Kurt Schulze

Kurt Schulze (born December 28, 1894 in Pyritz , † December 22, 1942 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German anti-fascist resistance fighter who worked for the Soviet secret service as part of the Red Chapel resistance network . He was a radio operator for the Soviet military intelligence service GRU in Ilse Stöbe's group and also helped the group around Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack .

Life

Kurt was born the seventh of ten children in the family of a poor baker. His father was Herrmann Schulze, his mother Anna, née Koft. In 1900 the family moved to Berlin.

After finishing elementary school , Schulze learned the trade of a seller of colonial goods , after which he worked as a sales assistant. Before Easter 1913 he went to Hamburg and was hired as a cabin boy on a ship going to Venezuela. A year later he returned to Germany and worked as an employee in various companies.

In May 1916 he was recruited to the Imperial Navy in Kiel, where he was employed as a radio telegraph operator and aircraft operator on the small cruiser SMS Stuttgart . After the end of the First World War he became unemployed . From 1920 he worked in his father's company as a chauffeur for a goods taxi . In the same year he became a member of the KPD. Until 1928 he belonged to the Berlin-Pankow group , where he also met Walter Husemann .

In early 1929 he was trained as a radio operator in the USSR. On September 8, 1929, he married Martha Leuschner (?). After the death of his father in 1932, he became the owner of his taxi business, which he sold in 1935. He moved to Petershagen and started working as a representative for a Berlin cheese dairy. From 1939 he lived in Berlin again. In 1940 he started working as a truck driver for Deutsche Post. In October 1941, by order of the headquarters, he met the reconnaissance officer Anatoly Gurevich , who came from Brussels.

Around this point in time, Kurt Schulze began to instruct Hans Coppi in radio technology.

On September 16, 1942, Kurt Schulze was arrested at his workplace at the post office at the Stettiner Bahnhof and taken to the Gestapo house prison at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. He was later imprisoned in the remand prison in Spandau. On December 19, 1942, he was sentenced to death by the Third Senate of the Reich Court Martial for “ high treason and cooperation with enemies and spies ” . On December 22nd he was executed in Plötzensee.

Honor

Schulze was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War in 1969.

Individual evidence

1. ^ New Germany of December 23, 1969

literature

• Regina Griebel, Marlies Coburger, Heinrich Scheel (Eds.): Recorded? The Gestapo album for the Red Orchestra. A photo documentation. Halle 1992, ISBN 3-88384-044-0
• Gert Rosiejka: The Red Chapel. "Treason" as an anti-fascist resistance. Results publisher: Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-16-0
• Alexander S. Blank, Julius Mader: Red band against Hitler. Verlag der Nation: Berlin 1979