Hermann Horstmann

Hermann Horstmann (born March 12, 1893 in Osnabrück , † June 24, 1938 in Moscow ) was a German lawyer and political functionary ( KPD ).

Life and activity

After attending school, Horstmann studied law. He completed his training in 1921 at the University of Erlangen awarded the degree of Dr. jur. from. In the same year he joined Gerhard Obuch's law firm in Düsseldorf .

Politically, Horstmann joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in 1919. In 1923 he switched to the KPD. At that time he became a partner in a joint law firm with Obuch and the social democrat Karl Siemsen. Horstmann became the legal advisor of the Red Aid and, along with Obuch and Felix Halle, one of the most famous communist lawyers in Germany. He defended communists before the Reichsgericht; his clients were primarily the KPD-BL Düsseldorf and the KPD organ freedom .

Shortly after the National Socialists came to power, Horstmann emigrated to Paris in April 1933. In July of the same year he moved to Belgium and then to Holland, where he found a job with the Russian Deutra in Rotterdam .

In autumn 1934 Horstmann was able to move to the Soviet Union with his family after approval by the KPD. In Moscow they lived in the MOPR house. Horstmann worked for radio and was a proofreader at the Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung . During this time he distanced himself from communism of the Stalinist character: shortly after her release from prison, he warned Zensl Mühsam that the NKVD would arrest her again sooner or later.

A, February 15, 1938 Horstmann himself was arrested and sentenced on May 26, 1938 to eight years in a prison camp. He died on June 24, 1938 in Moscow's Taganka Prison. Heart failure was officially given as the cause of death. The body was not released, there is no grave.

In July 1962, Horstmann was posthumously rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of the USSR.

family

Horstmann was married to Dagmar Dirichs (1903-1993), who worked from 1944 to 1948 as a teacher in the international children's home in Iwanowo and then until 1957 as a Russian teacher in the GDR. The daughter Sonja (1928–1944) emerged from the marriage and died of TB in exile.

Fonts

• When is a false certificate drawn up? , 1921.

literature

• 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 ( online ).