Lucian Polecat

Lucian Iltis (born May 15, 1903 in Mannheim , † September 29, 1967 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German KPD functionary.

Life and activity

Polecat was the son of a metal worker and a clothing worker . He learned the locksmith trade.

In 1919 Iltis joined the Free Socialist Youth and in 1923 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In the following years he worked for the Arbeiterzeitung in Mannheim .

At the end of the 1920s, Iltis became an employee of the KPD's AM apparatus. In 1930 he completed the 1st course at the Comintern Military Political School in Moscow under the code name Otto . After his return to Germany, he took on tasks in the central AM apparatus of the KPD in Berlin: under the code name Willy, he headed the republican organizations department, whose most important task was the gathering of news and dismantling of the SPD, the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , the trade unions and other SPD-related organizations. He then succeeded Rudolf Schwarz as head of the decomposition of the police in the AM apparatus.

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Iltis emigrated to the Soviet Union in August 1933, where he worked as an assistant teacher at the M school and a teacher at the Lenin school .

The Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI) used Iltis as an instructor in France and Austria. From 1935 he lived in Alsace , joined the KP France and worked as an editor for the KP newspaper Humanité .

When the Second World War broke out, Iltis was drafted into the French army in September 1939. He became a German prisoner of war, from which he was released in June 1940. He is said to have been sent by the Gestapo as an agent to the unoccupied zone of France and to have worked for both the Resistance and the Gestapo until 1944 . In November 1946 he was arrested in France for "collaborating with the enemy".

literature

• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).