Otto Franke (politician)

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Otto Franke (born September 15, 1877 in Rixdorf , † December 12, 1953 in East Berlin ) was a German politician .

Life

Otto Franke completed an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering from 1891 to 1894 after attending elementary school. Parallel to his apprenticeship, he attended Sunday and evening courses. During his apprenticeship, Franke joined the SPD and the German Metalworkers' Association in 1892 . In 1898 he was one of the founders of the German Transport Workers' Association . Between 1901 and 1907 Franke was the Berlin district manager of this association, where he was employed from 1907. After the outbreak of the First World War , he became a staunch opponent of the so-called castle peace policy and inevitably came into contact with members of the Spartacus group .

Together with Karl Liebknecht, Franke organized the great anti-war demonstration on May 1, 1916 on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Thereupon arrested in June 1916, after five months in prison in Berlin-Moabit, he was sent to the Eastern Front. At his place of work in Baranavichy , Franke immediately campaigned for the formation of soldiers' councils. In autumn 1917 he deserted and made his way to Berlin, where he initially lived illegally. In January 1918 Franke helped organize the strike of the Berlin armaments workers and built up the transport and courier service of the Spartakus group. From October 1918 until his death he was Karl Liebknecht's closest colleague and a member of the Berlin Workers 'and Soldiers' Council . Franke took part in the founding party congress of the KPD and was appointed senior secretary of the first KPD district leadership in Berlin. He played a key role in building the Berlin KPD organization. In 1921 Franke was delegated to Saxony , where he took over the management of the KPD district of Eastern Saxony. In August 1923 he moved to Moscow and represented the information department for Germany at the EKKI . In May 1924 he returned to Berlin, where he was arrested shortly afterwards. However, Franke managed to escape to the Soviet Union in October 1925. As part of the Hindenburg amnesty of 1928, he was able to return to Germany. Franke was entrusted with the management of the central library and the archive of the Central Committee of the KPD. At the beginning of 1933 he was one of the co-organizers of the ZK conference in the sports store Ziegenhals . In July 1933 Franke was arrested and imprisoned in the Oranienburg , Sonnenburg and Lichtenburg concentration camps. Released from this in October 1936, he found work in motorway construction. Arrested again in November 1937, Franke emigrated to Prague after his release in January 1938. There he was used for management training. After the invasion of German troops in March 1939, Franke had to emigrate again, and now he ended up in London. Interned in June 1940 as an "enemy foreigner" , Franke was released in March 1941 due to illness.

tomb

Franke did not return to Berlin until September 14, 1946. He became a member of the SED and got a job at the Karl Marx party college in Liebenwalde . As a veteran of the labor movement, Franke was one of the first to receive the Karl Marx Order shortly before his death . His urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

Honors

literature

  • Editorial collective: History of the German labor movement Biographisches Lexikon . Berlin 1970.
  • Jakob Weber: The Unbending - Memories of Otto Franke Verlag Tribüne Berlin 1st edition 1978 148 (2) pages
  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , p. 262 ( online ).
  • Jürgen Stroech: Otto Franke - worker functionary and librarian, in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Workers' Movement , Volume III / 2004.
  • Arno Gräf: Friends of Otto Frankes, in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement , Volume III / 2004.
  • Arnd Groß, Franke, Otto (1877–1953), in: Siegfried Mielke (Ed.): Trade unionists in the Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. Biographisches Handbuch, Vol. 1, Berlin 2002, p. 151 f. (Short biography).
  • Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz (Hrsg.): Emigrated metal trade unionists in the fight against the Nazi regime (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration, Vol. 3). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-210-7 , p. 819 f. (Short biography).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Franke, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Rixdorf
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1953
Place of death East Berlin