Fritz David

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Fritz David (aka Ilja-David Israilewitsch Krugljanski ) (born October 25, 1897 in Novosybkow near Wilna ; † August 24, 1936 ) was a functionary of the Comintern and the KPD . In the course of the great terror he was arrested in 1936, forced to confess in the show trial of former leading politicians in the Soviet Union , sentenced and executed.

Life

He was born the son of a Jewish teacher. He studied, but left the university without a degree. From 1916 he was politically active in Jewish social democratic groups. According to his own statements, he worked as a Menshevik- oriented trade union official until 1920 . He later worked for the Comintern.

He was sent to Germany under the name Fritz David. There he was initially active in the German textile workers' association until 1927 in the spirit of the KPD. Then he moved to the trade union department of the Central Committee of the KPD. He also became a member of the headquarters of the RGO and was responsible for the leather industry. He also worked as a secretary for the communist union newspaper Der Kampf . He switched to the Rote Fahne and was head of the trade union editorial office from 1928 to 1932. Between 1932 and March 1933 he worked directly for the Central Committee's secretariat. He was responsible for theoretical questions and was considered a party theorist in the final phase of the Weimar Republic . In doing so, he often turned against Trotsky . David published a book in 1932 called The Bankruptcy of Reformism .

In March 1933, after the start of National Socialist rule , he returned to Moscow and lived in the Hotel Lux . There he took up a job with the German section of the Comintern and became a close collaborator of Wilhelm Pieck . He was also active at the VII Comintern World Congress. He had prepared Pieck's speeches at the congress and at the so-called Brussels conference of the KPD . David was heavily involved in the resolution passed there, which provided for a united and popular front policy instead of the fight against the alleged social fascists . Pieck had planned for David an important role in the ideological struggle in the future.

In 1936 he was arrested by the NKVD . This happened in preparation for the first show trial against former leading members of the CPSU such as Zinoviev or Kamenev . It was about the accusation that they had formed an opposition "Trotskyist-Zinovievist terrorist center". In the process, David and Konon Berman-Jurin (= Hans Stauer) were assigned the part as key witnesses. In doing so, they were supposed to expose the Trotskyists' connection to the alleged conspiracy. In their extorted confession they stated that they had seen Trotsky themselves. This is said to have given the instruction to murder Stalin . The statement didn't help David. He was sentenced to death and shot. It was not until 1988 that he was rehabilitated. His wife was also arrested and appears to have died in the camp.

literature

  • David, Fritz . 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 .
  • Ulla Plener , Natalia Mussienko (ed.): Sentenced to the maximum penalty: death by shooting. Fatalities from Germany in the Great Terror in the Soviet Union 1937/38. Berlin, 2006 p. 53
  • Alan Bullock : Hitler and Stalin. Parallel lives . Munich, 1998 p. 636f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ursula Langkau-Alex: Deutsche Volksfront 1932–1939: Vol. 2 Berlin, 2004 p. 192
  2. ^ Report of Court Proceedings: The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center. Heard Before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR at www.marxists.org

Web links

personal data
SURNAME David, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krugljanski, Ilja-David Israilevic
BRIEF DESCRIPTION communist functionary and victim of Stalinism
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Novosibkov
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1936