Karl Schneider (pacifist)

Street sign Karl-Schneider Straße with a biographical addition

Gravestone in the main cemetery Scheib

Karl Schneider (born June 27, 1869 in Ettenheim ; † November 5, 1940 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a German ophthalmologist, pacifist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Karl Schneider grew up in a Catholic-liberal family in Ettenheim. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine and specialized in ophthalmology . In 1898 he set up his own practice in Neunkirchen . From the turn of the century he was interested in the burgeoning social democracy and studied the works of Marx , Engels , Bebel and Kautsky . After the First World War he began to become increasingly involved in social democracy and during the November Revolution was a member of the Neunkirchen workers and soldiers' council , which was dissolved by the French troops on December 1, 1918. In the council he was responsible for health care and public welfare . In 1919 Schneider was one of the founding members of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in Neunkirchen. In the local elections on July 11, 1920, he was elected as the top candidate of the USPD in both the Ottweiler district council and the Neunkircher local council. After the unification of parts of the USPD with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), he broke with his old party.

In the next few years, Karl Schneider was no longer politically active, but became pacifist in the German League for Human Rights and the German Peace Society . He wrote critical articles in the Volksstimme and the Neunkircher Volkszeitung , which turned against militarism . In 1934 he founded an “Initiative Committee for the Struggle for Peace” together with Gustav Regulator and Friedrich Brokmeier . In the referendum battle for the Saar area , Schneider's efforts remained an outsider position in the left-wing bourgeois camp.

After the annexation of the Saar area to the German Reich in 1935, Schneider was threatened several times and his practice was boycotted, among other things because of his derogatory remarks about Hitler . In 1934 he replied to the closing formula Heil Hitler in a correspondence with the Leipzig Medical Insurance Fund: “I am not a neurologist and therefore cannot 'cure' your Hitler. I'm an ophthalmologist and I prick the star. ”Schneider stayed in Saarland anyway. On April 15, 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo after he had written to ask whether it was true that the Gestapo tortured prisoners. He served his “ protective custody ” first in the St. Wendel prison, then was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then transferred to the Dachau concentration camp on September 3, 1940. He died there on November 5, 1940 under unexplained circumstances.

In 1948 a street in Neunkirchen was named after him.

His birthplace Ettenheim also has Carl-Schneider-Strasse.

literature

• Klaus-Michael Mallmann ; Gerhard Paul : The fragmented 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. 234-239 .
• Armin Schlicker: Street Lexicon Neunkirchen. Streets, squares and bridges in the past and present . Published by Historischer Verein Stadt Neunkirchen e. V. Neunkirchen 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027592-0 , pp. 233-234

Individual evidence

1. ^ Klaus-Michael Mallmann ; Gerhard Paul : The fragmented no. Saarlanders against Hitler . Bonn 1989, p. 234 f .
2. ^ Armin Schlicker: Street Lexicon Neunkirchen. Streets, squares and bridges in the past and present . Published by Historischer Verein Stadt Neunkirchen e. V. Neunkirchen 2009. ISBN 978-3-00-027592-0 . P. 234
3. ^ Klaus-Michael Mallmann ; Gerhard Paul : The fragmented no. Saarlanders against Hitler . Bonn 1989, p. 236 ff .
4. ↑ quoted from Klaus-Michael Mallmann ; Gerhard Paul : The fragmented no. Saarlanders against Hitler . Bonn 1989, p. 238 . Schneider's response contains puns: "Heil Hitler" has the double meaning 'Heil Hitler' or 'heal Hitler' with e- apocope , " someone's Star sting " has the double meaning someone with a cataract surgery 'or' hop on the scales' Colloquially: 'explain to someone how something is in reality', see Duden .
5. ^ Klaus-Michael Mallmann ; Gerhard Paul : The fragmented no. Saarlanders against Hitler . Bonn 1989, p. 239 .
6. ^ Karl Schneider-, Max Braun- and Willi Graf-Straße in Neunkirchen. (No longer available online.) Remembers-euch.de, archived from the original on January 5, 2013 ; Retrieved August 28, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.