Karl Fritsche

Karl Fritsche (born April 5, 1911 in Holleben , Merseburg district , † September 28, 1986 in Berlin ) was a German railway engineer. He was chairman of the Central Committee of the Railway Industrial Union .

Life

Fritsche, the son of a miner, completed an apprenticeship as a lathe operator and fitter after attending primary school and worked in the profession. Later he worked as a train driver and engine heater in Angersdorf , Halle (Saale) , Leipzig and Leipzig-Wahren. From 1940 to 1945 he was a field railroader and train driver in the Wehrmacht .

In June 1945 he returned to his office in Leipzig-Wahren from captivity and worked again as a train driver and engine heater until 1951. Fritsche became one of the first railroad activists. As a train driver in 1950, he showed his colleagues how the daily mileage of a locomotive can be increased to 500 km while saving coal. Hundreds of train drivers took part in this so-called 500 movement . In 1946 he became a member of the SED , in 1951/52 he was the chief executive in Halle (Saale).

In 1952/53 he studied at the SED central school in Ballenstedt . From 1954 he was Vice President of the Reich Railway Directorate in Greifswald . From 1951 he was a member of the central board of IG Eisenbahn, from 1955 to 1959 chairman of the central board of IG Eisenbahn and a member of the Presidium of the FDGB federal board. From 1954 to 1958 Fritsche was also a candidate for the Central Committee of the SED . Fritsche qualified as a qualified engineer and economist and later worked until 1976 in the service rank of a Reichsbahn senior councilor as a checking engineer in the state building supervision at the Reichsbahn directorate in Berlin.

Fritsche died after a long and serious illness at the age of 75 and was buried in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde .

Awards

• Honorary Title Hero of Labor (1950)
• Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze (1976)

literature

• Heinz Germany : History of the Free German Trade Union Confederation . Verlag Tribüne, Berlin 1982, p. 265.
• Andreas Herbst : Fritsche, Karl . In: Dieter Dowe , Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990). Berlin 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ^ New Germany , June 10, 1962, p. 5.
2. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , October 7, 1976, p. 5.
3. ^ Obituary notice in: Neues Deutschland , October 10, 1986, p. 7.