Kurt Weckel

Kurt Weckel (born March 15, 1877 in Schedewitz , † July 18, 1956 in Hanau ) was a German politician (SPD).

Life and activity

After completing his school education, Weckel completed the teachers' seminar in Schneeberg. He received his first teaching post in 1896 in Rodewisch near Auerbach. At the same time he joined the Saxon teachers' association. In 1898 he was transferred to Dresden.

Weckel was a member of the USPD from 1918 to 1922 , for which he was a member of the Saxon state parliament from 1920 to 1922 .

In 1921 Weckel took over the management of the Dresden experimental school, which tried out new teaching methods.

In 1922, Weckel switched to the SPD . For this he was a member of the state parliament for a further eleven years, from 1922 to 1933. From 1929 to 1932 he held the office of President of the Saxon State Parliament. His re-election on November 24, 1932 failed due to party differences between the SPD and the KPD , so that August Eckardt was elected by the DNVP as the new president with only 40 votes, although the SPD and KPD together already had 45 votes. In addition, he held office from 1924 to 1930 as chairman of the SPD sub-district of Dresden and as a member of national party committees.

Shortly after the takeover by the Nazis in the spring of 1933 emigrated Weckel in March 1933 in the Czechoslovakia . There he became a leading member of the Union des instituteurs allemands emigrés. In April 1939, Weckel fled to Great Britain in the wake of the German annexation of the so-called “ Rest of Czech Republic ” and the formation of the “ Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ”. There he belonged to the regional group of German trade unionists and worked after the beginning of the Second World War in the training of German prisoners of war.

After his emigration in 1933, Weckel was classified by the National Socialists as an enemy of the state: In 1937 his German citizenship was revoked and this was announced publicly in the Reichsanzeiger . In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin also placed him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, were to be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special SS units with special priority .

After the end of the Second World War , Weckel returned to West Germany in 1945. In 1946 he moved to the Soviet Zone . There he became an educational advisor in the Leipzig school administration and then from 1950 an elementary school teacher until his dismissal in 1952. In the wake of this he left the GDR in 1952 to live in Hanau in Hesse until his death .

Fonts

• Against the school reaction. State parliament speeches of the comrades on January 20 and 27, 1925 , 1925.

Web links

• Josef Matzerath: Weckel, Kurt . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
• Literature by and about Kurt Weckel in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Kurt Weckel on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London)