Otto Buchwitz

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Otto Buchwitz (1947)
1958, aged 78, with young people in Dippoldiswalde

Otto Buchwitz (born April 27, 1879 in Breslau ; † July 9, 1964 in Dresden ) was a German politician ( SPD / SED ).

Early years

After attending primary school from 1885 to 1893, Otto Buchwitz completed an apprenticeship as a metal handle and iron turner by 1896 . He joined the metal workers' union in 1896 and became a member of the SPD in 1898. Until 1907 Buchwitz worked in the profession he had learned, but also as a weaver. From 1908 he worked as secretary of the German Textile Workers' Association for the Chemnitz rural area. Drafted for military service in 1914, he was deployed in East Prussia at the end of the war . He then became deputy district administrator for the Görlitz district in 1919 . In addition, Buchwitz was elected Political Secretary of the Lower Silesia SPD District Association in 1920. Since the beginning of the Weimar Republic he was a member of the Silesian Provincial Parliament . In addition, he was for the SPD from 1921 to 1924 as a member of the Prussian state parliament and from 1924 to 1933 representative of the constituency of Liegnitz in the Reichstag .

During the Second World War

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists Buchwitz agreed with the other SPD members of the Reichstag against the Enabling Act and then went into exile to Denmark . From there he organized the flight of German opponents of the regime to Sweden and wrote for the anti-fascist weekly newspaper Free Germany , which appeared in Brussels . After the occupation of Denmark in 1940 he was arrested in April and handed over to the Gestapo in July . In July 1941, he was eight years prison sentenced.

Until the end of the war he was imprisoned in Brandenburg prison. There the illegal communist leadership contacted him. The procedure up to and after the end of Nazi rule was discussed together. On April 27, 1945, the prison director Thümmler and most of the guards fled from the approaching Red Army . The political prisoners disarmed the remaining sergeants and took over the management of the prison. A military formation occupied the gate. The first Soviet tank reached the prison around 2 p.m. On April 28, around 100 former political figures moved to Berlin via Bagow and Nauen . Otto Buchwitz was so weak that he had to be transported in a handcart.

post war period

Grave of Otto Buchwitz in the Heidefriedhof in Dresden

After 1945, Buchwitz actively participated in the unification of the SPD and KPD , although he was not necessarily a friend of the KPD before the war . His worst adversary in Saxony was Stanislaw Trabalski , whom he called Krawalski . He then took over the state chairmanship of the Saxon SED from April 1946 to December 1948 together with Wilhelm Koenen . From April 1946 to July 1964 he was a member of the party executive committee and the Central Committee of the SED . On November 29, 1948, he was elected alongside Hermann Matern as chairman of the Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK) of the SED. He exercised this function until III. Party congress in July 1950. He was then a simple member of the ZPKK until his death. Buchwitz belonged to the Saxon state parliament from 1946 until its dissolution in 1952. During this time he was also President of the Landtag and received a seat in the People's Chamber of the GDR , which met from 1950. Buchwitz had been the Age President of the People's Chamber since 1950 . He tried in vain to appease the uprising on June 17, 1953 . In 1953 he retired from full-time employment for health reasons. In 1957 Buchwitz was made an honorary senator of the Dresden University of Technology , and on April 27, 1963 he became an honorary citizen of Dresden. He died on July 9, 1964 in Dresden, his grave is in the local Heath cemetery .

Honors

After his death, several streets, schools and other public facilities in the GDR, such as a street in East Berlin and a youth hostel in Altenberg, were named after Otto Buchwitz, but most of them were renamed again after the reunification of Germany. Currently there are Otto-Buchwitz-Strasse in Oderwitz , Bernsdorf (Oberlausitz) and Mülsen , Otto-Buchwitz-Platz in Görlitz and Otto-Buchwitz-Ring in Neukirch / Lausitz .

Works

literature

  • Our honorary president. For the 85th birthday of the honorary president of the German Red Cross in the German Democratic Republic. Editor: Gottfried Herold . German Red Cross, Dresden 1964.
  • G. Roßmann: Buchwitz, Otto. In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag 1970, pp. 68-71.
  • Ruth Seydewitz : Fighters loyal to the class. From the life of Otto Buchwitz. Berlin 1968.
  • Aspects of the history of the Saxon state parliament, presidents and members of parliament from 1833 to 1952. Saxon state parliament, 2001, p. 163/164.
  • Meyer's New Lexicon in eight volumes. VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1963, Volume 2, p. 111.
  • Fritz Zimmermann: Otto Buchwitz. A picture of life. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1984.
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Walter Böhme, Edith Reichardt: Otto Buchwitz, April 27, 1879 - July 9, 1964. Honorary citizen since: April 27, 1963. Auruspress, Dresden 2008, pp. 36–46 (Dresden's honorary citizen from 1945–2007).
  • Ditmar Staffelt : The reconstruction of the Berlin social democracy in 1945/46 and the question of unity - a contribution to the post-war history of the lower and middle organizational structures of the SPD. Verlag Peter Lang 1986, ISBN 978-3-8204-9176-0 , page 428.
  • Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990. Volume 1: Abendroth - Lyr. KG Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11176-2 , p. 94.
  • Mario Niemann , Andreas Herbst (Ed.): SED-Kader The middle level. Biographical Lexicon 1946 to 1989. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76977-0 , pp. 139ff.
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Buchwitz, Otto . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Otto Buchwitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Germany , November 30, 1948, p. 2.
  2. ^ List of honorary citizens of the city of Dresden, PDF file , accessed on December 2, 2013
  3. ^ Association of the German Red Cross Museums (ed.): 150 Years of the Red Cross - 150 Museum Objects, Berlin 2013, p. 47
  4. ↑ Granting of the honorary name "Otto Buchwitz" to the 1st combat group battalion (mot.) Of the city of Dresden. Protocol No. 106/73 of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED, circulation on September 27, 1973. The Federal Archives, accessed on October 1, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Buchwitz, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politicians (SPD, SED), MdR, MdV
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1964
Place of death Dresden