Friedrich Rohde

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Friedrich Rohde (born September 6, 1895 in Stutthof ; † January 21, 1970 in Saßnitz ) was a member of the Gdańsk People's Day for three years as an SPD member of the Danzig People's Day between the wars . During the Nazi era he was a member of an anti-fascist resistance group in the Stutthof area . After 1947 he was responsible for building up the state-owned fish industry on Rügen .

root

Friedrich Rohde was born the son of the fisherman August Rohde and his wife Maria. After completing elementary school , he briefly hired himself as a cabin boy on a schooner before completing an apprenticeship as a fisherman in his father's business. In 1913, after joining the Prussian electricity construction administration as a worker , he became a member of the SPD and the German Transport Workers' Association . He was called up to the Kiel sailors division during the First World War and joined the USPD in 1917 . In the course of the revolutionary uprising he was elected a member of the Kiel Workers and Soldiers Council in November 1918 .

After his demobilization, Rohde returned to his homeland as a worker at the former Danzig Imperial Shipyard (Plehnersdorfer Werft), where he was elected to the works council in 1920. With the loss of thousands of jobs at the shipyard, Rohde also lost his job.

Married to Meta Maria Kochanski since 1920, he was hired as a deep-sea fisherman in Geestemünde in 1920 . He was an active participant in the several month long strike of the herring and deep sea fisheries in the spring of 1923. In 1924 he returned to Stutthof to take over his parents' fishing business. As early as 1922, Rohde with the right wing of the USPD had become a member of the SPD again and thus decided against joining his old party to the Communist International .

Social democratic activist - Resistant behavior

The municipality of Stutthoff between Frischem Haff , Frischer Nehrung and the Baltic Sea , with almost 3,000 inhabitants , has belonged to the Free City of Danzig since 1920 . Soon after his return, Rohde took over the chairmanship of the local branch of the Social Democratic Party of Danzig and the local group of young workers and was elected to the Danzig Lowlands district council in May 1927 . In the People's Day election in Gdansk in 1927 , Rohde was elected to the People's Day . In parliament he saw himself as a representative of the interests of the economically threatened small fishermen on the lagoon, Baltic Sea and Spit.

In the popular elections in Gdansk in 1930 , Rohde could no longer defend his mandate because of the downsizing of the Gdansk parliament. But in 1931 he was re-elected to the Danziger Niederung district council. In the People's Day elections in 1933 , the constituency of Stutthof, which had previously been a left stronghold, went to the NSDAP with 74.7% .

When the Danzig Senate adopted the Reich German Enabling Act after the landslide victory of the National Socialists in the People's Day elections in 1933 , Rohde lost his district council mandate and was temporarily held in custody. Later he was under police supervision.

The establishment of a concentration camp in Stutthof in 1939 after the start of the war contributed to the radical intimidation of the local opposition . As a protective measure, after the attack on Poland in Stutthof, 34 Nazi opponents came together to form an informal, illegal “naval union”. Rohde was particularly close to the former local KPD chairman Rudolf Behrend . The first illegal KPD sheet was created on Rohde's typewriter.

As a war fisherman, Rohde had to supply the Pillau air force base with fish; an illegally installed radio transmitter on his boat was used to inform friends of opinion. During the wave of arrests following the failed assassination attempt on Hitler ( Aktion grid ) against former prominent members of the "system parties", Rohde got away with a house search. Shortly before the end of the war, Rohde was drafted into the Volkssturm, but was able to desert and hide near his home town.

Made "Mayor of the Germans" in Stutthof by the Red Army in May 1945, Rohde had to take orders and ensure supplies. The new Polish administration left Friedrich Rohde in his position until he and his wife were expelled from his home country at the end of 1946. He joined the SED in the Wernigerode reception camp .

On Rügen

In May 1947, Rohde was allowed to move to Rügen to work as a fisherman. The former leader of the KPD parliamentary group in the Danzig Volkstag, Anton Plenikowski , supported Rohde in his professional restart on the Baltic Sea. At the end of 1948, Friedrich Rohde was appointed the new technical director of the state-owned fishing industry. Since November 1949, Friedrich Rohde has been in charge of the fishing combine in Saßnitz, which initially had to contend with considerable infrastructural problems.

In September 1951, Rohde was arrested for alleged sabotage and economic crimes as part of the Stalinist internal party cleansing wave of the SED . After 15 months of pre-trial detention, he was sentenced to a three-year suspended prison sentence in the Fischkombinat trial. This conviction caused considerable unrest at Rohde's old job. Above all, there was criticism from the union side, and it had an effect. Since March 1954, re-employed as "works representative for shipbuilding and repair", Rohde rose to the position of production manager for the fishing company. Rohde achieved its complete rehabilitation over several years.

In 1962 Rohde retired. In September 1967 he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze in "recognition of his outstanding achievements in setting up the state-owned Saßnitz fish combine".

Bibliography (selection)

  • Martin Holz: Evacuees, refugees and displaced persons on the island of Rügen 1943–1961. Böhlau, Cologne 2004, ISBN 341214102X ( publication of the Historical Commission for Pomerania. Volume V 39).
  • Ernst Loops: History of the Danzig Labor Movement Danzig 1929.
  • Günter Rehaag: Ostseebad Stutthof. Escape and expulsion from East Germany. Ground angle. Vogelsang, New World, Ostseebad Steegen, border village B, border village A, Groschkenkampe, Stobbendorf, Fischerbabke, district of Großes Werder, Gdansk West Prussia. Population registers Ostseebad Stutthof, Bodenwinkel . Preetz 1997.
  • Rüdiger Zimmermann : Friedrich Rohde (1895–1970). Gdańsk MP, fisherman, socialist . Bonn 2020.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fish Combine. Organ of the party organization of the SED in the VEB Fischkombinat Sassnitz , November 1962, No. 18
  2. ↑ Handbook for the Danzig People's Day. 3rd electoral term 1928/1931 . Book printing and publishing company, Danzig 1928, p. 120
  3. ^ Rüdiger Zimmermann: Friedrich Rohde. Gdańsk MP, fisherman and socialist . Bonn 2020, p. 23
  4. ^ Archives of social democracy in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Carl Töpfer estate
  5. ^ Danziger Volksstimme , vol. 14 (May 19, 1933, no. 123)
  6. ^ Margarete Pfau: Danziger Strasse. In: Günter Rehaag: Ostseebad Stutthof. Escape and expulsion from East Germany. Preetz 1997, pp. 159-160.
  7. ↑ Landesarchiv Greifswald, cadre file Friedrich Rohde Rep. 296a No. 833
  8. ↑ Fish Combine. Organ of the party organization of the SED in the VEB Fischkombinat Sassnitz , February 1963, No. 3
  9. ↑ Landesarchiv Greifswald, cadre file Friedrich Rohde Rep. 296a No. 833
  10. ↑ Fishing. Organ of the party organization of the VEB Fischkombinat Sassnitz-Rügen , September 26, 1967, No. 22
personal data
SURNAME Rohde, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rohde, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Member of an anti-fascist resistance group
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Stutthof
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1970
Place of death Saßnitz