Georg Bernard

Georg Bernard (born April 29, 1876 in Dobersdorf , † March 4, 1945 in Dachau ) was a German trade unionist .

Life

After attending elementary school, Bernard learned to be a mechanical engineer. In 1906 he was elected second honorary cashier in the local administration of the German Metalworkers' Association (DVM) in Frankfurt am Main . On February 1, 1913, he became an employee of the DMV local administration and was appointed deputy chairman of the local social security department. During the First World War he served until 1917 and worked in a company until the establishment of the Weimar Republic .

At the end of 1918 he was appointed first representative of the DMV in Frankfurt am Main. In 1920 he was appointed First Representative of the DMV Greater Frankfurt District. This district included the places Hanau , Mainz and Wiesbaden and extended into the Saar area . After the dissolution of the free trade unions on May 2, 1933 by the National Socialists and the synchronization of the DMV in the German Labor Front (DAF), Bernard was dismissed from the service of the DMV on June 17, 1933.

Because of his membership in the SPD , he was briefly arrested for the first time in June 1933. Since April 26, 1934, Bernard was monitored by the SS security service . Another arrest took place on August 29, 1934 for his political correspondence. After a stay in the Frankfurt police prison on November 7, 1934, he was transferred to the Esterwegen concentration camp , where he was imprisoned until February 6, 1935. In 1937 the Gestapo carried out further investigations against him. On October 18, 1937, he married the hotel employee Albertine Luis Schiller.

Another arrest was made on September 4, 1941; as nothing could be proven, he was released the next day. As part of the grid action , Bernard was taken into custody on August 22, 1944 and, after a brief detention in a Frankfurt police prison, on September 16, 1944, as a "protective prisoner", was deported to the Dachau concentration camp . There he received the prisoner number 108215. On March 4, 1945, he died in Dachau.

Honors

Since March 4, 2005, IG Metall in the Mitte district ( Hesse , Rhineland-Palatinate , Saarland , Thuringia ) has been awarding the Georg Bernard plaque, for the first time on the 50th anniversary of Bernard's death. Among other things, civil society youth projects that have made a name for themselves through their commitment to social justice, democracy and against right-wing extremism are to be funded.

literature

• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the assistance of Marion Goers: Functionaries of the German Metalworkers' Association in the Nazi state. Resistance and persecution (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - resistance - emigration. Volume 1). Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-059-2 , pp. 169–174 ( PDF; 258 kB ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Georg Bernard plaque , accessed on December 6, 2015