Fritz Riwotzki

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Fritz Riwotzki (* 1910 in Wattenscheid ; † 1978 ) was a German resistance fighter ( Red Fighters ) during the National Socialist era and police chief of Dortmund in the post-war period .

Life

Riwotzki was a trained typesetter and joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) in 1926 . In 1928 he became a member of the SPD and the Young Socialists (JS). After the JS was banned by the SPD party executive in 1931, he made contact with the Düsseldorf and Cologne groups of the Red Fighters (RK). From 1932 he was a permanent member of the RK and founded its Wattenscheider group in 1933.

In August 1936 he took part in the RK Reich Conference in Berlin . In November of that year, the Wattenscheid group was exposed by the Gestapo . Riwotzki fled to Berlin to warn the RK Reichsleitung. He was arrested on November 14, 1936 and sentenced to six years in prison on August 18, 1937 in the trial of "Riwotzki and others" by the Hamm Higher Regional Court . Up to May 1945 he was imprisoned in a penitentiary and concentration camp for nine years with severe abuse.

After the liberation he founded local and district associations in the state of Brandenburg on behalf of the SPD party executive . In 1946 he had to flee to the West because, as opponents of the forced unification of the KPD and SPD to form the SED, their defense and the NKVD attacked him . In Düsseldorf he became head of the state press office of the SPD and then government councilor in the NRW interior ministry .

He then worked as police director in Hagen and from 1957 until retirement as police chief in Dortmund.

During his tenure in Dortmund, among other things , he dealt with the transport price revolt in 1971 and prevented a demonstration by the Maoist KPD on May 1st in 1973 . While the social historian Hans-Heinrich Bass recognized Riwotzki's moderation during the events of 1971, Riwotzki was responsible for resolving the conflict by force in 1973, according to Der Spiegel .

Web links

literature

  • Horst Delkus: Fritz Riwotzki (1910-1978) - resistance fighter, police president and freemason. In: Home Dortmund. City history in pictures and reports 2/2005.
  • Jan Foitzik : Between the fronts. On the politics, organization and function of left political small organizations in the resistance from 1933 to 1939/40. Bonn 1986. ISBN 3-87831-439-6
  • Peter Friedemann / Uwe Schledorn : Active against the right. The Red Fighter - Marxist Workers' Newspaper 1930–1931. Essen 1994, ISBN 3-88474-033-4 .
  • Olaf Ihlau : The Red Fighters. A contribution to the history of the labor movement in the Weimar Republic and in the “Third Reich”. Meisenheim am Glan 1969.
  • Michael Kubina: About Utopia, Resistance and Cold War. LIT-Verlag 2001, ISBN 978-3-8258-5361-7 ( limited preview in Google book search)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Kubina From Utopia, Resistance and Cold War , p. 241
  2. ^ Hans-Heinrich Bass: Transport policy under the pressure of the street. The Dortmund fare unrest of 1971, in: Werkstatt Geschichte , ed. from the Association for Critical Historiography eV, No. 61: "geschichte und kritik", 2013, pp. 49–64.
  3. ↑ More like yes and no . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1973, p. 34 ( Online - May 7, 1973 ).
  4. ^ Hans-Heinrich Bass: Transport policy under the pressure of the street. The Dortmund fare unrest of 1971, in: Werkstatt Geschichte , ed. from the Association for Critical Historiography eV, No. 61: "geschichte und kritik", 2013, p. 61.
  5. ↑ More like yes and no . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1973, p. 34 ( Online - May 7, 1973 ).
personal data
SURNAME Riwotzki, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German policeman
DATE OF BIRTH 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Wattenscheid
DATE OF DEATH 1978