Karl Winter (politician, 1897)

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Karl Winter (born December 15, 1897 in Chemnitz , † December 31, 1971 in Dresden ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ) and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . From 1948 to 1952 he was a member of the Saxon state parliament .

Life

Winter, the son of a painter and a textile worker, learned the trade of a locksmith and metalworker. In 1913 he became a member of the German Metalworkers' Association . He was a soldier in the First World War .

In 1919 he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He served two months in the border guards and then worked as a metal worker in Chemnitz until 1928. In 1921 he left the SPD and in 1922 became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). From 1926, Winter was a member of the KPD district leadership of the Erzgebirge-Vogtland as organ leader. In June 1929 he was on the XII. Weddinger party congress elected to the central committee of the KPD. A year later he became a city councilor in Chemnitz and, at the end of 1931, chairman of the Chemnitz local committee of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO).

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, he was an illegal RGO instructor in Saxony from February 1933. It was in November 1933 in Leipzig arrested and in August 1934 by the Supreme Court of Dresden to two and a half years prison sentenced, he in the penitentiaries Waldheim and Zwickau and most recently in Sachsenburg concentration camp was serving. After his release he worked again as a metal worker in Chemnitz and had contacts with resistance groups. In 1938 Winter formed a management team in Chemnitz with Albert Hähnel and Max Müller to coordinate the KPD's resistance activities. At times you were in direct contact with Ernst Enge and other communist functionaries from various Chemnitz factories and residential areas. On August 22, 1944, Winter was arrested again and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . On April 12, 1945 negotiations began against Winter, Willy Neubert , Max Müller, Lisbeth Epperlein and others in one of the last trials before the “ People's Court ”. They were accused of supporting “ Eastern workers ” and Soviet prisoners of war , collecting funds for prohibited purposes, listening to foreign stations and passing on their information, and enabling them to listen to such stations in their homes. They were charged with high treason and favoring the enemy . On the following day, April 13, 1945, Winter was sentenced to three years in prison in Waldheim.

After the liberation from prison by the Red Army on May 6, 1945, Winter became secretary of the Antifa committee in Chemnitz that same month and, after the founding of the KPD, political secretary (chairman) of the KPD sub-district of Chemnitz. From April 1946 to December 1949, Winter was a member of the secretariat of the SED regional executive committee in Saxony as secretary for economic policy. In 1948 he became a member of the German Economic Commission . On September 30, 1948 he joined the Saxon state parliament as a replacement for Robert Bialek, who had been called to Berlin, and was a member of it until it was dissolved in July 1952. From January 1950 to July 1952 he headed the State Commission for State Control in Saxony and from August 1952 - after the formation of the districts in the GDR - was the authorized representative of the Central Commission for State Control in the Dresden district . At the same time he was from 1952 to 1971 member of the SED district leadership and member of the District Day Dresden.

Awards and honors

literature

  • Street names in Karl-Marx-Stadt . Karl-Marx-Stadt-Information 1989, p. 32.
  • Martin Broszat et al. (Ed.): SBZ manual: State administrations, parties, social organizations and their executives in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany 1945–1949 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55261-9 , p. 1058.
  • Andreas Herbst , Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, Jürgen Winkler (eds.): The SED - history, organization, politics. A manual . Dietz, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-320-01951-1 , p. 1116.
  • Winter, 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 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hass, Gerhart et al. (Ed.): Germany in the Second World War . Part I: Preparation, unleashing and course of the war up to June 22, 1941 . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1974, p. 294.
  2. ^ Council of the district of Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dresden State Archives and district management of Karl-Marx-Stadt of the Kulturbund der DDR (ed.): Regional historical contributions from the district of Karl-Marx-Stadt , issue 2 (1980), p. 27; Adolf Diamant: Gestapo Chemnitz and the Gestapo branches in Plauen iV and Zwickau. On the history of a criminal organization in the years 1933–1945: Documents - Reports - Reports . Verlag Heimatland Sachsen, Chemnitz 1999, p. 540.
  3. ^ Obituary of the Central Committee . In: Neues Deutschland , January 4, 1972, p. 2.
personal data
SURNAME Winter, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED)
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1971
Place of death Dresden