Hermann Danz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hermann Danz (born October 18, 1906 in Niederschelderhütte ( Rhineland-Palatinate ); † February 5, 1945 in Brandenburg an der Havel ) was a blacksmith , KPD - politician and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Danz was the son of the worker Anna Danz (later married Fischer). He attended elementary school in Schmalkalden from 1913 to 1921 and learned the blacksmith's trade from 1921 to 1924. Here, after joining the KPD in 1923, he founded a local branch of the Communist Youth Association of Germany in 1925 .

From 1928 to 1931 he attended the International Lenin School of the Communist International in Moscow . He then worked as a translator for Moscow Radio .

After returning to Germany , he was a member of the KPD district leadership of Thuringia from 1931 to 1933, first as an instructor, then as a member of the secretariat. After the seizure of power of the Nazis he was imprisoned from February to March 1933rd After his release, he took over the leadership of the KPD district executive committee Magdeburg - Anhalt, which was operating illegally . During this time he met his partner Eva Lippold . On November 17, 1933, he was arrested again and served a three-year prison sentence in the Luckau and Brandenburg penitentiaries . After his release in 1937, he resumed his illegal function. From the Magdeburg mill and sugar factory, he organized the procurement and distribution of food to slave labor. Hubert Materlik and Fritz Rödel also belonged to the resistance group that formed . About Martin Schwantes was contact with the KPD in Berlin to Anton Saefkow and Franz Jacob . After founding the National Committee for Free Germany (July 1943), Danz played a key role in winning people over to the overthrow of Adolf Hitler on the basis of the positions of the NKFD .

These groups and Danz were arrested on July 9, 1944, and sentenced to death by the People's Court on November 1, 1944 . On February 5, 1945 Danz was executed in the Brandenburg-Görden prison together with Martin Schwantes, Friedrich Rödel, Johann Schellheimer and Theodor Neubauer .

Honors

In 1950 the urn with Hermann Danz's remains was buried in the honor grove of Magdeburg's West Cemetery. The city of Magdeburg has named a street in his honor ( Danzstrasse ) and the small town of Schmalkalden named a secondary school after him. There is also a Hermann-Danz-Straße in Hecklingen in Saxony-Anhalt , in Hermsdorf in Thuringia and in Sondershausen . During the GDR era, an FDGB holiday home in Friedrichroda (Thuringia) was called "Hermann-Danz-Heim".

literature

  • Evelyne and Edgar Günther-Schellheimer: The Magdeburg resistance group around Hermann Danz 1933 to 1945, in: Year Book for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume III / 2011.
  • German resistance fighters. 1933-1945. Biographies and letters . Vol. 1. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 186-190
  • Klaus Drobisch : Danz, Hermann . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, p. 82
  • Danz, Hermann . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Contributions to the history of the city and the district of Magdeburg, issues 2/1970 and 12/1980

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Danz, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Niederschelderhütte
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1945
Place of death Brandenburg on the Havel