Hermann Friedrich (politician, 1891)

Hermann Friedrich (born May 4, 1891 in Esslingen , † January 4, 1945 in Mauthausen concentration camp ) was a German politician ( SPD , KPD , NSDAP ) and a victim of National Socialism .

Life

Friedrich was the son of a social democrat and spent his childhood and youth in Karlsruhe . After graduating from primary school, he did an apprenticeship as a butcher . In 1908 he became a member of the SPD and worked for his party in several cities and abroad. He was a participant in the First World War and was seriously injured. He also married during the war.

After the war he moved first to Konstanz and then to Sigmaringen . There he worked as an official and greengrocer. January 1919 he was a co-founder of the SPD local association.

On February 1, 1919, he was ringleader when demonstrators from the Reich Association of War Disabled demolished the editorial building of the Hohenzollerische Volkszeitung . This was close to the Center Party , the leading party in the Hohenzollern Lands . The Hechingen jail court sentenced him to one year in prison for violating the peace . After serving part of the sentence, he was released.

In 1922 he was elected to the communal parliament of the Hohenzollern Lands for the SPD . In August 1923 he became a member of the KPD. Over the next two years he was charged with disseminating banned Communist pamphlets, insulting , trespassing, and disturbing the peace in various trials . According to his own account, which the Hechingen chief public prosecutor also joined, he was mentally ill. In 1925 his mandate in the communal parliament ended.

At the end of 1924 he left the KPD and moved to Karlsruhe. After getting to know Adolf Hitler personally, he joined the NSDAP in 1927. Politically, he was close to the Gregor Strasser wing . In his pamphlet "From the Soviet Star to the Swastika" he explained his move from left to right.

Again there were conflicts with his party friends and he resigned from the NSDAP in 1929. Now he agitated against the NSDAP and especially Strasser with the writing "Under the swastika". After death threats, he moved to Strasbourg and continued his agitation against the National Socialists there. In France he was recognized as a political refugee. In 1933 he came under suspicion of espionage, left France and moved to Saarbrücken, which at the time was separated from Germany as part of the Saar area . Here in 1934 he was one of the founders of the insignificant " National Socialist German Freedom Party " and editor of the newspaper "Treudeutsche Saarwacht". He fell out with his like-minded friends and returned to Strasbourg. From there he was expelled to Austria by the French authorities.

Since he could not find work there, in 1937 he asked the Baden Gauleiter, Robert Wagner , whether he would be prosecuted if he returned. This was verbally denied; on his return, however, he was arrested for treason . He was released in March 1938.

In the following years he was employed in a number of short-term positions, including at the Friedrichshafen tax office. However, he was considered a troublemaker and repeatedly lost his job after a short time. He directed complaints to many authorities and party services and obtained so many summons to which he had to be brought before the police. In 1943 he received a service contract in a Schramberg armaments factory, which he did not meet. The authorities first blocked his ration cards to force him to work, and then went into hiding. He was arrested on March 14, 1944. A day later, a speech against the party and the authorities was held from the cell window. He was now transferred to Stuttgart and then held in the Welzheim Police Prison until mid-May 1944 . Then he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp and on October 15, 1944 to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He died there on January 4, 1945.

literature

• Birgit Kirchmaier: A life in extremes in: Messages from the Hohenzoller Historical Society 2003, p. 42 ff., ( Online )