Karl Albin Becker

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Karl Albin Becker (born November 19, 1894 in Hanover ; † December 1, 1942 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German KPD functionary. After an eventful career in the party, he went into exile in 1934 and was executed in 1942 after being extradited to Nazi Germany .

Life

Becker's family came from the socialist milieu. His siblings Ernst and Lina Becker were later active in the communist movement. He learned the profession of typesetter. In 1909 he became a member of the socialist youth organization and in 1912 he joined the SPD .

During the First World War , Becker was one of the leading figures of Bremen's left-wing radicals, first in Dresden and later in Bremen . In 1917 he was jailed for distributing anti-militarist writings among the youth and was not released until the November Revolution .

In Dresden he became a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council . As a representative of the International Communists of Germany , Becker was a delegate of the founding congress of the KPD . In 1919 he was a leading KPD functionary. In the Bremen Council Republic he was a member of the executive committee ("Bremen 21 Committee").

In the internal party disputes in 1919, he initially belonged to the left opposition and supported the syndicalist General Workers' Union . Becker returned to the KPD just a year later and in 1921 became the party's leading functionary in Hamburg . There he was among other things editor-in-chief of the Hamburger Volkszeitung .

In 1923 Becker was elected as one of the youngest members of the Central Committee and appointed to the Politburo . After the party was banned as a result of the Hamburg uprising and the German October in the same year, he had to go into hiding and was wanted on a wanted list. He then returned to the Hamburger Volkszeitung for a short time .

In the disputes within the party, he was one of the supporters of the “right wing” around Heinrich Brandler , August Thalheimer and Jacob Walcher . After a stay in Moscow , Becker joined Ernst Meyer in 1925 . As a result, he again took on important functions in the party. He worked in the trade union department of the Central Committee and was editor-in-chief of the communist trade union newspaper “Kampf”.

In 1928 he was elected to the Prussian state parliament. In the internal party disputes, he was a spokesman among the “ compromisers ”. With their defeat in 1928/29 he was ousted from all influential party offices and no longer elected to the Central Committee.

As a result, Becker was mainly active in communist subsidiary organizations such as the Rote Hilfe and the Kampfbund against fascism . Between 1931 and 1933 he was State Secretary of the League of Friends of the Soviet Union .

From February 1933 Becker lived illegally and in 1934 went into exile to Prague , later to Amsterdam and finally to Paris . There he worked for the exiled KPD. In the Friends World Committee of the Soviet Union , he played a leading role from the 1937th In June 1941 he and his partner Elsa Arnold were arrested by the Gestapo in Paris .

On September 4, 1942, Becker was sentenced to death by the People's Court for preparing for high treason . and executed on December 1, 1942 in Plötzensee prison.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Heinz Schumann and Gerda Werner: Fight the human right. Life pictures and last letters from anti-fascist resistance fighters . Dietz Verlag, 1958, ISBN 3-88021-180-9 , p. 47 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ According to Schumann / Werner Erkendet the human right .. as early as 1927
personal data
SURNAME Becker, Karl Albin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD functionary
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1942
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee