Martin Weise (resistance fighter)
Martin Weise (born May 12, 1903 in Torgau ; † November 15, 1943 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison ) was a German politician ( KPD ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism ( Rote Kapelle ).
Life
Weise, son of a teacher, grew up in Berlin and was initially active in the Wandervogel movement. In 1921 he joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany and in 1927 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Weise began to study history and philosophy in 1922 . However, he had to break off his studies in 1924 for financial reasons. Before he became unemployed in 1928, Weise worked for an insurance company for several years. From 1929 to 1933 he was a district councilor for the KPD in Berlin-Neukölln . From 1930 he wrote articles for the central organ of the KPD, Die Rote Fahne . Weise was one of the editors who illegally continued to publish this newspaper even after the National Socialists "came to power " in 1933. In 1933/34 he headed the Reich Committee of the Unemployed in Berlin.
1934, it has been arrested and to three years ' imprisonment convicted, he in the detention center Brandenburg spent. Here he learned that his fiancée Frieda Seidlitz , who had worked as a courier for the KPD, had succumbed to the abuse of the Gestapo while in custody. After his release from prison in 1937, he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . After his release from the concentration camp in April 1939, Weise again contacted his friends, including Wilhelm Guddorf . Weise and Guddorf established connections with the Hamburg communists Bernhard Bästlein and Robert Abshagen and worked on the pamphlet Organized the Revolutionary Mass Struggle . Together with John Sieg , Fritz Lange and Walter Husemann , Weise regularly distributed the underground magazine The Inner Front in Berlin from the end of 1941 , which contained appeals, information about the general situation and references to the broadcasting frequencies of the Moscow radio .
Weise was arrested in December 1942, sentenced by the People's Court in October 1943 , and executed on November 15, 1943.
Honors
- During the GDR era , a polytechnic high school in Berlin was named after Martin Weise.
- In September 1998 a memorial plaque was put up at Jonasstrasse 42 in Berlin-Neukölln, commemorating Martin Weise.
literature
- Luise Kraushaar (Ed.): German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters . Volume 2. Dietz, Berlin 1970, pp. 412-415.
- Peter Steinbach , Johannes Tuchel (ed.): Lexicon of Resistance 1933–1945 . CH Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 215-216.
- Way, Martin . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
Individual evidence
Web links
- The inner front (pamphlet no.15 from August 1942) (PDF file; 2.17 MB)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Way, Martin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German politicians and resistance fighters against National Socialism (Rote Kapelle) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 12, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Torgau |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 15, 1943 |
| Place of death | Brandenburg |