Max Fank

Max Fank (born December 15, 1899 in Stralsund , † March 15, 1978 in Hamburg ) was a German politician ( SPD , SED ).

Life

Max Fank, who had been fishing since he was ten, left elementary school at the age of 14 . In 1921 he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a trade union . After 1922 he worked in various professions and was active as a journalist and speaker for the labor movement. After the National Socialists seized power in 1933, he was dismissed as a worker at the Stralsund State Shipyard ("Kronhof") due to the law to restore the civil service and was banned from working. He had to make a living doing odd jobs. He headed the Stralsund SPD while illegally and was temporarily imprisoned. After his military service he was drafted as a worker at the Stralsund Kröger shipyard .

He belonged to a group that campaigned against the defense of the city of Stralsund against the Red Army .

In June 1945 he was a co-organizer of the newly founded SPD in Pomerania and a member of the party committee. He became party chairman in Stralsund and the Pomerania district. He was skeptical of the union of the SPD with the KPD to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), but became first chairman of the SED district leadership in Stralsund. Because of his public criticism of the persecution of Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania Social Democrats, he was deposed in 1947 and pushed out of the district executive committee. Since then he has been working as head fish master in Stralsund. Fank was chairman of the supervisory board of the consumer cooperative and the Raiffeisen fish recycling cooperative in Stralsund and chairman of the city council.

From October 1946 until his arrest in March 1949 he was a member of the Mecklenburg State Parliament . Max Fank first contacted the East Office of the SPD at the end of 1947 , to which he sent reports on the conditions in Stralsund. He received information leaflets from the West German SPD, which he distributed. After he was denounced, he was arrested on March 19, 1949 and sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp because of his opposition and his contacts with the SPD East Office .

Due to an amnesty , he was released from prison in January 1954 and went to the Federal Republic of Germany , from 1963 he lived in Hamburg . The State Security continued to watch him despite his place of residence in Hamburg and was particularly interested in his correspondence with former Stralsund SPD members.

literature

• Klaus Schwabe: State election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 1946 . State Parliament Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Ed.), Schwerin 1996, p. 79.
• Martin Broszat , Hermann Weber (Ed.): SBZ manual. State administrations, parties, social organizations and their executives in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany 1945-1949. On behalf of the Department of History and Politics of the GDR at the University of Mannheim. 2nd edition 1993, ISBN 978-3-486-55262-1 , p. 896 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature about Max Fank in the state bibliography MV
• M. Michels: Nazis and communists stand up ... In: MV-Schlagzeilen.de. October 21, 2008, accessed April 15, 2009 . 
• Rolf Bartusel: Fank, Max (born 1899). In: MV-DATA The biographical database. Retrieved April 15, 2009 . 
• Persecution as a Political Experience: Hamburg Social Democrats after 1945 (PDF)