Fritz Saar

Fritz Saar (born October 21, 1889 in Minden ; † September 3, 1948 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( SPD ).

Life and activity

Early years and Weimar Republic

Saar was the son of master saddler Wilhelm Saar and his wife Luise, nee. Spring († 1894). After attending primary school, Saar learned to be a waiter and cook in the local train station restaurant. After his apprenticeship he worked in various cities before settling in Berlin in 1911, where he a. a. worked in the Germania halls, in the Spree garden and in the Pfefferberg brewery .

Politically, Saar was organized in the SPD since 1909 . Since 1912 he was organized in the association of innkeepers.

From 1915 Saar took part in the First World War as a forcibly recruited soldier . Among other things, it was used at Verdun , where it was buried.

Shortly after the end of the war and the outbreak of the November Revolution , Saar was a member of the Reichsräte Congress of Workers 'and Soldiers' Councils as a delegate.

In 1919 Saar got a job at the Association of Innkeepers, in which he was authorized representative for Berlin, d. H. Head of the Berlin local administration. He stayed that way until 1930. His area of ​​responsibility included negotiating collective agreements and organizing strikes. Politically, he was assigned to the left wing of the SPD.

In 1931 Saar was elected chairman of the Central Association of Hotel, Restaurant and Cafe Employees (ZVHRC).

Emigration and Captivity (1933 to 1945)

After the seizure of power of the Nazis in the spring of 1933 Saar emigrated - after a brief arrest on May 2, 1933 - June 9, 1933 to Amsterdam , where he found refuge with his brother living there. There he opened a cigar shop and later ran a pension.

From June 1935, Saar published the Gastwirtsgehilfen Zeitung from Amsterdam . This reached print runs of between 50 and 200 copies, was smuggled into German territory via underground channels and distributed there among sympathizers. These were called upon to make copies and pass them on. The innkeeper assistants newspaper was the International Handlungsgehilfenverband and the International Union of hotel employees financed their appearance but had set in November 1938 due to financial difficulties. In terms of content, she dealt with topics such as the situation in Germany, collective agreements and food shortages.

Saar also built the structure of an exile leadership of the ZVHRC from the Netherlands. Since Saar propagated a political merger of the SPD and KPD against National Socialism, communists were also accepted, with which Saar put himself in opposition to the party executive of the exiled SPD. Among the communists with whom Saar worked in the following years was u. a. Paul Merker , who left the organization in 1938 after conflicts with Saar.

In Germany, Saar became the target of the National Socialist police apparatus after a series of arrests began in November 1936 in the vicinity of his contact persons in the Reich: A card index was also found for the distribution of the clerk newspaper, so that many recipients of the same were arrested and sentenced to prison terms for illegal prison sentences Union movement were condemned. A preliminary investigation was initiated against Saar in absentia.

As a result, Saar was classified as an enemy of the state. In 1939 he was stripped of his German citizenship. In the spring of 1940 the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, were to be located and arrested with special priority by the occupying forces following special SS units.

One year after the occupation of the Netherlands in spring 1940, Saar was located by the occupation authorities in 1941 and arrested together with his wife. They were first brought to Düsseldorf. Saar was finally transferred to the Berlin police prison. There he was subjected to numerous interrogations and probably also ill-treated.

In January 1942 Saar was indicted before the People's Court on charges of having committed preparation for high treason . The prosecution applied for the death penalty, and the court finally ruled in its judgment of April 9, 1942, imprisonment for life. The verdict stated that in Saar's case only "one of the highest penalties threatened by law can be considered as an appropriate atonement for his act." He was saved from the death penalty by the fact that he was able to convince the court that he was doing his union work would have resigned himself from 1938, and the fact that the court found that “the union he has undertaken to re-establish, both according to the profession in question and the size of its membership, the fewer important and influential trade unions ”.

Saar served his sentence from 1942 to 1945 in the Brandenburg prison .

post war period

At the end of the war, Saar was freed from the Brandenburg prison by the Red Army . Soon afterwards he took part in the establishment of the food-pleasure-restaurants union in Berlin on June 30, 1945 .

In 1945 Saar was appointed mayor of the Berlin district of Friedrichshain by the SPD . The appointment was confirmed by the Allied Command with BK / O (46) 86. He later became a member of the SED , a unity party that emerged from a forced merger of the two parties , while maintaining the view he had taken during emigration that the SPD and KPD had to move together in order to prevent a repetition of the political development of the time after the First World War . After he was not elected mayor in the election for the city council of Greater Berlin in autumn 1946 - especially since the SPD distanced itself from him - he was given the trusteeship for the Aschinger restaurants as a substitute .

Saar died in September 1948 when he had a heart attack in his office.

family

Saar was since 1911 with the cold lady Martha, geb. Klodt, married.

literature

• Werner Röder / Herbert A. Strauss : Politics, Economy, Public Life , 1980, p. 628 f. (Entry on Saar)
• Willy Buschak : Working in the Smallest Circle: Trade Unions in the Resistance to National Socialism , 1993.

Web links

• Biography Fritz Saar at 150 years of NGG