Friedrich Schnellbacher

Friedrich ("Fritz") Schnellbacher (born March 20, 1884 in Hanau , † December 4, 1947 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( SPD / USPD / KPD ). He was a substitute member of the headquarters of the KPD.

Life

Schnellbacher, son of a from the Odenwald originating stonemason , trained as a lithographer . He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1906 and took over the SPD district organization in Hanau as secretary after Robert Dißmann , who took over the district secretariat in Frankfurt am Main . In January 1913 he took part in the Prussian party congress of the Social Democrats as a delegate from Hanau- Bockenheim - Gelnhausen - Orb . The highly industrialized district of Hanau was known as the stronghold of the extreme left wing of the SPD. From 1915 to May 11, 1922 Schnellbacher was a member of the Hanau city council.

In 1916 he was called up for military service as a lithographer . He should draw general staff maps. Schnellbacher fell ill with rheumatoid arthritis and was taken to the hospital , first to Hanau, then to Mainz . The military fired him when it became apparent that he could no longer be used because of the serious damage to his health.

At the Reich Conference of the SPD in September 1916, he appeared as the spokesman for the International Group . At the founding convention of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in Gotha in April 1917, Schnellbacher was elected to the USPD advisory board as a representative of the Spartakus group. Previously, he had defended the positions of the International Group against attacks by Hugo Haase .

From 1917 to at least 1921 Schnellbacher was a representative of the trade unions on the board of the local health insurance fund Hanau. 1918/1919 he was chairman of the Hanau workers and soldiers council . Together with the doctor Georg Wagner , he was able to convince the majority of the members of the Hanau USPD to convert to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the spring of 1919. In April 1919 he played a decisive role in the founding of the Hanau section of the communist-led International Association of War Victims and War Survivors , which had split off from the Social Democratic Reich Association of War Victims and Survivors . Schnellbacher became head of the local KPD group in Hanau and a full-time employee in the Langenselbold consumer cooperative .

Schnellbacher was Hanauer's delegate at the 2nd party congress of the KPD in Heidelberg in October 1919. He supported Paul Levi in the fight against the anarcho-syndicalist current in the party. The so-called "Hamburg syndicalists" around Heinrich Laufenberg , Otto Rühle and Fritz Wolffheim were excluded from the party congress and in April 1920 founded the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD).

On the III. At the KPD party convention in Karlsruhe in February 1920 , Schnellbacher was elected a substitute member of the headquarters. Together with Wilhelm Pieck , he was chairman of the fourth party congress of the KPD in Berlin (April 14-15, 1920) and was again elected as a substitute member of the headquarters and as a representative of Hesse in the party's central committee. After the establishment of a political (Polbüro) and organizational office in the KPD headquarters at the end of September 1920 under August Thalheimer , Schnellbacher became one of the political commissioners or shop stewards . The offices had the function of securing the connection with the individual districts of the party, of checking and ensuring the execution of party decisions.

From the end of 1922 Schnellbacher worked as IBOKA's secretary for the Hesse district in Frankfurt am Main , and from 1929 onwards he was its salaried secretary on the main board in Berlin. At the main board he mainly worked on international issues. In February 1929 he therefore moved from Hanau to Birkenwerder near Berlin, where a short time later he also became chairman of the KPD local group. He was partly responsible for the fact that the KPD became the strongest party in the community assembly in the subsequent election. In November 1929 he was elected to the Brandenburg Provincial Parliament. For some time he also worked as a secretary for the Brandenburg housing cooperative “The large family”.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , the IBOKA was closed and Schnellbacher was questioned several times by the Gestapo . He was relatively undisturbed because he was already seriously ill (rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, diabetes). During the Nazi regime he was unemployed most of the time.

After the war ended in 1945 he resumed work for war victims and survivors. He became head of the main department of professional welfare for the severely disabled in the State Insurance Institute Berlin under the social democrat Ernst Schellenberg . In 1946 Schnellbacher became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , but no longer appeared politically. He died in Berlin the following year.

literature

• Biography: Friedrich Schnellbacher . In: Hartfrid Krause: Revolution and counter-revolution 1918/19: using the example of Hanau . Librarian, Kronberg / Ts. 1974, pp. 222-239.
• Schnellbacher, Friedrich . 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

• Timeline on the website of the Federal Archives.

Footnotes

1. ^ Later renamed the International Association of Victims of War and Labor (IBOKA)