Heinrich Galm

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Heinrich Galm (born October 23, 1895 in Seligenstadt , Offenbach district ; † October 30, 1984 in Offenbach am Main ) was a German trade unionist and politician and from the First World War to the first post-war decades he was a member of the parties USPD , KPD , KPO , SAPD , AP and SPD ; During the Weimar Republic , Galm was a member of the Hessian state parliament and also (in the years after 1945) a figure in local politics in Offenbach.

Life

At the beginning of his apprenticeship, the trained saddler joined the trade union and the social democratic workers' youth movement, of which he headed the Offenbach local group from 1914. Galm was a soldier in the First World War from 1916 to 1918 . He joined the USPD in 1917 and the KPD in 1920 . Galm worked as a union secretary and since 1922 was the representative of the Saddlery, Upholsterer and Portfeuiller Association for Offenbach and the surrounding area, at that time the most important union in the city dominated by the leather industry. In the same year he was elected chairman of the KPD local group in Offenbach. From 1924 to 1933 he was a member of the Landtag of the People's State of Hesse and from 1927 a candidate for the Central Committee. Heinrich Galm was also a member of the Offenbach municipal parliament during this time.

Galm, who belonged to the right wing of the party around August Thalheimer and Heinrich Brandler and had already criticized what he believed to be the ultra-left union policy of the party leadership in 1924/25 , increased his opposition to the Stalinization of the KPD in 1928 . In October 1928 he and Erich Hausen applied to the Central Committee for Ernst Thälmann to be replaced and excluded from the party because of the Wittorf affair , whereupon he himself was expelled from the KPD in early 1929. Heinrich Galm was a co-founder and member of the extended Reich leadership of the KPO ; a large part of the Offenbach KPD followed the popular Galm into the new organization. During this time he also started the local weekly newspaper Volksrecht , which was his mouthpiece until 1933. In 1932 he moved (again with most of the local party members) to the SAPD , of which he was a member of the party executive . Together with Fritz Ohlhof , who had converted from the SPD , he formed the state parliament group of the SAPD until the new elections in the summer of 1932. Galm was the only member of the Landtag elected on a KPO (1931) or SAPD (1932) list during the Weimar period.

After the NSDAP came to power in 1933, Galm was arrested several times and imprisoned for longer periods, for example in the Osthofen concentration camp , the last time in July 1944.

After 1945 Heinrich Galm founded the Workers' Party (AP) , which was tailored to his person , but only gained importance at the local level and represented Galm in Offenbach's city parliament until it was dissolved and he switched to the SPD in 1954. From 1956 to 1968 he served as an honorary city councilor and from 1953 to 1973 he worked for the Frankfurter Rundschau .

literature

  • Werner Fuchs, Bernd Klemm (Ed.): Heinrich Galm, I was always a rebel. Political memories by H. and M. Galm, compiled after discussions . Saalbau-Verlag, Offenbach / M. 1980, ISBN 3-922879-01-6 .
  • Stefan Heinz : Heinrich Galm (1895–1984) , In: Angelika Arenz-Morch, Stefan Heinz (ed.): Trade unionists in the Osthofen concentration camp 1933/34. Biographical manual (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration , Vol. 8). Metropol, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86331-439-2 , pp. 212-234.
  • Bernd Klemm: The Workers' Party (Socialist Unity Party) Hesse 1945-1954. Creation conditions, history and program of a 3rd German workers' party after the Second World War . SOAK-Verlag, Hannover 1980, ISBN 3-88209-031-6 .
  • Galm, Heinrich . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Galm, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician and trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Seligenstadt
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1984
Place of death Offenbach am Main