Heinrich Sommer (politician)

Heinrich Sommer (born August 18, 1895 in Heiligenwald , † May 1, 1967 in East Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

The miner's son completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith. In 1912 he joined the German Metalworkers' Association , later he switched to the Saarland Free Trade Union Railway Association . From 1914 he worked for the railroad until he was drafted into the war in 1915.

In 1920 he joined the KPD. As a member of the KPD district leadership in Saar, he was one of the leading Saarland party officials. He was also involved in the revolutionary trade union opposition from 1929 . For the RGO he took over the chairmanship of their Red Railway Union for the Saar area, which remained a comparatively small organization.

In 1932, Sommer was elected to the last Landesrat of the Saar area for the KPD . Before that, he had been a member of the district council for several years (1926–1932).

After the National Socialists came to power in the summer of 1934/35, the KPD leadership appointed him as an instructor for the Saar district. In the Saar region, the party had not been declared illegal before the annexation to the German Reich in 1935. After the Saar referendum , Sommer fled to France at the end of January 1935, where he worked in the KPD's emigration management. Soon after, however, he was briefly imprisoned and deported, after which he fled to Sweden in the summer of 1935. There he supported the distribution of the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung . At the same time, from 1936 to 1939, Sommer headed the illegal sea and dockworkers section of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF). This was particularly active in supporting the resistance of seafarers and railway workers to the Nazi regime.

From 1939 to 1941, Sommer was interned in Sweden. At the end of April 1941 he was allowed to travel to the Soviet Union . There he first worked as a locksmith in Kharabali and in Kazakhstan , before starting in September 1943 as an instructor in the political headquarters of the Red Army . Because of his communist orientation, he was used for training and agitation in prisoner-of-war camps.

Back in Germany, Sommer worked for the German Central Administration (GDR) from August 1946 and for the East German Foreign Ministry from 1949. In 1960 he was awarded the Silver Patriotic Order of Merit .

His son Hans Sommer (1917-1995) was an SED party official.

literature

• Summer, Heinrich . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. 2., revised. and strong exp. Edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Luitwin Blies, Horst Bernhard (ed.): For the overthrow of the Nazi regime. Resistance and persecution of anti-fascists from the Saarland . Blattlaus-Verlag, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-930771-44-8 , p. 39-46 .
• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 7). Metropol, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 306, 677-678 (short biography).