Fritz Reuter (politician, 1900)

Fritz Reuter (born December 3, 1900 in Grieben , † November 23, 1968 in East Berlin ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism , trade unionist and politician . From 1953 to 1956 he was the district mayor of Berlin-Friedrichshain .

Life

Reuter, son of a family of farm workers, worked as a herding boy and farm hand for a Prussian junker after attending elementary school. Towards the end of the First World War , he became a soldier in 1918. After the war he worked as a construction worker. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO). From 1931 to the beginning of 1933 he was the 2nd chairman of the Berlin RGO Unified Association for the Construction Industry (EVFDB).

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists took over in May 1933, the illegal direction of the Berlin RGO. In 1934 he emigrated to Moscow and was a student at the Lenin School . Reuter went to the Netherlands in 1936 and traveled from Amsterdam as a courier for the West Section under Paul Bertz to Germany, where he was arrested on May 1, 1936 in Düsseldorf . On October 23, 1936, the People's Court sentenced him to twelve years in prison. He was released from the Brandenburg-Görden prison on April 27, 1945.

In Berlin he was again a member of the KPD (from 1946 the SED ) and co-founder of the new trade unions. On June 30, 1945, he and Nikolaus Bernhard formed the provisional association management of the particularly active Berlin construction industry. On the first day of the association in June 1946, Nikolaus Bernhard was elected first chairman and Fritz Reuter second chairman of the industrial union for the construction of Greater Berlin. After Bernhard had fled to West Berlin , he was chairman of the Berlin industrial union construction / wood in the Free German Trade Union Confederation from 1948 to 1953 . On November 30, 1951, he became a member of the Preparatory Committee of the “National Committee for the Reconstruction of the German Capital” and on December 22, 1951, finally, a member of the “National Committee for the Reconstruction of the German Capital”.

On February 20, 1953 he was elected mayor and chairman of the council of the Berlin-Friedrichshain district. In March 1956 he left this office at his own request, but remained a city district councilor and ran again for the district council assembly in Berlin-Friedrichshain in May 1957 . Reuter was then employed as a department head in various state- owned companies in East Berlin. a. as head of the management department of the VEB Road and Track Construction Berlin.

Reuter died at the age of 67 and was buried in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery.

Awards

• 1958 medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
• 1960 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• Fritz Heckert Medal

literature

• Arno Klönne , Hartmut Reese, Irmgard Weyrather, Bernd Schütt (eds.): Hand in hand. Construction work and unions. A social story . Bund-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 1989, ISBN 978-3766321749 , p. 272.
• Lutz Heuer : Fritz Reuter, 1900–1968. A proletarian life . Trafo, Berlin 2007, ISBN 9783896266859 .
• Reuter, Fritz . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Berlin's unions work . In: Berliner Zeitung , July 18, 1945, p. 3.
2. ^ Preparatory committee of the "National Committee for the Reconstruction of the German Capital" . In: Neues Deutschland , December 1, 1951, p. 1.
3. ^ Founding of the National Committee for the Rebuilding of the German Capital . In: Neues Deutschland , December 23, 1951, p. 1.
4. ^ Constitution of the Friedrichshain parliament . In: Neues Deutschland , February 22, 1953, p. 6.
5. ↑ Friedrichshainer examine their candidates . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 14, 1957, p. 1.
6. ↑ Urn burials . In: Neues Deutschland , January 7, 1969, p. 2.