Karl Langowski

Karl Max Langowski (born October 1, 1905 in Kiel , † November 1, 1965 in Woltersdorf ) was a party functionary of the KPD . From 1932 he was a member of the KPD's military-political apparatus (M apparatus) in a leading position and was arrested in December 1933 for treason. Sentenced to ten years in prison in 1935, he was liberated by the Red Army in 1945 and worked in various functions at the communal level in the GDR .

Life

The trained locksmith became a member of the KPD and the Red Front Fighter League (RFB) in 1925 . He worked as a coal trimmer and stoker on the high seas in 1927/28 and was again employed as a fitter in Kiel and Hamburg from 1931 . In Kiel he belonged to the sub-district leadership of the KPD and headed the Red Young Front , the youth organization of the RFB. In 1930 he was arrested and spent three months in custody.

Under the code name "Joseph" graduated Langowski 1931/32 a course at the Military School of the Comintern in Moscow to work on his return in the apparatus of the military political apparatus, the news service of the KPD. There he was in charge of the "Decomposition of the Reichswehr " department. In February 1933, he went into illegal work. He was part of the management of the M apparatus under Hans Kippenberger and, after his emigration, he was a personal assistant to Hermann Dünow , the incumbent manager. As a result of Alfred Kattner's betrayal , Langowski and Dünow were arrested by the Gestapo on December 18, 1933 when they wanted to give Kattner a passport to emigrate to the Soviet Union . Langowski was sentenced to ten years in prison on August 16, 1935 by the People's Court . He was imprisoned in Berlin-Moabit , Luckau and Brandenburg-Görden , where he was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945 .

After the Second World War , Langowski initially took part in setting up the municipal administration and the KPD local group in Klosterfelde . He became head of the work area and until July 1946 political director of the KPD / SED Niederbarnim . However, he was not allowed to take part in the unification congress of the KPD and SED in April 1946. Due to an accusation made by Hermann Dünow in August 1946 that he had become an informant and traitor in the Luckau prison, Langowski was arrested by the Soviet military administration in 1946 , but was soon rehabilitated. Langowski publicly denied Dünow's allegations in 1947.

The Ministry of State Security was of the opinion that after his arrest, Langowski had contributed to the further breaking up of the M apparatus and arrests in 1934 through statements made to the Gestapo. He also appeared as a witness against comrades in later trials. The "ominous accidental death of his wife resulted in the exclusion from the party," but in early 1957 he was re-admitted to the SED. He managed the transport company for Schöneiche near Berlin and Woltersdorf. From the summer of 1957 to mid-January 1963, he served the MfS district office in Fürstenwalde / Spree as an information person ("secret informator"). Under the code name "Franz", he was jointly responsible for monitoring his business and the restaurant in his house. Until his death he worked as director of the municipal housing company of the Niederbarnim district.

literature

• Langowski, Karl . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 . . ( online ).
• Ronald Sassning : Thälmann, Dünow, Wehner, Mewis. Pictures with etchings . In: UTOPIE Kreativ , H. 115/116 (May / June 2000), pp. 558-583. ( PDF )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ronald Sassning: Thälmann, Dünow, Wehner, Mewis. Pictures with etchings . In: UTOPIE Kreativ , H. 115/116 (May / June 2000), p. 562.