Hermann Kreutzer

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Hermann Kreutzer (left) in conversation with the Berlin Mayor Klaus Schütz

Hermann Kreutzer (born May 3, 1924 in Saalfeld , Thuringia , † March 28, 2007 in Berlin ) was a political prisoner under National Socialism and the GDR , a German politician and journalist .

Life

Kreutzer, who came from a social democratic family, was involved in leaflet campaigns against the Nazi regime at an early age . As a Wehrmacht soldier , he had several contacts with the Resistance in France , had deserted, was caught and (at the age of 17) sentenced to ten years in prison for “ degrading military strength ”. He managed to escape; In 1945 he returned to Germany with advancing US units.

From 1945 Hermann Kreutzer and his father actively participated in the re-establishment of the SPD in Thuringia and in the establishment of the Saalfeld district association .

In 1946 he fought in the Soviet occupation zone against the efforts to unite the SPD and KPD to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which the Soviet occupying power and the KPD were supposed to give a democratic appearance through coercion, promises and fraud. At a youth seminar in Camburg, he personally clashed with the later SED chairman, Erich Honecker , who, as FDJ boss, campaigned for the unity of the workers' parties. After the forced unification of the SPD and KPD into the SED , which was supported or promoted by the Soviet occupying power , could not be prevented, Kreutzer continued to illegally engage in social democratic underground work in Thuringia and for the SPD's east office in West Berlin .

In April 1949, Hermann Kreutzer was arrested by the NKVD as an opponent of the forced unification . He, his future wife Dorothée (born December 18, 1923) and his father were each sentenced to 25 years of forced labor by a Soviet military tribunal for "counterrevolutionary activities" . As before 1945, he was imprisoned as a political prisoner in the Brandenburg prison and in the Bautzen JVA .

In 1956 he was released from prison and moved to West Berlin under pressure from the federal government . Dorothee was released in July 1956; the two married.

In West Berlin, Kreutzer immediately became active again in the SPD, worked for many years as the SPD district chairman in the Berlin-Tempelhof district , becoming a district councilor and later district councilor for social affairs. In 1967, at Herbert Wehner's request, Kreutzer switched to the all- German ministry , later to the Federal Government's Ministry of the Interior . There he was primarily responsible as head of the department for ransom political prisoners from the GDR. In 1968 Kreutzer founded the Kurt Schumacher Circle , named after Kurt Schumacher , an organization of political prisoners and refugees from the GDR , of which he was the spokesman. From 1970 Kreutzer was active as a representative of the Berlin representative Egon Bahr (the new red-yellow federal government that came into office in 1969 under Willy Brandt ).

In 1979 he expressed the thesis that between 10,000 and 12,000 GDR influencing agents were active in West German broadcasting councils , the SPD, trade unions and the churches . When he also accused some parliamentarians of acting as influencing agents, they lodged a complaint against him. At the end of 1980, Kreutzer publicly criticized his party's course of starting official talks with the SED after he had already come into conflict with the SPD party leader Willy Brandt over his Ostpolitik . Kreutzer was then retired from work. A few months before the 1980 federal election , he made an appeal for the CDU. According to Spiegel , he was expelled from the SPD; according to another source, he anticipated being expelled from the party .

Kreutzer belonged to the working group in 1951 , which the handling of the radical decree was not sharp enough.

The Kurt Schumacher Circle reorganized itself under Kreutzer and became part of the Society for Social Democracy, founded in 1982 . V. an organization of - mostly former - SPD members who were previously active in the Fritz-Erler-Kreis, which represented the right wing of social democracy.

In the period that followed, Kreutzer and the Kurt Schumacher Circle endeavored with events, publications and their own library to come to terms with the history of the SED dictatorship, to safeguard the interests of social democrats persecuted in the GDR, and to fight against any cooperation between the SPD and SED. After German reunification , any cooperation with the SED successor party, the PDS, was rejected.

In the 1990s, in addition to his lectures on the experiences in prison in the GDR, Kreutzer was also committed to honoring the actress and singer Marlene Dietrich , in particular for her consistent stance against National Socialists and the Nazi regime .

Publications

  • Hermann Kreutzer, Manuela Runge : A suitcase in Berlin / Marlene Dietrich - stories of politics and love. Structure of the Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7466-8075-1 .

Literature, film

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel: Opposition and resistance in the GDR: political life pictures . CH Beck, 2002, ISBN 978-3-406-47619-8 , pp. 106-.
  2. ↑ http://www.bundesstiftung-aufteilung.de/pressemitteilungen-2006-1643,139,18.html
  3. ↑ Ulrich Weissgerber: Poisonous words of the SED dictatorship. LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10429-8 , p. 301 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel: Opposition and resistance in the GDR: political life pictures . CH Beck, 2002, ISBN 978-3-406-47619-8 , pp. 104-.
  5. ^ GDR, Myth and Reality: Resistance against the forced unification of the KPD and SPD
  6. ↑ a b At the empty desk . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1980, pp. 22nd f . ( online ).
  7. ^ GH: The justice system, the politicians and the writers - rats and flies - Munich license for smear campaigns . In: Die Zeit , No. 50/1979.
  8. ↑ Radical in the evening . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1983, p. 57 f . ( online - post-election version).
  9. ^ Opposition and resistance in the GDR. P. 104.
  10. ↑ defa.de
personal data
SURNAME Kreutzer, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD) and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Saalfeld , Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH March 28, 2007
Place of death Berlin