Friedrich Schönauer

Friedrich "Fritz" Schönauer (born September 11, 1904 in Altenplos ; † April 2, 1950 in Bayreuth ) was a German trade unionist , politician ( SPD ) and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.

Life

Schönauer was born on September 11, 1904 in Grüngraben (Altenplos registry office) near Bayreuth. The father Konrad Schönauer was a bricklayer and foreman, the mother Katharina Schönauer, nee Ochs, a housewife. At times, the father took over the office of mayor of Altenplos. After attending primary school, Friedrich Schönauer completed an apprenticeship as an electrical engineer, which he completed in 1921 with the journeyman's examination. In the following years he worked in the profession he had learned and was also active in the trade union. Shortly after completing his training, he joined the German Metalworkers Association (DMV). At times Schönauer also worked as a tractor and pit electrician in the Ruhr mining industry.

After the seizure of power by the Nazis, he was arrested on 10 March 1933rd He was taken into “protective custody”, first in Kulmbach , later in Bayreuth prison. On May 6, 1933, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp , from which he was released on December 29, 1933. He was active in the resistance against the Nazi regime. He was arrested several times in 1934. At the end of February 1935 he emigrated to Czechoslovakia to avoid being arrested again. There he worked in the exile structures of the SPD. In September 1937 he went via Austria and Switzerland to France , where he was again involved in exile organizations of German social democracy. Among other things, he was also active in the cross-party coordination committee of German trade unionists . In France, Schönauer was interned in the Gurs camp as a potentially “hostile foreigner”. In March 1941 he was able to flee to Spain , where he was also interned. After two years of internment, he was released from a prison in Madrid in December 1943 with false papers . Schönauer went back to France illegally, where he joined the French Resistance . He later joined the US invasion troops in France, with whom he fought against the Axis powers in 1944/45 under a false name (including Fred Stark, Jean, Novotny, James Fried).

Schönauer returned to Germany in the summer of 1945 and retired from the US Army in September of the same year. He settled in Kulmbach and worked there as an employee in a spinning mill. He also continued his union involvement. During the US occupation he was arrested because of his opposition to denazification and sentenced in 1948 to ten days imprisonment in the Fronfeste .

Party politics

Schönauer was already politically socialized very early. At the age of 14 he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ), and in 1919 he became a member of the SPD. After the Second World War he took part in the re-establishment of the SPD in Kulmbach, and he was elected district chairman in October 1945. Since 1946 Schönauer was a city councilor and second mayor of Kulmbach. In the first federal election in 1949 he was elected directly to the German Bundestag in the Kulmbach constituency, of which he was a member until his early death.

Schönauer was a full member of the committee for patent law and industrial property rights. His successor in the Bundestag was Johannes Semler .

Honors

• Friedrich-Schönauer-Strasse in Kulmbach

literature

• Siegfried Mielke : Friedrich Schönauer (1904–1950). In: Siegfried Mielke, Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the collaboration of Julia Pietsch: Emigrated metal trade unionists in the fight against the Nazi regime (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 3). Metropol, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-210-7 , pp. 770-781.
• Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 2: N-Z. Attachment. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 773.