Kurt Megelin

Kurt Adolf Walter Megelin (born November 5, 1904 in Berlin ; † 1979 ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism . He headed the Red Shock Troop from 1934.

Life

After elementary school, Kurt Megelin learned to be a printer . He belonged to the Association of German Book Printers , where he was youth secretary from 1922. He then did a commercial apprenticeship. From 1918 he was a member of the SAJ and from 1992 a member of the SPD , where he became head of the 25th Prenzlauer Berg department. He was also a member of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and the Freethinker Association. After his apprenticeship, he worked at the Prenzlauer-Berg district office. He became managing director of the Federation of Free School Societies. This and his union activities made him the target of the National Socialists after the seizure of power . In 1933 he was initially banned from continuing education at the Leipzig librarianship school, then he was completely dismissed from the service.

Megelin now turned completely to illegal work and became a member of the Red Shock Troop. There he took over the Prenzlauer Berg district. Through his employment as an administrative clerk in the district mayor's office, he was able to send the movement's magazine nationwide. In 1934, he took over the management of the Red Strike Troop, most of which had been exposed in 1933. Together with other undiscovered comrades, he switched the work of propaganda to cadre training. Although he was arrested several times between 1933 and 1938 and spent a total of 33 months in prison, he was able to portray his role in ever smaller ways. In 1938 he escaped from custody because he feared he would be sent to a concentration camp. Shortly thereafter, he continued to operate illegally, having succeeded in making his files disappear. He managed to get a job with the Reich Insurance Group . He used the associated travel activity to set up illegal networks.

During the Second World War he worked for Wilhelm Leuschner and served as a liaison with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler . Shortly before the end of the Second World War, he also made contact with a resistance group led by Erika Bartsch .

After the Second World War he became a member of the SPD again. He became secretary to Ella Kay , the district mayor of Prenzlauer Berg. When the Soviet administration dismissed this, he also lost his job. He fled to the western part of the city, where he became a consultant and later head of the public library system in the Reinickendorf district office. Politically, he was very little involved, on the one hand due to his health, which had deteriorated considerably as a result of his imprisonment in the Third Reich, and on the other to the change from east to west.

In 1979 Megelin died in the Allgäu, but was buried in Berlin. His wife Else Megelin was also active in the Red Assault Troop .

literature

• Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: The Red Assault Troop. An early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism . Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86732-274-4 , pp. 460 f .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Kurt Megelin 1904 - 1979. In: Humanists in focus - Destroyed diversity. March 20, 2013, accessed October 6, 2018 .