Hugo Henke

Hugo Emil Henke (born June 9, 1888 in Rüstringen ; † May 3, 1945 in Neustädter Bucht ) was a communist politician .

Life

After successfully passing his apprenticeship exam, the trained blacksmith went on a journey , on which he u. a. worked in Italy. Henke, who was critical of the political and social conditions early on, left the church in 1912 and was reluctant to join the soldier in 1914 after the outbreak of the First World War . After four years in the war on the Western Front , Henke returned to Wilhelmshaven in 1918 , where he took part in the November Revolution and was a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council . In 1919 Henke joined the minority that was excluded from the KPD after the Heidelberg party congress , which in 1920 founded the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD); he belonged to this party until 1923.

In 1931, Henke joined the KPD and was soon one of the party's most important activists in the Wilhelmshaven area, where he also headed the fighting alliance against fascism and the KPD's anti-fascist agitation . In 1932 Henke was elected to the Oldenburg state parliament, where he also put his focus on agitation against the NSDAP (which provided the state government).

After the takeover of the Nazi Party in 1933 Henke was at times in the camp Vechta prison, but was released later that year. In the following years politically inactive, not involved in the resistance structures of the KPD and temporarily unemployed, Henke tried to set up his own business as a blacksmith. As part of the action grid Henke was arrested again in August 1944 and in the Neuengamme concentration camp abducted. From here, in April 1945, Henke was forced to take part in the death march towards Lübeck Bay , where Henke died on May 3, 1945 in the bombing of Cap Arcona .

See also

• The victims of National Socialism among the parliamentarians from Lower Saxony areas

literature

• Stefan Appelius , Bernd Feuerlohn: The brown city by the sea. Wilhelmshaven's path to dictatorship . Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-87975-332-6 , pp. 100-102, 170.
• Henke, Hugo . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .