Fritz Ecker

Friedrich "Fritz" Ecker (born March 5, 1892 in Furth im Wald , Upper Palatinate , † around 1978) was a German political functionary (SPD).

Life and activity

Ecker was the son of a master tailor who belonged to a long-established family in the Upper Palatinate. From 1905 to 1908 he completed a commercial apprenticeship. He then worked as a municipal employee in Furth. In 1914 he married Rosa Blobner (1892–1962) with whom he had the daughters Anna (* 1914), married. Tragsdorf, and Gisela (* 1916), married. Small, had.

At the beginning of the First World War , Ecker registered as a volunteer . He was used as an infantryman and machine gunner. From 1914 belonged to the 7th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment: On May 9, 1915, he was wounded in the battle of the Loretto-Höhe and on May 8, 1917 in the storming of Fesnoy, south of Arras . He later fought with the 13th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment on the Russian front. He was released from the army on December 18, 1918.

After (?) The war he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany , for which he was a member of the Furth City Council from June 1919 to June 1920.

From 1920 to 1933 Ecker held the position of secretary of the SPD district of Upper Palatinate in Weiden. At the same time he was a city councilor for Weiden and a member of the district and district assembly.

After the National Socialists came to power, Ecker was taken into protective custody several times . Among other things, he spent a few months in the Dachau concentration camp , where he arrived on July 1, 1933. According to his own statements, he was given prisoner number 2463. At the end of the year he was released again, whereby he had to fulfill the condition of reporting to the police every day.

In 1934 Ecker escaped being arrested again by fleeing to Czechoslovakia . There he worked on the concentration camp pamphlet . An appeal to the conscience of the world , with one of the first books written by German exile journalists about the atrocities in the National Socialist concentration camps, to which he contributed the report "Die Hölle von Dachau", in which he reported his experiences in the Dachau concentration camp or described other information that he came to know about the conditions and processes within the camp.

When in September 1938 some areas of Czechoslovakia were annexed by Germany in the course of the Sudeten crisis , Ecker moved to Stockholm . There he belonged to the local group Stockholm suburbs of the exile SPD. He was also head of the Comradeship Association of Former Political Prisoners and editor of the group newspaper of this association, The Gray Corps , which appeared from October 1942 to February 1945.

Within the exile SPD, Ecker initially belonged to the right wing. In March 1945, however, after a conflict with Kurt Heinig, he went over to the left wing and moved to the correspondingly oriented SPD local group in Stockholm.

In the meantime, Ecker was expatriated by the National Socialists and - as he was suspected to be in Great Britain - put on the special wanted list by the Reich Main Security Office in the spring of 1940 , a list of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles, were automatically and given priority by SS special commands should be arrested.

In January 1946, Ecker was brought to Weiden via Lübeck on the first repatriate transport. There he was appointed by the American occupation administration as head of the employment office and taken into the civil service as a councilor.

On September 1, 1945, Ecker took part in the unofficial re-establishment of the SPD in Weiden, which was formally implemented after the US military government was re-approved at the end of December 1945.

In the city council elections in Weiden on May 26, 1946, Ecker was one of ten SPD candidates who were elected to the 28-seat representative body (16 CSU, 10 SPD, 1 KPD, 1 non-party). Otherwise he did not develop any political activity after 1945.

Most recently, Ecker was recorded as a retiree in Weiden in 1978.

Fonts

• "The Hell of Dachau", in: Concentration Camp. An appeal to the world's conscience. A book of atrocities. The victims accuse , Karlsbad 1934, pp. 13–53

literature

• Karl Bayer: "Friedrich (Fritz) Ecker (1892 to 1978). Party secretary - Nazi opponent - Emigrant", in: Oberpfälzer Heimat , vol. 50, 2006, pp. 155–172.
• Hans-Günter Richardi : School of violence. The Dachau Concentration Camp , Munich 1995.
• Werner Röder / Herbert A. Strauss : Politics, Economy, Public Life , 1980, p. 177.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry on Fritz Ecker on the UK wanted list (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London)