Karl Heinrich (politician, 1890)

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Karl Heinrich (born September 25, 1890 in Munich ; † November 3, 1945 in special camp No. 3 Hohenschönhausen ) was a social democratic activist, police officer and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Memorial plaque in honor of Heinrich in Berlin-Spandau

Heinrich joined the Hessian police service in 1909 as a candidate for a commissioner . In the years 1911/12 he did his military service as a one-year volunteer . In February 1914 his training as a police officer was over. In the First World War , Heinrich initially served in the infantry, where he was promoted to lieutenant in January 1915. As a result of being seriously wounded, from mid-1916 he was no longer considered fit for use in the war and was, among other things, decorated with the Iron Cross 1st class, employed in the military police administration.

After his discharge from the army, Heinrich took up his service as an officer in the Hessian police in 1918. In early 1919 he joined the SPD. He switched to the Prussian police , which in 1929 transferred him to the Berlin police station as a major . Heinrich commanded the police in the Berlin government district as deputy head of the "Linden" inspection . One of his tasks was the enforcement of the ban around the Reichstag building . Because of the harshness shown against the National Socialists , their Gauleiter Goebbels propagated the name Knüppelheinrich for him , which the Communists , whom he was equally hated, took over. As a result of the Prussian strike in 1932 for political reasons , Heinrich devoted himself to leading positions in the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold .

After taking power , the Berlin SA took revenge on Heinrich from the beginning of March 1933 by taking him to several wild concentration camps for eight weeks , including the notorious Columbiahaus . His dismissal from the police at the same time was associated with a considerable reduction in pay, which is why Heinrich had to work as an insurance agent on a commission basis. After most of the leaders of the Reichsbanner had fled Germany when it was smashed, Heinrich and Theodor Haubach built an illegal social democratic organization in Berlin in 1933/1934 with over a thousand members, mostly made up of Reichsbanner people. After Haubach's arrest in November 1934, Heinrich took over the management of the organization. But the Gestapo also arrested him in September 1935. In a show trial, the People's Court sentenced Heinrich to six years in prison for preparing for high treason . He served his sentence in the Brandenburg penitentiary and from the summer of 1938 in various moor camps , then in penal camps in Hesse. After his prison sentence had expired in 1941, the Gestapo intended to deport Heinrich to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , but then held him in their prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin because of his poor health . The Gestapo released him from there in September 1942 when he was medically determined to be incapable of imprisonment.

In June 1945, after the liberation from National Socialism, the Soviet occupying power , which was looking for an experienced police officer without a Nazi past, appointed Heinrich as commander of the Berlin Police. Soon after the appointment, however, KPD members reported to Soviet agencies, which independently referred to Heinrich's role as a bobby officer before 1933; Heinrich is “a bad fellow” who also behaved “badly” and “badly” to fellow prisoners while in custody. The main background to these allegations was a power struggle within the Berlin police, in which older social democratic police officers claimed to be resuming their positions that were controlled until 1932/33, while communists who were employed in the police force for the first time sought to consolidate their sphere of influence. After the Western powers occupied their Berlin sectors at the beginning of July 1945, Heinrich, who apparently was counting on the support of the British in particular, tried to remove the KPD members who had been admitted to the police there since May. As a result, he was arrested on August 2 in an NKVD office . Because Heinrich had a pistol in his briefcase, the representatives of the Western powers had no means of intervening in his favor, since Germans were strictly forbidden from possessing any weapons . Internally, the Soviet side informed the western allies on August 8 that Heinrich was suspected of having cooperated with the Gestapo in addition to possessing weapons, of having acted ruthlessly against democratic forces in the Weimar Republic and of mistreating fellow prisoners as a camp inmate.

However, the Soviet occupying power did not issue a public statement on the sensational move. In the secret investigation, the NKVD accused Heinrich of illegal possession of weapons and the mistreatment and denunciation of fellow prisoners during the Nazi prison regime. The investigation was completed at the end of September 1945. The indictment accused him of "counter-revolutionary" crimes. Since Heinrich was seriously ill in the meantime, there was no trial before a Soviet military tribunal . Admitted to the detention hospital of Special Camp No. 3 in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen in October 1945 , he died on November 3, 1945 of " paralysis of vital organs". His body was buried in a rubble dump near the camp.

The Soviet occupying power kept this a secret, despite urgent inquiries from the Western occupying powers, the SPD leadership and the Berlin public about his whereabouts and the accusations. During the Berlin election campaign in autumn 1946, an anti-social democratic campaign by the SED press, which was dosed with NKVD information, justified Heinrich's arrest. His fate could only be clarified after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In May 1996 , the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation rehabilitated Karl Heinrich.

In January 1946, Hans Kanig was again a Social Democrat commander of the police force.

A memorial plaque and the Karl Heinrich Bridge in the Berlin district of Spandau commemorate Karl Heinrich .

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl Heinrich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Otto, Wilfriede, Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist, Berlin 2000, p. 96.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Otto, Erich Mielke, p. 96.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Erler, Peter, Police Major Karl Heinrich - Nazi opponent and anti-communist. A biographical sketch, Berlin 2007, p. 99.
  4. ↑ See Keiderling, Gerhard, Wir sind die Staatspartei. The KPD district organization Greater Berlin April 1945-April 1946, Berlin 1997, pp. 186f.
  5. ↑ See Heimann, Siegfried, Karl Heinrich and the Berlin SPD, the Soviet military administration and the SED, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 2007, p. 33.
  6. ↑ See Keiderling, Staatspartei, p. 188.
personal data
SURNAME Heinrich, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION social democratic activist, police officer and anti-fascist resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 1945
Place of death Special camp No. 3 Hohenschönhausen