue 114, April 2000, pp. 362–375 (PDF file; 112 kB)
2. ^ Communist Fememord . In: Potsdamer daily newspaper , February 2, 1934.
3. ↑ John Schehr and comrades. A Murder, a Myth and the Consequences ( Memento from March 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Feature on MDR Figaro from March 2, 2013
4. ^ Socialist cemetery
5. ^ New Germany , February 2, 1954.
6. ↑ Brandenburg Memorials Foundation ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.