Hans-Walter Blank

Hans-Walter Blank , also: Hans Walter Blank (born January 21, 1918 in Dortmund ; died April 18, 1968 ) was a German politician ( KPD ).

Hans-Walter Blank was the eldest son of Walter Blank (1889–1938) and his wife Martha, geb. Herzstein (1891-1935). Hans-Walter Blank was a trained photographer. But he also worked as a youth secretary in the state leadership of the KPD in North Rhine-Westphalia .

Stumbling block for Hans-Walter Blank Lohrbergstrasse 27, Cologne-Klettenberg .

In April 1936, Hans-Walter Blank fled with his father and brother Peter Max (1921–2006) from the National Socialists to Antwerp , Belgium . In March 1937 he went to Spain with his father to participate in the XI. International Brigade to fight against Franco . Here he was together with 300,000 Spanish fighters in Barcelona on October 28, 1938 participant in the farewell speech by Dolores Ibárurri . After the defeat of the interbrigadists, Hans-Walter Blank was interned in Argelès-sur-Mer . In April 1939 he and 6,807 Spanish fighters from Argelès-sur-Mer and Saint-Cyprien were brought to the Gurs camp in the Pyrenees. After the attack by the German Wehrmacht in France in May 1940, the prisoners from Gurs were relocated again. Hans-Walter Blank came to the Mont-Louis camp . In 1941 he managed to escape and he was active in the Resistance as a fighter and was front officer of the Comité "Allemagne libre" pour l'Ouest (CALPO) with the 1st Regiment of Paris.

In April 1945 he returned to Cologne and was elected as a KPD member of the first North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament on April 20, 1947 . In Cologne, he and his brother campaigned for the return of his parents' collection of paintings. Except for a few works, u. a. Heinrich Hoerle's monument to the unknown prostheses and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert's discussion , however, remained lost.

On June 17, 1950, Hans-Walter Blank resigned from the state parliament and worked as an employee and journalist. Hans-Walter Blank died on April 18, 1968.

literature

• Barbara Becker-Jákli : The Jewish cemetery Cologne-Bocklemünd. History, architecture and biographies . emons, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-95451-889-0 , pp. 214f.
• Ulrich Eumann: After Franco's victory. The suffering of Cologne fighters in Spain. History in the West, 28th year, Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2013, ISSN 0930-3286, pp. 119-139, online.pdf .

Web links

• Hans-Walter Blank at the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament
• Hans-Walter Blank in the DRAFD -Wiki