Heinrich Studer (resistance fighter)

Heinrich Studer (born February 17, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main ; † November 12, 1964 ) was a German party functionary ( KPD ), emigrant , resistance fighter against National Socialism , prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp and head of the illegal international military organization Buchenwald .

Life

Studer was the son of a carpenter and learned the trade of a locksmith. He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919 and held various party functions at local and regional levels during the 1920s. He lived illegally in Berlin and the Ruhr area, as the police wanted him for violating the Explosives Act. From 1927 he was officially employed by the Arbeiter-Zeitung , but was actually an employee of the AM apparatus (decomposition department) of the Hessen-Frankfurt district management. (The term AM was the abbreviation for Department of Military Policy ). From October 1930 to April 1931 student at the Military Political School of the Communist International in Moscow, then again active in the AM apparatus. In 1931 he became Gauleiter of the illegal Red Front Fighters Association Hessen-Frankfurt.

After the transfer of power to the NSDAP , he was arrested in March 1933 and sentenced to three years in prison in Kassel . After his release he emigrated to the ČSR in 1936 . When he wanted to flee Czechoslovakia after the invasion of the German troops, he was arrested again when crossing the border to Poland in 1939 and interned in Buchenwald concentration camp until 1945. Here he was assigned to the prisoner clothing store work command. He largely organized the prisoner resistance and became the head of the International Military Organization (IMO). Disguised as “camp protection”, she was able to campaign for the life and health of prisoners.

After the Nazi regime was eliminated, he returned to Hesse . In 1945 he was initially an employee of the political department of the Frankfurt am Main police headquarters . He later took over functions in his party again.

literature

• Emil Carlebach / Willy Schmidt / Ulrich Schneider (eds.): Buchenwald a concentration camp. Reports - Pictures - Documents , Bonn 2000, p. 124, ISBN 3-89144-271-8 .
• Author collective: Buchenwald. Reminder and obligation. Documents and reports , Berlin 1983, p. 758.
• 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 January 5, 2013]).