Kurt Gärtner (politician)

Kurt Gärtner (born June 26, 1879 in Finsterwalde ; † December 15, 1944 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a German politician ( USPD , SPD ).

biography

Kurt Gärtner was the son of a cloth maker and became a carpenter . In 1898 he became a member of the German Woodworkers' Association and the SPD in Guben . Because of his union activities, he had to leave Guben in 1905 to find work in Berlin . He became a soldier in the First World War . In 1917 he became a member of the USPD.

After the November Revolution, Gärtner became involved in politics, and in 1919 he was elected to the city ​​council in the then still independent city ​​of Neukölln . In 1922 he switched back to the SPD. During this time he worked full-time in the German Freethinkers Association . From 1925 Gärtner was a city ​​councilor for Berlin .

Stumbling block for Kurt Gärtner

The " seizure of power " by the National Socialists led to his political activity as a city councilor of Berlin being banned. His employment in the German Freethinkers Association was also terminated in June 1933. After his first arrest, he fled to Czechoslovakia , but returned to Berlin in 1937 and worked in the resistance . As part of the action grid Kurt gardener was arrested on August 22, 1944, and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was murdered on 15 December 1944th

Afterlife

On September 12, 2008, a stumbling stone was installed in Gretelstraße 10 near Sonnenallee in Neukölln in honor of Kurt Gärtner.

literature

• Active Museum Association : In Front of the Door - Berlin City Councilors and Magistrate Members Persecuted During National Socialism 1933–1945 , Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-018931-9 , page 197.
• Hans-Rainer Sandvoss : Resistance in Neukölln , Berlin: German Resistance Memorial Center 1990, p. 80.
• Board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century . Marburg: Schüren 2000, ISBN 3-89472-173-1 , p. 107.