Heinz Priess (Spain fighter)

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Heinz Priess (left) during the Spanish Civil War

Heinz Priess (born April 3, 1915 in Hamburg ; † January 12, 2001 in Berlin ) was a German editor. From 1936 to 1939 he took part in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and fought in the Resistance against the German occupation in France during the Second World War .

Life

Heinz Priess came from a communist family. He became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany and the KPD . In 1933 he was placed in " protective custody " for a while , so he emigrated to Denmark in 1934 .

From 1936 to 1939 he fought in the ranks of the International Brigades in Spain. After Heinz Hoffmann was wounded towards the end of the Battle of Brunete in July 1937, he took over the position of war commissioner for the Hans Beimler battalion . After the defeat of the Spanish Republic , he fled to France, where he was interned in the Gurs , Vernet and Castres camps, fled from internment and fought in the southern French resistance as head of military reconnaissance and was a member of Ernst Buschmann and Max Brings the Military Commission of the Free Germany Movement for the West (CALPO). He was also the liaison between the French partisans and the groups of the Federation of Free Germany in Paris and Switzerland. As a member of the French resistance movement, he witnessed the liberation of Paris in August 1944 .

In October 1945 he returned to Hamburg and became editor-in-chief of the KPD organ Hamburger Volkszeitung . On June 6, 1950, he was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for insulting the First Mayor of Hamburg, Max Brauer . In July 1951 he moved to the GDR and succeeded Hanns Maaßen as editor-in-chief of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk in Leipzig. From 1952 he was head of the newsroom of the State Broadcasting Committee at the GDR Council of Ministers . Until 1956 he was director of the German broadcaster . From August 1956 to 1969 he was editor-in-chief of the German freedom broadcaster 904 . The name of the station was linked to the shortwave station in republican Spain, Deutscher Freiheitsender 29.8 . In 1969 he went to the Federal Republic on behalf of the SED and worked for the German Communist Party (DKP). From 1975 he was a member of the presidium of the committee of the anti-fascist resistance fighters of the GDR and from 1978 chairman of the section of former Spain fighters. From 1990 he was a member of the Democratic Socialism Party (PDS).

Awards

memoirs

  • Spain's sky and no stars. A German history book. Memories of a lifetime and a century. , 335 S., Publisher: Das Neue Berlin, 1996, ISBN 978-3929161793 .

A review reports on his family: "Of his three cousins, for example, Bruno stayed in Spain, Heinz was murdered by the Nazis , and Victor , who also fought in the International Brigades, was sentenced to 25 years in the Gulag in the Soviet Union."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael F. Scholz: Do you want Scandinavian experiences?
  2. ^ Heinz Hoffmann: Mannheim, Madrid, Moscow , Military Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1981, p. 344f.
  3. ↑ Jonny Granzow: The breakout of the Spanish fighters from the secret prison: A historical report , edition bodoni, 2012, ISBN 978-3940781277
  4. ↑ Bernd-Rainer Barth, Werner Schweizer, Thomas Grimm: The case of Noel Field
  5. ↑ Priess im Neues Deutschland , December 16, 1989, p. 7.
  6. ^ New Germany , June 7, 1950, p. 2.
  7. ↑ Neues Deutschland , May 19, 1956, p. 4.
  8. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , May 2, 1985, p. 6
personal data
SURNAME Priess, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Priess, Friedrich Karl Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 2001
Place of death Berlin