Hans Lebrecht

Hans Lebrecht (born November 8, 1915 in Ulm ; † September 24, 2014 in Kibbutz Beit Oren / Israel) was a Jewish- German and Palestinian - Israeli communist , journalist and politician

Life

Hans Lebrecht was born as the third son of Wilhelm Lebrecht and his wife Rosa in Ulm. He grew up in a Jewish factory owner family in Ulm on Zeitblomstraße, later in the newly built "Lebrecht Villa" on Safranberg. When his father's leather factory was “ Aryanized ” in 1935 , as a Jew he had to break off his apprenticeship as a locksmith . Through his father, he found accommodation in an Upper Silesian factory in Neisse (now Nysa in the Opole Voivodeship ), where he came into contact with communist resistance fighters . After the Aryanization of this factory he was dismissed and finished his apprenticeship in Karlsruhe- Durlach. In 1936 he met Tosca Loewy, the daughter of the Ulm cantor , who became the woman of his life. In 1937 he traveled to Palestine, following his girlfriend Tosca, who had gone there the year before. In 1938 he came to Germany with a Palestine passport, where he carried out courier services for the KPD in the Allgäu . He helped those released from the concentration camp and other anti-fascists to take part in the struggle in the international brigades against the Franco regime in Spain . Because he was wanted with an arrest warrant , he returned to Palestine. In the 1950s he returned to Ulm - now as an Israeli citizen . As a member of the Palestinian Communist Party and the Communist Party of Israel , he worked as a journalist, at times also as secretary of the RAKAH Knesseth faction . Throughout his life he called himself a communist, even if he got into wing fights and was temporarily excluded from the party. He had to go to prison several times: once in Akko in the British central prison as a member of the PKP, another time in 1954 because of his protests against the remilitarization of West Germany, and again in 1978 on suspicion of being a spy for the PLO . As an active comrade in Gush Schalom , he was close friends with the Palestinian politician Faisal el Husseini . Hans Lebrecht visited his hometown several times in the post-war decades, most recently in autumn 2004, to which he was linguistically and emotionally deeply connected. He was also a sponsor of the Documentation Center for the former concentration camp in Fort Oberer Kuhberg in Ulm. He worked as a peace activist politically and professionally as a journalist. In these roles he was for decades an observer, writer and also a contributor to the political and social relations of the State of Israel. Soon after his 80th birthday in 1995, he began writing his memoirs. They were published in 2007 by the Documentation Center Oberer Kuhberg in the Ulm publishing house Klemm & Oelschläger.

The Lebrecht couple recently lived in the Beit-Oren kibbutz, not far from Haifa , in a left-wing Zionist milieu. Her daughters Ruth and Margalith now live in Israel and Hamburg, respectively .

Lebrecht was chairman of the Association of Antifascists and Victims of Fascism in Israel and at times a vice-president of the International of Resistance Fighters FIR He saw the future of the Israel and Palestine region in a two-state solution . All problems that arise should not be solved with military force and dictatorial, but in a peaceful balance of interests.

Lebrecht's relationship with the GDR

As a journalist, he reported regularly from 1956 for the SED newspaper " Neues Deutschland ". In 1959 he visited the GDR for the first time. He got to know Hermann Budzislawski , the editor of the “ Weltbühne ”, among others . For three decades he wrote articles for this critical journal. He also came into contact with Gerhart Eisler , the chairman of the State Committee for Broadcasting . In 1962 Lebrecht visited East Berlin again, the former GDR capital. He also described his view of the GDR in his autobiography . During a visit to Ulm in 1966 Lebrecht argued with the then Mayor Pfizer from Ulm over the question of which country, FRG or GDR, was more liberal. At that time Lebrecht cited as an argument against Pfizer: "A GDR trade union delegation, invited by West German social-democratic colleagues, was stopped by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution on arrival in the West and sent back to the GDR in handcuffs ."

Publications

• The Palestinians, Frankfurt am Main: Zambon, [2015], [new edition]

• Curved paths, but one goal, Münster: Klemm & Oelschläger, 2007

• The Palestinians, Berlin: Dietz, 1984

• Palestinci, Praha: Nakladatelství Svoboda, 1984, Vyd. 1

• The Palestinians, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Marxistische Blätter, 1982

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.swp.de/suedwesten/staedte/ulm/hans-lebrecht-ist-98-jaehrig-in-israel-gestorben-21200153.html
2. ↑ http://www.hagalil.com/2015/09/hans-lebrecht/
3. ↑ Curved paths, but one goal, Münster: Klemm & Oelschläger, 2007, p. 84