Heinrich Hoffmann (politician)

Heinrich Hoffmann (born January 8, 1899 in Schleswig , † December 23, 1979 in Gößnitz ) was a German party functionary ( SPD / SED ), Thuringian state politician and member of the 1st German People's Council .

Life

Hoffmann came from a family of craftsmen . After attending elementary school, he learned the hairdressing trade . In 1917 he was drafted into the First World War as an army soldier , lost a leg and became a British prisoner of war . When he returned in 1919, he campaigned for war victims' welfare . In 1920 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). From 1922 to 1927 he was chairman of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) in the SPD sub-district of Schleswig. From 1924 until the end of the republic he was also a member of the federal executive committee of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold . By participating in a course at the socialist Heimvolkshochschule in Tinz, Thuringia, he made numerous contacts with social democratic and communist actors. In Jena he ran against the Jena SPD chairman Hermann Leber from the right wing of the party. In 1927 he became editor of the Thuringian SPD newspaper "Das Volk" in Jena. Later he took up a position at the federal body " Reichsbund " of the Reich Association of War Disabled People in Berlin .

After the NSDAP came to power , he went on an election tour through Thuringia for the SPD, during which he showed courage and skill. After he was arrested and then released again, he worked for the establishment of the Victoria insurance , in whose apparatus he was able to accommodate some sympathetic friends.

When the Nazi regime was over, he organized the re-establishment of the SPD in Thuringia in May and June 1945 after Hermann Brill had brought him to the state capital. Because Hoffmann represented a position that was friendly to the KPD, he often came into conflict with Brill. When he had left for Hesse , Hoffmann was preferred by the Soviet military administration to be acting Thuringian SPD state chairman. In this function he actively worked towards the union of the SPD with the KPD in the Soviet zone of occupation . Until 1949 he was parity state chairman of the SED and was part of its Berlin party executive. From 1946 to 1950 he was a member of the Thuringian Landtag , from 1948 to 1950 also a member of the First German People's Council and the Provisional GDR People's Chamber . In December 1949, he was relieved of his office as a party leader because of his lack of assertiveness. From February 1950 he acted as attorney general in the state of Mecklenburg , but was also dismissed there because of insufficient hardship in the fight against "enemies of the republic" and therefore excluded from the SED. He then worked at the German Central Bank in Schwerin . After he was re-admitted to the SED in 1955, he worked in various trading companies.

literature

• Solveig Simowitsch : "... will go down in the history of the SPD as those who break their word ..." . Knowledge Verl. Berlin, 2006
• Steffen Kachel : A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919 to 1949 . Publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia. (= Small Series Volume 29). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2011, p. 554.
• Andreas Herbst , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Hoffmann, Heinrich . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .