Max Gohl

Max Gohl (born April 18, 1886 in Rixdorf (near Berlin ), † January 28, 1951 in East Berlin ) was a German communist union official and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Life

Gohl grew up in Rixdorf and attended the community school in Berlin-Neukölln for eight years . He then completed four years of training as a metal pusher . From 1906 to 1908 Gohl had to do his military service. He then worked as a metal handle in various factories in Berlin until 1914. In 1905 he had already joined the German Metal Workers' Association (DMV). At the turn of 1910/11 he became a member of the SPD .

During the First World War , Gohl was buried in France, which is why he was released from military service in early 1917. He went back to Berlin and was now employed as a lathe operator at the Goerz company . In this company he also became a union shop steward. In 1917 Gohl joined the USPD . From the beginning of 1918 Gohl belonged to the industry committee of the iron turner in the Berlin DMV, where the revolutionary chairmen concentrated at that time . Gohl soon also belonged to this group. In early 1918 he played a key role in organizing strikes against the war in Berlin. During the November Revolution , Gohl belonged to the group of activists from the ranks of the Revolutionary Obleute , who significantly organized the overthrow in Berlin in November 1918. Gohl later stated that it was he who led the “huge demonstration from [the company] Goerz and subsequent companies from Tempelhof via Neukölln, Treptow to the Reichstag” on November 9, 1918, and in the afternoon “handed the red flag to the Goddess of victory on the Brandenburg Gate ”.

With the left wing of the USPD , Gohl joined the KPD at the end of 1920 . In the KPD he took on a number of functions, including from 1924 a member of the party's district leadership in Berlin-Brandenburg. At the same time, Gohl was from 1924 secretary for trade union issues at the district level. He lost his full-time job for the Berlin DMV as early as 1923 due to his political commitment to the KPD, but until the end of 1928 Gohl was a volunteer member of the Berlin DMV industry commission for lathe operators. Gohl also lost this function, since he supported the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO) from 1928 and was therefore excluded from the DMV. In the RGO, Gohl took on functions at the regional level.

Between 1929 and 1932, Gohl was politically more in the background, as he was threatened with arrest for several political offenses. According to his own statements, the regional KPD leadership had advised him to exercise restraint. He became editor of the information service " Inprekorr ". In this context he was sentenced by a criminal court in 1932 as a "convict" for "literary treason and high treason" to nine months imprisonment.

At the beginning of 1933 - after his release from prison and the beginning of National Socialism - Gohl went underground. Although the KPD leadership had forbidden him from any involvement in the banned unit association of metal workers in Berlin (EVMB), he tried with Ewald Degen to rebuild the EVMB, which had been weakened by the persecution. From January to April 1934 he and Ewald Degen took over the top management of the association's illegal groups. At the same time he was involved in the production and distribution of numerous illegal newspapers and leaflets.

Max Gohl was arrested together with Ewald Degen and Marie Juhre on March 23, 1935 in Berlin-Friedrichshain while handing over illegal material. In July 1935, the Berlin Court of Appeal sentenced him to eight years in prison for “preparing for high treason”. He served his term in prison in Brandenburg-Görden . After serving his regular prison sentence, Gohl was placed in protective custody in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Gohl spent a total of ten years in prison during the Nazi regime.

After the end of the Second World War , Gohl lived in Berlin-Zehlendorf . He took part in the rebuilding of trade union politics in Berlin. Gohl joined the KPD in 1945 . From 1946 onwards he belonged to the SED and in West Berlin he fought violently with social democratic trade unionists. From 1948 Gohl worked for the state trade organization of the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ). He continued to live in West Berlin, but died in a hospital in East Berlin .

Literature / sources

• Stefan Heinz , Siegfried Mielke (ed.): Functionaries of the unified association of metal workers in Berlin in the Nazi state. Resistance and persecution (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - resistance - emigration. Volume 2). Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-062-2 , pp. 34, 45-46, 92, 94, 141-144 (short biography).
• Stefan Heinz : Moscow's mercenaries? "The Union of Metal Workers in Berlin": Development and failure of a communist union. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89965-406-6 , pp. 333 ff., 359, 368 ff., 370 ff., 380 ff., 399, 415, 461, 470 f., 528.
• Stefan Heinz: "Red Association" and resistance group. Der Einheitsverband der Metallarbeiters Berlins (1930–1935) , In: information - Scientific journal of the study group German Resistance 1933–1945, 42nd year (2017), No. 85, pp. 10–15.
• Landesarchiv Berlin , inventory C Rep. 118-01, no. 3192 (documents in connection with the recognition of Max Gohl as a “victim of fascism”).

Web links

• Hermann Weber and Andreas Herbst : Short biography from the Handbook of German Communists, online edition

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Max Gohl, self-written curriculum vitae, quoted from: Stefan Heinz: Moskaus Söldner? The “Unified Association of Metal Workers in Berlin”: Development and failure of a communist union . Hamburg 2010, p. 383.