Josef Küchler

Josef Küchler (born April 28, 1902 in Trebnitz , ( Silesia ), † August 6, 1997 in Rostock ) was a German CDU politician and member of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament .

Life

From 1908 to 1916 he attended the local elementary school , in 1917 he began an apprenticeship as a locksmith and from 1920 worked as a traveling journeyman and fitter in the Rhineland . In 1926 Küchler passed the master craftsman's examination at the craft and trade school and was foreman in Trebnitz until 1934. In 1935 he came to the Rostock Heinkelwerke as an SO inspector, where he worked until the Soviets dismantled it in 1945.

From 1920 to 1924 Küchler joined the West German Social Democrats, after his return to Silesia he moved to the center . Josef Küchler joined the Rostock CDU on November 28, 1945; since 1946 he has been a member of the local, district and state executive. Finally, at the end of 1946 - after Dr. Walter Neumann - as 2nd chairman and appointed him full-time district secretary.

In the municipal and state elections in September / October 1946, he received both a mandate for the Rostock city council and a state parliament mandate. At the instigation of the SED , he was replaced as district secretary in 1948, which aroused fierce resistance within the Rostock CDU. Economics minister Siegfried Witte then appointed him as his special representative. In 1949 he took over the position of full-time parliamentary group manager. After Siegfried Witte's dismissal at the end of January 1950, Küchler gave a last opposition speech in the state parliament, but afterwards made a “progressive” appearance.

At the state party conference in 1950, Küchler was elected 3rd state chairman, and the SED state leadership even approved his re-candidacy for the 2nd electoral term. As an adapted functionary, Küchler was planned as CDU district administrator in Anklam .

His arrest by the Soviet secret police in December 1950 shook the co- ordinated state CDU massively. Together with the freelance journalist Ursula Wöllert and the student Peter Püschel, Küchler was sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to 75 years of forced labor in Siberian camps. Küchler returned to Rostock in 1955 and was shunned by his former party friends.

In 1962 he was arrested again by the MfS after colleagues in the Kavelstorf consumer cooperative denounced him. Küchler commented on the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 with the words of Heinrich Heine : "As a German, I was captured by Germans because I went from Germany to Germany". He served his two-year prison sentence in Bützow-Dreibergen until 1964.

swell

• ACDP 01-297-006 / 7, Küchler, Joseph: Brief outline of my life. ms. Manuscript, Rostock January 1992.
• Brigitte Kaff (ed.): "Dangerous political opponents". Resistance and persecution in the Soviet zone, GDR . Droste, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-7700-1875-3 .
• Christian Schwießelmann: The CDU in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania 1945 to 1952. From the foundation to the dissolution of the regional association. A representation of party history . Droste, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-7700-1909-0 , ( research and sources on contemporary history 58).