Oskar Fichter

Oskar Andreas Fichter (born January 30, 1898 in Furtwangen , † January 18, 1943 in Cologne ) was a German political functionary ( KPD ).

Life and activity

Fichter was a trained lithographer. From 1917 he took part in the First World War as a conscript . Around 1920 he came to Essen, where he first worked as a laborer at the Rheinische Elektrizitätswerke and then as a miner for three years. This was followed by a brief activity in his learned profession before he became unemployed.

In 1927 Fichter became a member of the Red Front Fighters League and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). At the end of 1931 he became an employee in the anti-militarist apparatus (AM apparatus) of the KPD's district leadership in the Ruhr area.

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Fichter worked in the communist underground, in particular for the BB department of the KPD. So he succeeded in procuring blueprints from the Krupp company and handing them over to representatives of the BB apparatus.

At the end of 1933, Fichter was taken into protective custody in Essen for a few weeks . In June 1934 he emigrated to the Netherlands, where he became political leader of the communist emigrants in Antwerp under the code name Claas .

At the beginning of 1936 Fichter went to Brussels , in May 1943 he settled in Verviers . To avoid expulsion, he went to Paris , where he worked for the Red Aid . He then went back to Brussels.

After his emigration, the National Socialist police authorities classified Fichter as an enemy of the state: in the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin - which mistakenly suspected him to be in Great Britain - put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who would be killed in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles should be located and arrested by the Wehrmacht from the occupation troops following special commandos of the SS with special priority.

After the German occupation of Belgium, Fichter was arrested. On August 8, 1942, the People's Court in Berlin found him guilty of preparing for high treason and sentenced him to death. The execution was carried out on January 18 in Cologne. The execution was announced by the Essen national newspaper and other organs in Germany and then - since Fichter was thought to be a Dutchman - also taken up in periodicals of the foreign press such as De Varende Hollander .

literature

• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).