Hans Beimler

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Hans Beimler on a GDR postage stamp

Hans Beimler (born July 2, 1895 in Munich as Johannes Baptist Beimler ; † December 1, 1936 outside Madrid ) was a German politician ( KPD ). He became known as a communist member of the Reichstag and as a political commissioner of the " Thälmann Battalion " of the XI. International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War .

Life

Imperial Era and Weimar Republic

As the son of a farm worker, Beimler attended elementary school in Waldthurn in the Upper Palatinate , where he grew up. He later learned the trade of a locksmith and in 1913 became a member of the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV). During the First World War he was a marine on a minesweeper from 1914 to 1918 and was a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Cuxhaven in 1918 . After he was active in the Spartakusbund , he was one of the founding members of the KPD in 1919 .

From April 13 to May 3, 1919, he took an active part in the struggle for the preservation of the Munich Soviet Republic and founded the KPD local group in Munich. After the Soviet Republic was crushed, he was imprisoned for a short time. He then worked again as a machinist, held various trade union functions and was chairman of the KPD in the Munich district of Nymphenburg . Beimler was arrested again in 1921 because he had tried to prevent the transport of troops by blowing up a bridge. For this he received two years in June 1921 imprisonment and serving the sentence until 1923 in prison Niederschönenfeld . After his discharge, he worked in a locomotive factory in Munich and was a member of the local works council.

Beimler was repeatedly reprimanded and prosecuted for his political activities. By resolution of the general assembly of the Munich works councils, he traveled to the Soviet Union with the first German workers' delegation from July 14 to August 28, 1925 . Beimler was entrusted with the management of operational work by the KPD's southern Bavarian district leadership, of which he had been a member since June 1925. Until March 1928 he was a member of the secretariat of the district management responsible for trade union issues and for work in the mass organizations. In April 1928, the district leadership commissioned him to reorganize party work in the Augsburg sub-district , which he headed until the spring of 1932.

In 1928 the association management excluded Beimler from the DMV. Beimler was a member of the Augsburg city council from December 1929 to August 1932, and of the Bavarian state parliament from April to July 1932 . From 1932 to 1933 he was a member of the German Reichstag . In the spring of 1932, Beimler returned to Munich and became political secretary of the southern Bavaria district of the KPD.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the takeover of the Nazis he participated in the the Central Committee of the Political Secretaries, ZK-instructors and department heads of the Communist Party on February 7, 1933 convened meeting Sporthaus Ziegenhals in Berlin part.

On April 11, 1933, Beimler was arrested after weeks of illegal work and tortured in the Munich police headquarters and taken to the Dachau concentration camp after 14 days . On the night of May 8 to May 9, 1933, he managed to escape from the camp, allegedly killing an SS man in order to escape in his uniform. After a few weeks of shelter with like-minded people in Bavaria, he was able to move to Prague . In August 1933 his brochure was published in the Dachau murder camp . It was the first authentic report on the conditions in a German National Socialist concentration camp . In a passage in the brochure Im Kordlager Dachau it says:

“Now (the warehouse manager Vogel) handed me a 2 meter long calf rope the size of a finger and asked me to hang it on the small water tap [...] I climbed onto the cot and hung the rope [...] on the tap. After I got down again, he gave me the following instructions: 'If someone enters the cell again in the future, you have to take a military posture and say:' The protective prisoner Beimler reports on the spot 'and - pointing to the rope -' should If you have any doubts, then he is at your disposal. '"

- Hans Beimler, August 1933

On November 3, 1934, the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger published the third expatriation list of the German Reich through which he was expatriated . Until 1936 he worked among emigrants in Prague and Zurich .

Spanish Civil War

When the Central Committee of the KPD initiated support for the Spanish republicans from Paris in July / August 1936, Beimler went to Barcelona on August 5, 1936 to support the republican side with the formation of the Thälmann battalion and the international brigades (interbrigades) . With his help, a German-language transmitter for the anti-fascists in Barcelona could be put into operation. Beimler was then one of the first volunteers to fight for the Spanish Republic in these brigades . In the interbrigades he was political commissar of all German battalions .

death

On December 1, 1936, Beimler walked down a hollow street near the Moncloa-Palast building complex to move the positions of the two German battalions from the XI. International Brigade visit. In this alley, he and the political commissioner Louis Schuster (i.e. Franz Vehlow) found their deaths, while the third companion, Richard Staimer , who later became Wilhelm Pieck's son-in-law , escaped. Beimler's death was later the subject of much speculation. He is buried in the Barcelona municipal cemetery, the Cementiri de Montjuïc .

