Herbert Crüger

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Herbert Crüger (* 17th May 1911 in Berlin , † 17th January 2003 in Zeuthen ) was a German resistance fighter against the Nazis , KPD - functionary , victims of political purges in the GDR and author .

Life

Crüger was born in Berlin in 1911 as the son of a book printer . After attending primary school , he became a cabin boy . From 1928 to 1931 he learned the trade of a businessman in Berlin, after which he was unemployed.

He became a member of the Hitler Youth in 1931 , but joined the KJVD in 1932 . From 1932 to 1933 he was military director of the RFB in Berlin-Neukölln .

From 1933 he worked illegally within the SA for the KPD's intelligence service . In 1934 he was exposed and arrested. He escaped in 1935 and emigrated to Czechoslovakia . From 1936 he worked again for the KPD intelligence service in Prague . From 1937 to 1938 he was an employee of the intelligence service of the Spanish Republic in Barcelona . From 1938 he studied art history and archeology in Zurich . He was interned in Switzerland in 1940, but continued his studies after this internment. In 1942 he became a member of the KPD. From 1943 on, Crüger was responsible for the publication of the magazine of the Movement Free Germany in Switzerland.

In January 1946 Crüger returned to Germany . From 1946 to 1948 he was a councilor in the Ministry of Labor and Welfare in Hesse . In 1948 he became second secretary of the KPD in southern Württemberg and in 1950 secretary of this regional association. After he was banned from working within the KPD at the end of 1950 because of his former Western European emigration, Crüger moved to the GDR in 1951 , where he first took an apprenticeship in archeology from 1951 to 1953 in Rostock at the local university . From 1953 he was a lecturer at the Humboldt University in Berlin .

After critical discussions after the XX. At the CPSU party congress and his work for the arrested Bernhard Steinberger , Crüger himself was arrested in March 1958 by the Ministry for State Security (MfS). In December 1958, in a secret trial, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for serious treason. He was stripped of his status as persecuted by the Nazi regime . From 1959 to 1961 he was imprisoned in Bautzen . After his early release in 1961, he worked as a research assistant at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR .

In May 1990, Crüger was politically rehabilitated after a cassation trial. In the same year he joined the PDS . He was a member of the Working Group Former Spain Fighters .

Crüger was married to the actress Mathilde Danegger .

Fonts

  • The loss of the lens. On the relationship between the past and the present in historical knowledge. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1975.
  • Herbert Crüger, Gerhard Bartsch, Christian Zak: History as a lawful process. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1976.
  • Secret times. From the secret apparatus of the KPD to the state security prison. Linksdruck-Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-86153-002-3 .
  • An old man tells. Life report of a communist. GNN-Verlag, Schkeuditz 1998, ISBN 3-932725-49-2 . review

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from Herbert Crüger to Walter Ulbricht dated December 5, 1956.
personal data
SURNAME Crüger, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anti-fascist resistance fighter and KPD functionary, victim of the political cleansing in the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 17, 2003
Place of death Zeuthen