Heinrich Schmitt (politician)

Heinrich Schmitt (born October 6, 1895 in Waldbüttelbrunn , † August 13, 1951 in Munich ) was a German politician. At the end of the 1920s he was a member of the Reichstag for the KPD and after the end of the Second World War he was Bavarian State Minister for Political Liberation.

Life

Schmitt was a trained lathe operator and became a member of the SPD in 1913. Enlisted in the military in 1915, it was buried during the war. From December 1916 he worked for BASF in Ludwigshafen am Rhein . In 1917 he joined the USPD, in 1920 he joined the KPD with its left wing. Schmitt moved to Leuna in 1917 , worked as a locksmith in the Leuna works and took on various functions. He was considered a skilful and trained speaker. From the mid-1920s it was chairman of the works council of Leuna-Werke. He was reappointed in this position in 1928 and 1929. In September 1928, Schmitt was elected to the Reichstag as a member of the Merseburg constituency. In his parliamentary work, Schmitt mainly dealt with health and social policy issues that he was also confronted with in everyday business.

In 1930 Schmitt went to the Soviet Union as a skilled worker, first worked as a lathe operator in the Moscow plant "Hammer und Sichel" and then attended the International Lenin School . In July 1931 he returned to Germany. From 1931 to 1933 he was general secretary of the International Committee of Chemical Workers. In 1933 he emigrated with his family to the Soviet Union, worked again as a lathe operator and volunteered for the International of Chemical Workers .

In June 1934 he was sent to Prague , after which he was a Central Committee instructor in the Saar region. Schmitt traveled to Germany with a forged passport in the name of Walter Scheublein and was senior advisor for trade union work in the Rhineland. Until his arrest in 1935 he was part of the Reich leadership of the illegal communist trade union movement in Berlin, Saxony, the Rhineland, the Ruhr area and Westphalia with the task of organizing trade union and resistance groups. In addition to trying to build up illegal groups of the revolutionary trade union opposition , he was also involved in initiating "independent class unions ". With these social democratic and Christian workers should be involved in the union activities of the communists. Schmitt was arrested on May 7, 1935 in connection with his illegal work and, after almost two years in pre- trial detention, sentenced by the People's Court to 15 years in prison on February 8, 1937 .

In April 1945, Schmitt was freed from Landsberg prison by the Americans and rejoined the KPD. In September 1945 he became inspector of the local health insurance fund in Würzburg. From September 28, 1945, he was a special minister for political liberation in the first cabinet of the Bavarian Prime Minister Wilhelm Hoegner . In his department he was responsible for the implementation of the US concepts for denazification of society. In February 1946 he was appointed by Hoegner as a representative of the KPD in the Preparatory Constitutional Committee created by the military government . In the same year he was a member of the Bavarian State Constituent Assembly.

He belonged to the secretariat of the state leadership of the KPD Bavaria and came into conflict with the party, which criticized him for his management as a minister was wrong. Thereupon Schmitt resigned as Minister of State on July 1, 1946 and left the KPD on October 26, 1947. Schmitt later joined the SPD . From 1947 to 1949 Schmitt was a member of the Bavarian Senate . Heinrich Schmitt died in Munich on August 13, 1951.

His son Harry Schmitt (alias Ralf Forster) headed the DKP military organization during the Cold War .

literature

• 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 ( online [accessed July 24, 2020]).
• Siegfried Mielke : Heinrich Schmitt (1895–1951) , In: Siegfried Mielke, Stefan Heinz (ed.) With the collaboration of Julia Pietsch: Emigrierte Metallgewerkschafter in the fight against the Nazi regime (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 3). Metropol, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-210-7 , pp. 352–365.

Web links

• Heinrich Schmitt in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Heinrich Schmitt in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History