GPU theory

Antonia Stern, a friend of Beimler's, stayed in Madrid six months after his death, researching his death and speaking of a murder by the Soviet secret service GPU on the 20th anniversary of his death in Madrid . As the reason for Beimler's murder, she cites his criticism of the GPU, which repeatedly fatally intervened in the clashes between the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) and the republicans in order to bring the social revolution in Spain on a Stalinist course . Beimler also maintained contacts with anarchists who regarded Moscow-loyal communists as enemies. This theory assumes that the survivor Staimer was a GPU agent who sneakily shot Beimler and Schuster. Staimer himself is said to have been a member of a GPU command under Erich Mielke , who later became Minister for State Security in the GDR .

The historian Michael Uhl counters this theory by analyzing the files of the KPD defense apparatus in Spain, according to which Beimler did not die from a GPU bullet. Investigations by the Ministry for State Security of the GDR and by historians in communist archives after 1989 also found no evidence of a murder on the part of the GPU. Furthermore, this theory contradicts the fact that the conflicts between the Popular Front government and the anarchist groups only escalated from 1937 and were bloody.

On the other hand, a secret note dated February 3, 1938 by the informant Arthur Bay discovered in the Swiss Federal Archives in Bern supports Antonia Stern's thesis, according to which Beimler was shot by his own people: «The liquidation of the former German communist member of the Reichstag, Hans Beimler, who was killed by the communist The press was falsely reported as having fallen at the front and was executed by Richard Kindermann, Herz-Gruppe. Laurencis, a detective for the Catalan police, spoke about the Beimler case, whereupon it disappeared without a trace. " Ludwig Renn , who, as commander of the Ernst Thälmann battalion, shared the room with his political commissars Hans Beimler and Louis Schuster, named November 30, 1936 in his book The Spanish War , published in 1955, as the day on which he learned of their deaths. Accordingly, Beimler would have died a day earlier than was officially announced. Even contemporaries were amazed at the large commemoration ceremony on December 2nd, which was organized exceptionally quickly.

See also theories about Durruti's death

Sniper theory

Another theory is that Hans Beimler and Louis Schuster were shot by a Francoist sniper and only Richard Staimer survived this attack. Many republican fighters in Spain doubted this theory .

family

In 1919 Hans Beimler married Magdalena Müller, with whom he had two children, Rosemarie (born September 28, 1919; †?) And Johann (born April 28, 1921 in Munich; † November 12, 2013 in New York). Johann was arrested in Moscow in 1937 for allegedly participating in the preparation of an assassination attempt on Stalin, later released probably because of his famous father and was able to flee to Mexico. There Johann's son Hans Anthony Beimler was born, who later worked as a screenwriter for television series such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine .

Magdalena died in Munich on March 16, 1928 and Beimler married Centa Beimler in July 1930 (* March 12, 1909, † August 19, 2000). She was a secretary in the editorial office of the KPD newspaper Neue Zeitung in Munich and looked after the two stepchildren. Centa was arrested in April 1933 and then imprisoned in Moringen women's concentration camp . In 1942 she was arrested again and sentenced by the Munich Higher Regional Court to one and a half years in prison. In 1945 she became a full-time functionary in the VVN and the KPD in Bavaria. The DEFA feature film The Spring Lid Watch and the documentary War of Dreams tells part of the family history.

Appreciations

On the 1st anniversary of his death, December 1, 1937, Beimler was honored with Spanish citizenship.

State-owned enterprise
, the VEB Lokomotivbau electrotechnical works (LEW) in Hennigsdorf in Berlin was named after Hans Beimler.

Hans Beimler Medal
The state award (not to be confused with the Hans Beimler badge, see below) wasdonatedby the Council of Ministers of the GDR on May 17, 1956and awarded to individuals who worked in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War ( 1936–1939) and later remained true to the socialist ideals as veterans.

Songs

Film adaptations

In the NVA

  • The 1st motorized rifle regiment received the traditional name Hans Beimler on February 28, 1966 .
  • The Volksmarine “Hans Beimler” high-speed rocket boat, a Tarantul-class ship

Streets, residential area
Numerous streets in the GDR were named after Hans Beimler, some of which still exist in the East German federal states, but most of them - such as Berlin's Otto-Braun-Straße  - have since been renamed. In Chemnitz there is still the Hans-Beimler area , a prefabricated housing estate in the Gablenz district . A library of the same name existed under the name of Beimlers after a public protest until it was closed. There is also a (Hans) Beimler Street in Augsburg and Munich in western Germany.

Monuments
In the Chemnitz district of Gablenz, a stele by the artist Volker Beier was inaugurated in 1979 in memory of Hans Beimler and the other German interbrigadists and renovated in 2018.

