Ludwig Küchel

Ludwig Küchel (born January 29, 1900 in Lambrecht (Palatinate) ; † October 7, 1977 ) was a German trade unionist ( ADGB / FDGB / DGB ) and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . He was first chairman of the central board of the textile industry union in the FDGB.

Life

Küchel, the son of a lathe operator , attended elementary school and completed an apprenticeship as a weaver . From 1913 he was organized in a union. In 1919 he joined the USPD and in 1922 the KPD . Because of differences in trade union tactical issues, he switched to the SPD in 1925 . He was first chairman of the German Textile Workers' Association (DTV) in Lambrecht, first chairman of the works and workers' council of the largest cloth factory in Lambrecht, first chairman of the Free Gymnastics Association and first chairman of the workers' sports cartel for Lambrecht and the surrounding area. After completing a correspondence course at the business school in Düsseldorf , he became a secretary in the works council and legal department of the main board of DTV in Berlin on June 1, 1929 .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he took up illegal work with colleagues from the DTV. On April 21, 1933, he was arrested and taken to the SA prison General-Pape-Strasse in Berlin-Tempelhof . Küchel was badly mistreated there and released five days later. On March 28, 1938, he was arrested again and severely ill-treated. After six months he was released because the higher court refused to initiate proceedings. On September 30, 1939, Küchel was arrested for the third time and a year later on September 27, 1940, the Dresden Special Court sentenced him to one year and ten months in prison. He spent his imprisonment in Bautzen prison , after his release he was placed under Gestapo supervision.

After the war ended in 1945, Küchel rejoined the KPD and in 1946 became a member of the SED and the FDGB. From June 1946 to March 1950 he was the first chairman of the central board of IG Textil. From 1947 he was a member of the FDGB federal executive committee, from 1949 a member of the executive FDGB federal executive committee. After leaving the SED, Küchel went back to his Palatinate homeland. From April 1951 to 1965 he was legal secretary at the DGB in Kaiserslautern .

literature

• Detlev Brunner: Social Democrats in the FDGB. From trade union to mass organization from 1945 to the early 1950s . Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2000, ISBN 3-88474-863-7 , passim.
• Andreas Herbst : Küchel, Ludwig. In: Dieter Dowe , Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990). Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-240-6 .

Web links

• SA prison Papestrasse on the page "Smashing of the unions 1933" (with audio file: Ludwig Küchel reports on the prison conditions in the SA prison Papestrasse).