Otto Brass

Otto Brass , partly also Braß , (born December 21, 1875 in Wermelskirchen , † November 13, 1950 in Masserberg ) was a German socialist politician. He participated in the resistance against National Socialism .

Life

After attending primary school in Wermelskirchen , Brass completed an apprenticeship as a file cutter there from 1889 to 1892. In 1897 he passed the master's examination in this craft. From 1903 to 1905 he was a health insurance officer. From 1905 to 1917 he was the publisher and manager of the Remscheider Arbeiterzeitung , which was later renamed the Bergische Volksstimme .

Brass has been involved in the German Metalworkers' Association since 1893 and was chairman of the Lower Rhine district there. Since 1895 he belonged to the SPD .

When the social democracy split due to the differences over the war credits to finance the First World War , he participated in the founding of the USPD in 1917 , of which he was a member of the central committee. During the November Revolution he was elected chairman of the Remscheid workers 'and soldiers' council. He also represented this at the 1st Reich Congress of Workers 'and Soldiers' Councils in December 1918 in Berlin . In January 1919 he was elected to the Weimar National Assembly. From 1920 to May 1924 he represented constituency 25 ( Düsseldorf -East) in the Reichstag .

In 1920 he founded the “Zentralvertrieb Zeitgeschichtlicher Bücher GmbH” and acquired the “Laub'sche Verlagbuchhandlung”. When the USPD majority united with the KPD to form the VKPD at the end of 1920 , he initially went along this path and was elected to the VKPD secretariat at the unification party congress in Berlin in December 1920, from which, however, he was already criticized on February 22, 1921 on the “offensive theory” of the party majority together with the two party leaders Paul Levi and Ernst Däumig as well as Clara Zetkin resigned. Under the charge of "reformism" he was expelled from the KPD together with Adolph Hoffmann in January 1922 , joined the short-lived Communist Working Group (KAG) and in the spring of 1922 switched back to the independent part of the USPD with which he worked September came back to the SPD.

After the National Socialists came to power , he was briefly imprisoned in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp . He founded the German Popular Front resistance group with Hermann Brill in Berlin in 1934 and worked with him to draft a “ten-point program” for this group. After he was arrested again in 1938, the People's Court sentenced him to twelve years in prison in 1939, for which he was sent to the Brandenburg prison .

After 1945 Brass took part in the reconstruction of the German trade unions and was a member of the “preparatory trade union committee for Greater Berlin”, which on June 15, 1945 published a call for the re-establishment of free trade unions. From 1946 to 1950 he was a member of the federal executive committee of the FDGB . Brass also took part in the re-establishment of the KPD and came to the SED through the compulsory merger of the SPD and KPD in 1946 .

literature

• Gerlinde Lorenz: "Leitstern" socialism. The political biography of Remscheid workers' leader Otto Braß (1875–1950) and his son Otto (1900–1972) . Klartext, Essen 2010. ISBN 978-3-8375-0412-5 .
• Brass, Otto . In: 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 .

Web links

• Otto Brass in the database of members of the Reichstag