Schools and youth hostels
Many GDR schools bore the "honorary name" of Hans Beimler , including a high school in Friedrichshain 's Corinthstrasse 1-5 . There was a bronze bust of the communist and a memorial room in which his work was honored. The youth hostel in the Rote Grube district of Sosa was called Hans Beimler until 1990. The youth hostel in Klingenberg (Saxony) at dam 2 also bore this name until 1990. Likewise, the connected secondary and secondary school in Dabel (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) bore the name until it closed in 2004. In Radeberg (Saxony), a polytechnic school was named Hans Beimler, as did the polytechnic high school in Bennewitz (now a primary school). One of the three polytechnic high schools in the district town of Herzberg / Elster also bore the honorary name of Hans Beimler.

Hans Beimler Choir
In (West) Berlin there has been a political Hans Beimler Choir since 1972.

Hans Beimler Center, Hans Beimler Training Center
In Augsburg there has been a Hans Beimler Center since the end of 2008, which is operated by the Hans Beimler Association. It is located at Manlichstrasse 3 in Augsburg-Oberhausen and therefore right next to Beimler's former house (Manlichstrasse 5), where he lived during his time as Augsburg city councilor.

The Central Training Center (ZAZ) of the Society for Sport and Technology in Scheibe-Alsbach , which existed from 1955 to 1989, also bore his name.

Pre-military competitions for schoolchildren In
the course of pre-military training, the GDR established the Hans Beimler competitions in their schools. The students with the best results were awarded the Hans Beimler badge of FDJ handed.

Fonts

  • In the Dachau murder camp. Four weeks in the hands of the brown bandits , Moscow 1933.
This work, originally published in the form of a brochure, was reprinted by the military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic in 1976 and 1980. The text of the 1980 edition, in which a chapter is missing compared to Beimler's original version, is available online in the Bibliotheca Augustana , accessed on March 6, 2013.
The paper was reissued in print and a biographical sketch was added by Friedbert Mühldorfer : PapyRossa, Cologne 2011, ( review ). In December 2018 a second, reviewed edition was published, edited, commented and supplemented by a biographical sketch by Friedbert Mühldorfer, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-89438-480-7 .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans Beimler  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of participants
  2. ↑ a b c Hans Maur: Memorials of the labor movement in Berlin-Friedrichshain , ed. by the district management of the SED, district commission for researching the history of the local labor movement in cooperation with the district commission for researching the history of the local labor movement at the district management Berlin-Friedrichshain of the SED, 1981, p. 49.
  3. ↑ Dachau Concentration Camp 1933 to 1945 . Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-87490-750-3 , p. 109 .
  4. ↑ Hans Beimler, In the Dachau murder camp. Friedbert Mühldorfer added a biographical sketch . PapyRossa Verlag Cologne 2012.
  5. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 5 (reprinted 2010).
  6. ↑ Ludwig Renn: In the Spanish War , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar, 5th edition 1983, order number 610 912 4, p. 129.
  7. ↑ Günthart, Erich: The death of Hans Beimler and Louis Schuster in Ludwig Renn's "The Spanish War" . In: Journal of the SED State Research Association of the Free University of Berlin . tape 43 , 2019, ISSN  0948-9878 , p. 106-130 ( fu-berlin.de ).
  8. ↑ a b c Lucien Scherrer, "The mysterious death of a hero", Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2018
  9. ↑ Swiss Federal Archives, Dossier E4320B # 1975/40 # 23 *, Bay, Arthur, September 13, 1908, 1934–1938.
  10. ↑ Renn, Ludwig: The Spanish War . Structure, Berlin 1955, p. 113-114 .
  11. ↑ Werner Abel: An indomitable and uncomfortable review of the new edition of the book Im Mörderlager Dachau in Neues Deutschland , December 1, 2011
  12. ↑ Werner Abel: Hans Beimler - the first German honorary citizen of Spain
  13. ↑ Text Hans-Beimler-Lied ( Memento of the original from November 30th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.erinnerorte.de
  14. ↑ Hans Beimler, comrade in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  15. ↑ on youtube: part 1 , part 2 , part 3 and part 4 , accessed on August 27, 2012.
  16. ↑ Horst Stechbarth : Soldier in the East. Memories and experiences from five decades. Prora 2008, p. 79.
  17. ↑ Hans-Beimler-Strasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  18. ↑ a b Re-inauguration of the Hans Beimler stele in Chemnitz on August 31, 2018 at 5:00 p.m.
  19. ↑ Local residents appreciate the newly renovated monument. in Freie Presse Chemnitz, September 1, 2018.
  20. ^ Website of the Hans Beimler Choir
  21. ^ Website of the Hans Beimler Center
  22. ^ Matthias Rogg : Army of the People? The military and society in the GDR, p. 188.
personal data
SURNAME Beimler, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beimler, Johannes Baptist
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR and political commissioner
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1936
Place of death before Madrid