Gottfried Hamacher

Gottfried Hamacher (born September 17, 1916 in Bonn , † May 12, 2006 in Berlin ) was a resistance fighter against National Socialism in the National Committee for Free Germany .

Life

Gottfried Hamacher was born the son of an innkeeper. He completed a commercial apprenticeship and worked as an assistant in his parents' company. In 1934 he was drafted into the Reich Labor Service and served in the Wehrmacht from 1936 to 1938 and from August 1939 . At the beginning of February 1941 he was transferred to Sturzkampfgeschwader 77 as a non-commissioned officer and radio operator . His first front line deployment took place in May 1941 in Greece on the island of Crete.

On June 22, 1941 at 3:33 a.m. he flew the first attack on the Soviet Union, the target was the Brest fortress . On July 10, 1941, his fighting machine was shot down by the Soviet anti-aircraft cartillery during the bombing of the Dniester Bridge near Tiraspol and he was taken prisoner.

From June 1943 he was a student at the anti-fascist school in the village of Talizy. There he was involved with a working group in the preparation of the establishment of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD). In 1943 he was appointed front officer and army officer of the NKFD in the 65th Army. From April to June 1945 he was an assistant in the staff of the 2nd Belarusian Front in Szczecin. His area of ​​operation was Western Pomerania.

Gottfried Hamacher became a member of the KPD in 1945 and became a member of the SED in 1946 after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD . He was an editor or reporter for the KPD newspaper Deutsche Volkszeitung . He was a KPD and SED party functionary. In 1947 he was one of the founders of the Society for the Study of Culture of the Soviet Union, and from 1949 Society for German-Soviet Friendship (DSF), where he held managerial positions. In June 1951 he was expelled from the SED because of "insufficient vigilance towards the class enemy", relieved of all functions and worked as a transport worker until 1955. In 1959 he was rehabilitated by the Central Party Control Commission of the SED. He then worked in a leading position in the general management of the GDR travel agency (VEB) until 1981 . There he was, among other things, director for foreigners support and head of diplomatic missions in the USSR and Bulgaria .

Gottfried Hamacher was one of the co-founders of the DRAFD (Association of Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement), where he mainly dealt with the collection of biographies of German anti-fascists who have joined the allied troops .

publication

• with André Lohmar, Herbert Mayer, Günter Wehner and Harald Wittstock: Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement, short biographies. Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-320-02941-X online (PDF; 47 kB)

Web links

• Gottfried Hamacher in the DRAFD Wiki