Karl Huber (politician, 1904)

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Karl Huber (born June 23, 1904 in Frankenthal / Pfalz ; † June 9, 1965 in Kaiserslautern ) was a German politician and trade unionist who was imprisoned as a resistance fighter against National Socialism from 1935 to 1945, the last eight years of which in various concentration camps . In Rhineland-Palatinate , after the Second World War, he was the first state secretary of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN) . He died of the long-term effects of his imprisonment in a concentration camp.

School and job

Huber attended elementary school in Frankenthal. From 1919 to 1923 he learned the trade of machine fitter at the Frankenthal printing machine company Albert & Co., now part of Koenig & Bauer . From 1924 to 1926 he worked as a fitter at the municipal hospital in Frankenthal, from 1927 to 1928 at the Frankenthal pump manufacturer Klein, Schanzlin & Becker, now KSB . From 1928 to 1933 he was employed by the municipal gas works in Berlin . Because of his political attitudes and activities he was dismissed after the Nazis came to power in January 1933 and returned to Frankenthal. For political reasons, the employment office no longer placed him there.

Political and trade union engagement

Between the First World War and the seizure of power

In 1919 Huber became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) in Frankenthal. In 1924 he joined the SPD , local association Frankenthal. Since 1931 he was a member of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold in Berlin. Huber held various honorary functions, for example he was chairman of the SAJ in Frankenthal and party representative of the SPD and district leader of the Reich Banner in Berlin.

Huber joined the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV) and the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) in Frankenthal on May 1, 1920 . He volunteered as a training officer for the ADGB in Frankenthal.

time of the nationalsocialism

During the entire period of National Socialism , Huber was active in the resistance and therefore exposed to persecution measures by the rulers. As early as March 1933, he was taken into custody by the Frankenthal SS for a few days and released after a “severe warning” not to participate in political or trade union activities. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1933 he joined the illegal Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the Baden - Palatinate district . Together with some former Frankenthaler members of the SPD and KPD, he founded a loose political circle in 1934. In addition to Huber, the group also included the social democratic brothers Walter and Rudolf Weynen and the communists Ludwig Westermann, Eugen Stroh and Georg Reffert. Loose contacts existed with the former SPD and KPD member of the Reichstag, Gerhard Jacobshagen from Ludwigshafen, as well as with emigrated social democrats and communists in the Saar area .

The group often met in Reffert's apartment or kiosk at Frankenthaler Bahnhof and discussed the current political situation. Witnesses later testified that Huber had decided in the discussions for a united front of Social Democrats and Communists against National Socialism and the establishment of a new workers' party, since the KPD as well as the SPD and SAP had failed when the National Socialists seized power.

In July 1934, the group distributed illegal leaflets about the Röhm Putsch and the Reichstag fire several times in the Frankenthal urban area . An SA man from Frankenthal, to whom Huber had given a leaflet in misjudgment of his political views, reported him; this led to several months of surveillance by the Frankenthal criminal police. Finally, on March 9, 1935, he and Georg Reffert were arrested by officers from the Frankenthal criminal police and the Ludwigshafen am Rhein Gestapo office and locked up in the Frankenthal local court prison. Huber was charged with violating the so-called Heimtückegesetz (Heimtückegesetz) in the Frankenthal Special Court and sentenced to four months in prison, the two months in pre- trial detention not counting. The rest of the group wasn't exposed and arrested until December 1935.

In May 1936, the arrest warrants against the other members of the group were overturned because there was insufficient evidence to support a charge of high treason . Huber remained in custody and in the same month was transferred from the Frankenthal district court prison to the Munich-Stadelheim prison. On July 21, 1936, the Munich Higher Regional Court sentenced him to one year and five months in prison for allegedly “preparing a treasonous enterprise”.

Before the end of this prison sentence, Huber received a so-called protective custody order from the Gestapo in Ludwigshafen . On February 6, 1937, he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich as a “political prisoner” , where he was given the prisoner number 11,412. On September 27, 1939 he was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz ( Upper Austria ). From there he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar on November 9, 1942 , where he was registered under the prisoner number 3850. He joined the illegal communist camp resistance . He was the construction manager's Kapo. Letters to relatives in Frankenthal have survived from the concentration camp. He remained imprisoned until the camp was liberated by the US Army on April 11, 1945 .

After the Second World War

Immediately after the liberation, but still from the concentration camp grounds, Huber worked in the management of the KPD district of Baden-Palatinate and supported the Popular Front Committee there. At the end of May 1945 he returned to Frankenthal. As a member of the Frankenthal Citizens' Council from June to December 1945, he represented the interests and concerns of the employees and helped shape the reconstruction of the city.

At the end of 1945 Huber became a member of the Palatinate district leadership of the KPD. From 1946 to 1948 he acted as chairman of the local group of the KPD Frankenthal, during the same period he was a member of the Frankenthal city ​​council . In 1946 he was also a member of the Central Cleanup Commission at the Hesse-Palatinate Higher Government Presidium in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse and in 1947 a public prosecutor at the Arbitration Chamber in Landau .

After the VVN Rhineland-Palatinate was founded, Huber was elected its first state secretary in 1947. In 1948 he became head of the care center for the victims of fascism at the district government in Neustadt.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ VVN / BdA Kaiserslautern: Urn field at the fountain. Retrieved May 25, 2010 .
  2. ↑ adhesion data of the Dachau concentration camp ( Memento of 24 September 2010 at the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Horst Gobrecht: History of the KPD Rhineland-Palatinate 1946–1956, review. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved May 25, 2010 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / klaus-j-becker.de
personal data
SURNAME Huber, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social democrat, communist and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankenthal (Palatinate)
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 1965
Place of death Kaiserslautern