Karl Kuhn (resistance fighter)

Karl Kuhn (born January 5, 1910 in Dudweiler ; † April 13, 1984 in Saarbrücken ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Karl Kuhn grew up as the son of a Protestant family of miners. In 1924 he finished elementary school , then became an electrical mechanic and was involved in the union. At the age of 19, he also joined the SPD and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold . In the course of the global economic crisis , he became unemployed.

In the voting battle for the future of the Saar area , Kuhn was involved in the united front . He was part of a six-person delegation from the Saarland who tried to visit Ernst Thälmann in the prison of the Moabit Criminal Court in October 1934 at the request of the Red Aid . The authorities refused to do so and arrested the delegation, who was deported after interrogation.

After the result of the vote was announced, Kuhn fled to France and lived there until 1937, first in a refugee camp in Mirande , Département Gers , then in Pau and finally in Castelnaudary . In early 1937 he volunteered in the Spanish Civil War and became a soldier in the Thälmann battalion . He was captured on March 13, 1937 and held in the former monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña . Unlike most of the other cases in which prisoners were transferred to the Gestapo, he was deported to France on February 14, 1939, posing as a Frenchman.

Back in France, Kuhn was immediately interned and imprisoned in Argelès-sur-Mer and later in Gurs . In the camp he belonged to the “Ninth Company”, a camp group made up of social democrats who felt they were being treated at a disadvantage by the communist -oriented prisoners. Within this group he seems to have been one of the driving forces.

As a stateless person , Karl Kuhn enlisted in the French army and was drafted on October 16, 1939. On June 17, 1940, after the Franco-German armistice, he was taken prisoner by Germany. Using the code name Charles Kuhn and disguised as a Luxembourg citizen, he was able to survive undetected as a prisoner of war in a camp in Sulzbach-Rosenberg until April 22, 1945 . He was liberated by the Allies that day . In May 1945 he was released from the French army.

Back in Germany, Kuhn joined the Social Democratic Party of Saarland (SPS) and ran unsuccessfully in the first municipal council election in Dudweiler in 1946 . He then worked in his old profession and later as a broadcast technician for Radio Saarbrücken . In 1954 he moved to Saarbrücken, where he died on April 13, 1984.

literature

• Max Hewer: From the Saar to the Ebro. Saarland as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. 2nd, corrected edition, Blattlausverlag, Saarbrücken 2016, ISBN 978-3-945996-08-9 .
• Klaus-Michael Mallmann , Gerhard Paul : The splintered no. Saarlanders against Hitler . Ed .: Hans-Walter Herrmann (=  resistance and refusal in Saarland 1935–1945 . Volume 1 ). Dietz, Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-8012-5010-5 , p. 146-148 .
• Gerhard Paul ; Klaus-Michael Mallmann : Milieus and Resistance: A Behavioral History of Society under National Socialism . Ed .: Hans-Walter Herrmann (=  resistance and refusal in Saarland 1935–1945 . Volume 3 ). Dietz, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-8012-5012-1 , p. 302-306 .
• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz (Hrsg.): Emigrated metal trade unionists in the fight against the Nazi regime (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration, Vol. 3). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-210-7 , pp. 63, 837 f. (Short biography).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus-Michael Mallmann; Gerhard Paul: Resistance and Refusal in Saarland 1935–1945. Volume 1: The fragmented No . Dietz, Bonn 1989, pp. 146-148. (as google book)
2. ^ Gerhard Paul; Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Resistance and Refusal in Saarland 1935–1945. Volume 3: Milieus and Resistance . Dietz, Bonn 1995, pp. 302-306. (as google book)