Otto Gehre

Otto Gehre (born April 26, 1894 in Dessau , Duchy of Anhalt ; † June 17, 1976 in Halle (Saale) , Halle district ) was a German former, party functionary of the SPD or SED and persecuted by the Nazi regime .

Life

Gehre was born the son of a wallpaper printer and a housewife. After attending elementary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a moulder, which he finished in 1912. In 1908 he joined the Socialist Workers 'Youth and in 1909 the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV), for which he took on a number of functions in the Weimar Republic. In 1912 Gehre joined the SPD. During the First World War he served as a soldier from 1914 to 1918.

On his return he attended the Dessau Mechanical Engineering School from 1923 to 1925. He then took up a job as an engine driver and later as a tool manager at the Junkers engine works in Dessau. In addition to his job, he was politically active as a member of the sub-district executive committee of the SPD in Magdeburg and Anhalt and chairman of the labor sports cartel in the state of Anhalt. In addition, Otto Gehre was involved as a functionary in the Dessau local administration of the German Metalworkers' Association .

In 1933 he was dismissed as a result of Hitler's seizure of power due to his membership of the SPD and the DMV. Because of his illegal union work for the DMV, which had been banned since May 2, 1933, Gehres was arrested on January 12, 1936. He came into custody in Chemnitz , Leipzig and Berlin-Moabit . On October 6, 1937, the People's Court sentenced him to two years in prison for illegal work for the DMV , which he served in the Coswig / Anhalt prison. After serving his regular prison sentence, Gehre was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp . There he was registered under inmate number 2658. In November 1940 he was released from the concentration camp.

In 1941 Otto Gehre took up a position as a material manager at the Junkers factories in Dessau, where he was already working before the outbreak of the Second World War. He worked there until the end of the war.

After the war he worked as a department head and later as social director at Junkers & Co. In July 1945 he was involved in the founding of the SPD in Dessau, which in April 1946, with the participation of Otto Gehre, was forcibly united with the KPD to form the SED . Gehre was a delegate at the unification party conference in Berlin. From 1948 to 1949 he was plant manager of the "National Radiators" plant in Schönebeck (Elbe) . In 1946 Otto Gehre became a member of the state executive committee of Saxony-Anhalt in the SED .

In October 1946 Otto Gehre was elected to the Dessau city council and as chairman of the SED parliamentary group . From December 4, 1949 to July 1952, he was the 2nd state secretary of the SED in Saxony-Anhalt. In this role he succeeded Werner Bruschke . From 1950 to 1952 Otto Gehre was a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt and at times chairman of the SED parliamentary group. After the dissolution of the state parliaments and the formation of the districts, he was a member of the Halle district assembly from 1952 to 1954 . After a course at the Administration Academy in Forst Zinna in 1951 and the administrative reform in the GDR in the summer of 1952, he became the main department head for material supply in the state administration of the state reserve at the GDR Council of Ministers . In 1953 Otto Gehre took up a position as deputy chairman of the state contract court in the Halle district.

In 1956, Gehre suffered a nervous breakdown . After his recovery he headed a department at VEB Baumechanik Halle-Ost from 1957 .

In 1960 he ended his activities due to invalidity . Gehre died at the age of 82 and was buried in the Südfriedhof (Halle) .

Awards

• 1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and 1969 in gold
• 1974 Gold medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit

literature

• Wolfgang Röll : Social Democrats in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 . Wallstein Verlag, Dessau 1993, ISBN 3-89244-417-X .
• 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. 213 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
• Andreas Herbst , Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, Jürgen Winkler (eds.): The SED. History organization politics. A manual . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-320-01951-1 , p. 950.
• Mario Niemann , Andreas Herbst (ed.): SED-Kader: The middle level . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76977-0 , pp. 198f.
• Philipp Matern: Otto Gehre (1894–1976). In: Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the assistance of Marion Goers: Functionaries of the German Metal Workers' Association in the Nazi state. Resistance and persecution (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - resistance - emigration. Volume 1). Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-059-2 , pp. 243-249.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Sachsen-Anhalt-Wiki ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ ^{A b} Frank Hirschinger: "Gestapo agents, Trotskyists, traitors": Communist party purges in Saxony-Anhalt . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-36903-4 , pp. 246 ff .
3. ↑ Wolfgang Röll: Social Democrats in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 . Wallstein Verlag, Dessau 1993, ISBN 3-89244-417-X , pp. 284-285.
4. ↑ Otto Gehre's tombstone at www.findagrave.com (accessed on July 11, 2018).

See also

• List of members of the State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt (1946–1952, 2nd electoral period)