Hugo Paul (politician, 1905)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hugo Gustav Heinrich Paul (born October 28, 1905 in Hagen in Westphalia , † October 12, 1962 in East Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD ). He was briefly a member of the Reichstag in 1932 . During the Nazi regime he was active in the resistance and was imprisoned several times in penitentiaries and in concentration camps. After the Second World War, he was Minister for Reconstruction of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1946 to 1948 and a member of the state parliament from 1946 to 1950 . He was a member of the Parliamentary Council in 1948 and of the Bundestag from 1949 to 1953 .

Life

After graduating from primary school, Paul completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker and car fitter at Mannesmann- Motorenwerke in Remscheid . In 1920 he joined the German Metalworkers' Association and the Free Socialist Youth . In 1922 he switched to the Communist Youth Association (KJVD), in 1923 he became a member of the KPD. He initially headed the communist youth in Remscheid. In 1923 he took part in the fight against the occupation of the Ruhr . From 1928 he belonged to the district leadership of the KPD Niederrhein. In 1931 he took part in a workers' delegation to Moscow on May 1st. From July to November 1932 he represented the constituency of Düsseldorf-Ost as a member of the Reichstag .

In 1933, at the age of 27, Hugo Paul became head of the illegal KPD district leadership in Ruhr, and soon after the beginning of the Nazi era became an illegal instructor for the sub-districts of Düsseldorf and Munich-Gladbach . In June 1934 he was arrested in November by the People's Court to two and a half years prison sentenced. After serving his sentence in Lüttringhausen prison , he was interned in the Esterwegen and Sachsenhausen concentration camps from 1936 to April 1939 . After his release, he worked as a toolmaker and locksmith at the Albert Schulte company in Wermelskirchen and at the same time was again active in the anti-fascist underground. In January 1943 he was arrested again by the Gestapo on suspicion of preparing for high treason , this time sentenced by the People's Court to six years in prison. He was imprisoned in Wuppertal prison from August 1943 to August 1944 and in Butzbach prison from September 1944 to April 1945 . He was only released on April 25, 1945 shortly before the end of the war.

Paul was from 29 August 1946 to 5 April 1948 minister of reconstruction of the country North Rhine-Westphalia under the Prime Minister Rudolf Amelunxen (independent) and Karl Arnold (CDU). From October 2, 1946 to June 17, 1950 he was a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament, and from December 1946 to April 1947 he was deputy chairman of the KPD parliamentary group. In 1947 and 1948 he was also a member of the Zone Advisory Board for the British Zone of Occupation .

In the summer of 1948 Paul was elected to the Parliamentary Council of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament , which drafted the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany . Paul was a member of the Rules of Procedure Committee and the Occupation Statute Committee. In the plenum he sharply criticized the formation of a West German state, which he viewed as the result of a “dictate of the Western powers”, and denied the Parliamentary Council legitimacy for its activities. He advocated a central position for parliament in the constitution (with a weakening of the separation of powers), as well as the constitutional definition of a social and economic restructuring of the community and the nationalization of key industries. On October 6, 1948, he resigned from the Parliamentary Council for internal party reasons. He belonged to the German Bundestag in its first legislative period (1949–1953). He moved in via the KPD state list, in the constituency of Solingen - Remscheid he had achieved third place with 20.9% of the votes. In the minutes of the Bundestag he was listed as "Paul (Düsseldorf)" to distinguish it. He represented a consistently negative attitude towards Konrad Adenauer's policy of integration into the West and rearmament .

In 1948 and 1949 Hugo Paul was state chairman of the KPD in North Rhine-Westphalia. In a joint meeting of the party executive and state secretariat on December 7th and 8th, 1949, he was given leave of absence because he had not known " Titoist relationships" from the editor-in-chief of the Freie Volk party newspaper , Josef Schappe . In early February 1950, he was deposed as chairman. His successor was Josef Ledwohn .

After he had accused the federal government of “ anti- constitutional policies”, the Adenauer cabinet filed a criminal complaint against Paul in November 1951. He temporarily fled to the GDR . In December 1953, at the instigation of the Federal Court of Justice, he was taken into custody for four months on suspicion of high treason and endangering the state . The Federal Prosecutor's Office accused him because of his affiliation with the German workers' committee against the remilitarization of Germany (DAK) claims to have established a "union (...) whose purposes and whose activities are directed against the constitutional order, and encouraged the efforts of the association as a ringleader to have "(endangering the state according to the then § 90a StGB). While on leave, Paul fled again to the GDR, where he now settled permanently. Paul was a member of the KPD party executive until the party was banned in 1956. He died in East Berlin in 1962, but was buried in Wermelskirchen .

Paul was married to Luise Klesper (1912-1998), who also belonged to the KPD.

Publications

  • Under the sign of proletarian internationalism . (Responsible: Hugo Paul) Party executive of the KPD, Düsseldorf 1951.
  • What the communists propose for the development of the middle class. Speech . Party executive committee of the KPD, Düsseldorf 1953.
  • What every trade unionist needs to know from the 3rd DGB Congress. Presented by the KPD. (Responsible: Hugo Paul) Fink, Hamburg 1954.

literature

See also

Cabinet Amelunxen I - Cabinet Amelunxen II - Cabinet Arnold I

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Detailed view of the MP Hugo Paul , former MP, State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.
  2. ^ Erhard HM Lange : Hugo Paul (KPD). In: Basic Law and Parliamentary Council. Federal Agency for Civic Education, September 1, 2008.
  3. ^ Herbert Mayer: Party purges in the Federal German KPD - A Western European case study. In: Utopie Kreativ , issue 81/82 (July / August 1997), pp. 134–142, here p. 138.
  4. ↑ Günter Judick: How anti-fascists and construction workers became public enemies No. 1 again. In: Eckart Spoo, Arno Klönne: Taboos in West German history. Ossietzky, 2006, pp. 179-185, here p. 184.
  5. ↑ Paul, Hugo. Biographical information from the Handbook of the German Communists, Federal Foundation for the Processing of the SED Dictatorship.
  6. ↑ Manfred Demmer: On the 100th birthday of Hugo Paul - Minister in North Rhine-Westphalia. In Neue Rheinische Zeitung , online flyer No. 12, October 4, 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Paul, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Paul, Hugo Gustav Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR, MdL, MdB
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Hagen , Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1962
Place of death East Berlin