Martin Loewenberg

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Martin Löwenberg at an anti-fascist rally in Munich
Martin Löwenberg on the occasion of his 80th birthday

Martin Löwenberg (born May 12, 1925 in Breslau ; died April 2, 2018 in Munich ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism and, according to his own statements, was persecuted by the Nazi regime and a concentration camp prisoner and thus subjected to forced labor . However, there is no scientific evidence for his incarceration in concentration camps.

Löwenberg was a founding member of the local association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (VVN) and the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) in the Soviet zone of occupation . Löwenberg reported in numerous eyewitness conversations at schools and at events.

Life

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Martin Löwenberg was born in 1925 to social democratic parents in Breslau; the father was a Jew.

As a youth boxer, Martin Löwenberg trained in the Breslau Post Sports Club Stephan . Together with his friends, he fought against the increasing repression and persecution of maladjusted young people. Later he worked with his older brother Ferdinand in an organized resistance network and supported Eastern European forced laborers with bread stamps and information about the course of the war.

In 1939 Löwenberg had to break off his agricultural apprenticeship due to the Nazi race laws . A subsequent apprenticeship as a saddler he completed in 1942 with the journeyman's examination. In May 1944 he was arrested in his own words and was first incarcerated in the concentration camp Flossenburg in northern Bavaria, later to Thil in occupied Lorraine and in the concentration camp Litomerice , satellite camp of Flossenburg . On May 7, 1945 he was liberated by the Red Army .

Then Löwenberg went to Weißenfels in the Soviet zone of occupation and became a founding member of the local association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (VVN) and the local Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB).

Löwenberg later moved to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he was convicted of his involvement in the Social Democratic Action (SDA), an internal party opposition controlled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a cover organization of the banned KPD . Löwenberg was in solitary confinement for 16 months.

In 1952, Löwenberg brought news of her son's death to Philipp Müller's mother , who had been shot by a police officer during a peace demonstration in Essen .

Even after his release, Löwenberg remained politically active. For many years he was the chairman of the works council in an industrial group as well as the chairman of the wholesale and retail trade group and a member of the large collective bargaining commission of the trade union trade, banks and insurance companies (HBV).

In the eighties Löwenberg joined the Alliance 90 / The Greens and was a member of the state working group against legal developments and neo-fascism. Löwenberg wanted to bring the supporters of the labor movement together with the ecological movement. In the 1990s he resigned from the Greens on the grounds that he was no longer “the left fig leaf of a party that was slipping to the right”.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Martin Löwenberg co-founded the “Munich Alliance against War and Racism”, which has existed since June 2005 and was called “ left-wing extremist influenced” by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution , in which he bundled anti-Nazi and anti-racist forces for joint action. At the Bavarian state level and for the Munich district, Martin Löwenberg worked for many years on the board of the VVN-BdA .

Martin Löwenberg was committed to the broadest possible social alliances against neo-fascism. He turned against the marginalization of “bourgeois forces” operated by the radical left as well as against the exclusion of “autonomous people” by bourgeois forces.

In November 2002, the 77-year-old Löwenberg was convicted by the Munich District Court for calling for resistance to a neo-Nazi march . Thousands of people in Munich tried to block a neo-Nazi elevator on November 30, 2002. Christian Ude , Lord Mayor of Munich, said at the time: "Getting in the way is a good thing".

Löwenberg, whose Jewish relatives were mostly murdered in extermination camps, shouted at the anti-fascist rally on Munich's Odeonsplatz “it is legitimate, yes, legal to oppose democracy against the gravediggers” and was then charged. The verdict sparked a storm of protest. The Süddeutsche Zeitung headlined: "Ex-concentration camp inmate sentenced for Nazi protest". Dieter Hildebrandt addressed the judgment in his last windshield wiper .

On December 12, 2004 in Berlin, together with Esther Béjarano , Percy MacLean and Peter Gingold, he was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal by the Berlin International League for Human Rights .

Martin Löwenberg and his wife Josefine had a daughter, Jutta Koller (* 1956).

Honors

Movie

  • It can be legitimate what is not legal. Martin Löwenberg - A life against fascism, oppression and war . Documentary by Petra Gerschner and Michael Backmund, editing: Katrin Gebhardt-Seele, soundtrack: Konstantin Wecker .

literature

  • Daniela Fuchs-Frotscher: Between anti-fascist resistance and loss of homeland - the Löwenberg family from Breslau in Cornelia Domaschke, Daniela Fuchs-Frotscher, Günter Wehner (eds.): Resistance and loss of home , Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, 2012, ISBN 978-3-320- 02278-5 , p. 11 ( Online , PDF; 1.9 MB)

Other sources

  • Speech by Martin Löwenberg at the final rally "Against Nazi Terror, Racism and Anti-Semitism!" On Munich's Marienplatz
  • Audio recording of the event "60 Years of Unruly Resistance - Martin Löwenberg and the History of the Political Opposition in Bavaria" [6. June 2005]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holocaust survivor Martin Löwenberg is dead
  2. ↑ Obituary in Neues Deutschland, No. 87 from 14./15. April 2018, p. 6
  3. ↑ http://www.verwaltung.bayern.de/Anlage2988706/VerfassungsschutzberichtBayern2007.pdf (p. 178)
  4. ↑ Alexander Krug: Ex-concentration camp inmate convicted of Nazi protest. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 11, 2010.
  5. ^ Website for the film
  6. ^ Report of the VVN-BdA on the film ( Memento from February 17, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Löwenberg, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anti-fascist and trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH 2nd April 2018
Place of death Munich