Helmuth Warnke

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Helmuth Caesar Fritz Warnke (born July 31, 1908 in Hamburg ; † March 18, 2003 there ) was a German painter , editor , politician and publicist .

Live and act

Helmuth Warnke was a son of the plumber Max Warnke and his wife Emma, ​​nee Besch. His father belonged to the SPD and later to the KPD and fought for the rights of workers. Helmuth Warnke spent childhood and youth in Eimsbüttel . He received schooling from 1914 to 1920 at the Lutterothstrasse elementary school and until 1923 at the Langenhorn elementary school . Then he went to Wustrow . There he completed an apprenticeship as a painter and worked as a craftsman. Following the example of his father, Warnke joined the KPD in 1926. He hoped to eliminate the differences between workers and company owners and thus enable the workers to fully participate in social life.

In 1927 Warnke went back to Hamburg. There he worked as a painter for various companies and became a union member. When he became unemployed in the meantime, he went on a journey. In 1931 he returned to his hometown and worked for metal and medical companies. For political reasons he was not allowed to take a master's examination. Warnke was involved in the union and was a member of the KPD's SPD commission, which was supposed to initiate cooperation between the two parties. When the central committee of the KPD decided in 1931 to want to vote out the SPD, Warnke had no sympathy.

Imprisonments and the Post War

During the National Socialist era , Warnke produced leaflets for the KPD, which he also distributed. For this reason, between 1933 and 1936 he was convicted of “ high treason ” several times . Warnke spent a total of two and a half years in custody in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , where he was severely tortured. In the meantime he worked as a painter or foreman for various employers. Since Warnke was seriously impaired in health and suffered from the consequences of torture, but also because of his political views, he was initially considered "unworthy of defense" during the Second World War . Nevertheless, in 1941 he was drafted into the state riflemen and posted to the war front in France. A short time later he was considered fully fit for military service.

The war took Warnke to England , where he was arrested by American troops in the fall of 1944 and taken to Arkansas . There he created the Committee for Peace and Democracy . This institution with 500 members offered democratic education in particular. Warnke's imprisonment ended in the spring of 1945. He was recognized as a politically persecuted person and initially worked as a laborer and painter. He also got involved again in the KPD. In 1947 he received a full-time position from the party as secretary of the labor and social affairs department and a seat on the state board. As a functionary, he took on organizational tasks, supported company groups and held educational events. Warncke organized a cross-party initiative that wanted to prevent a renewed militarization, initially West and later also East Germany, and which led to controversial disputes within the KPD. In 1952 Warnke received a three-month prison sentence. The reason for this was a poster of the KPD, for which he was responsible under press law and which the mayor Max Brauer considered offensive. Also from 1952 Warnke edited the department of trade union issues, labor and social affairs of the party newspaper Hamburger Volkszeitung .

Due to inhuman and politically inexplicable "cleansing actions" from his point of view, Warnke increasingly distanced himself from the KPD. In addition, the party had almost no democratic forms of organization and increasingly pursued a policy that did not serve the working population and their concerns. After the end of the workers' uprising in 1953 , Warnke criticized the party so clearly that he was expelled from the KPD in January 1954.

With the exclusion from the party, Warnke's activity as editor of the Hamburger Volkszeitung also ended. He initially worked as a painter, from 1962 to 1973 for the Soviet ship insurance company Schwarzmeer und Ostsee-Rückversicherung, and later for the health insurance company Barmenia . At the same time he was politically active for a long time. From 1955 to 1962 he chaired the International of War Resisters. From 1961 to 1970 he was a member of the German Peace Union . Entering the German Bundestag through a direct mandate in 1961 failed. In 1975 Warnke and others successfully took action against the Senate's intention to close the Ochsenzoll Hospital . In 1982 he joined the Green Alternative List Hamburg and sat for the party until 1984 in the Fuhlsbüttel local committee. The party membership ended in 1999 due to the party's approval of the war operation in the Bosnian war , which the pacifist Warnke did not want to support.

Works

In addition to these activities, Warnke wrote books on Eimsbüttel and Langenhorn as a district chronicler. In it he presented in particular the situation of socially disadvantaged people. Warnke was involved in an initiative he founded in the early 1980s for a memorial that commemorates the former Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. Warnke spoke in numerous schools, bookhouses and youth facilities about the time of National Socialism . The district assembly Hamburg-Nord publicly honored him for this in 2001.

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personal data
SURNAME Warnke, Helmuth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Warnke, Helmuth Caesar Fritz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, editor, politician (KPD) and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 2003
Place of death Hamburg