Karl Barthel

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Karl Barthel (born March 20, 1907 in Lohmen (Saxony) ; † February 21, 1974 in Jena ) was a German politician, KPD - member of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic , concentration camp survivor, SED party functionary and author .

Life

Barthel was the son of the " non-resident " Seiler and SPD candidate from 1898, Clemens Barthel, in Dresden Neustadt . He started out as a toolmaker in the Ernemannwerke and became a member of the German Metalworkers Association (DMV). In 1923 he joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and was one of the first to be dismissed in the wake of the economic crisis and hyperinflation in 1924.

In 1927 he took part in a central training course of the KJVD at the Reichsparteischule of the KPD and became KJVD district manager in East Saxony . Conrad Blenkle and Fritz Rau sent him to the state party secretariat of the KPD in Suhl in Thuringia . Its leader, Hans Tittel, was a supporter of Heinrich Brandler . In order to be able to remove the “right-wing deviants”, the party demanded a resolution from the Thuringian KPD on the resolutions of the 4th RGI Congress in Moscow. Walter Ulbricht was present when the proposals were voted on . Because of “deviating from the party line”, the “ Brandlerists ”, who later often became co-founders of the KPD-O , were excluded. Ernst Thälmann then praised the "role model" of the KJVD Thuringia under Karl Barthel.

MP

In December 1929 Barthel became the youngest member of the KPD parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament . In 1930 he met his wife, who later became chemist Leni Streng, in the Wickersdorf Free School Community .

After a short time in the editorial office of the newspaper "Freiheit" ( Düsseldorf ), Barthel was in Kassel in November 1931 and, at the suggestion of Thälmann and John Schehr, the KPD's central committee appointed as Hessen- Waldeck's political secretary to succeed the imprisoned Krämer. In the VI. Election period he was among the 89 deputies of the Communist Party in the Reichstag . He married Leni Streng in November 1932. On February 7, 1933, he said he took part in the last meeting of the Central Committee in the Ziegenhals sports shop and , like all KPD members, was made illegal after the Reichstag fire three weeks later. Walter Ulbricht commissioned him as an instructor for Lower and Upper Silesia .

Arrest and verdict

On November 28, 1933, Barthel was arrested by the Gestapo at a meeting with the local KJVD district manager in Breslau and was at Edmund Heines ' police headquarters . Three weeks later, after a fictitious escape route that he failed to take advantage of, he was abducted to a private house of the Navy SA and severely abused. According to his own communication, he only confirmed the statements made by his meeting partner. On March 28, 1934, Barthel was taken to the Graupestrasse remand prison in Breslau as a " police detainee" and sentenced to two and a half years in prison and five years of loss of honor at the end of November . He was first transferred to the Wohlau prison , then to the Lichtenburg concentration camp and finally to the Buchenwald concentration camp .

Buchenwald concentration camp

“ The life of every prisoner in the concentration camp was constantly surrounded by death. Extreme nerve tension, vigilance, cunning and luck were necessary if the prisoner wanted to avoid the threatened annihilation. "(The morning turns red)

Barthel's block elder, Hans Bremer, was shot together with the second block elder, Oskar Fischer , as a victim of retrospective revenge for the “ Felseneck Trial ” and instead of two criminals who had fled. Barthel worked in the SS farm buildings, and was able to do this occasionally. a. Listen to Radio Beromünster and use SS members (e.g. precision mechanic Hans Prinzler) to smuggle his manuscript, which appeared in 1946 as “ The World Without Mercy ” in the Soviet occupation zone, to his wife. (In 1939, Theodor Neubauer, the first KPD member of the Reichstag, was released from concentration camp imprisonment; his wife contacted him.)

In 1944 Barthel was sent to the Marstall Weimar for 14 days , where he was imprisoned in the same building as the concentration camp commandant Karl Otto Koch . He later announced that, based on the Gestapo findings from the violent interrogations there, many KPD functionaries had been killed again. Barthel himself was brought back to the concentration camp without interrogation.

Friends Barthels in the concentration camp were the ones called "Protectorate Czechs ' 1939 consigned, later minister of Czechoslovakia Alois Neumann (justice minister, escaped in 1959 from Czechoslovakia) and Dr. Plojar who helped each other. During the bombing of the US Air Force on August 24, 1944, Barthel supplied water to numerous wounded, such as Rudolf Breitscheid and the Italian Princess Mafalda of Savoy , who both died from their injuries , as he was in charge of the key to the SS drinks cellar.

post war period

After the end of the war, the Soviet military administration in Germany appointed him Mayor of Jena on July 14, 1945 . Later he was employed by the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD SED member and as director of Jena's municipal utilities . Barthel died in 1974 at the age of 66.

Fonts

  • The world without mercy. Pictures and sketches from the concentration camp , with woodcuts by Hans Schneider. Greifenverlag : Rudolstadt 1946.
  • The morning turns red. Memories . Greifenverlag: Rudolstadt 1958.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Barthel, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD and SED functionary, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Lohmen (Saxony)
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1974
Place of death Jena