Otto Heese

Otto Heese (* 17th March 1891 in Nauen , † 13 June 1968 ibid ) was a German Communist union official and resistance fighters against the Nazis .

Life

Otto Heese attended the six-level boys' primary school and learned the mason trade from 1905 to 1909. After completing his apprenticeship, Heese joined the Central Association of Masons in Germany . At the end of 1909 he moved to Hamburg, where he worked for a short time in his profession. Soon after, Heese went to Baltimore to gain new professional experience . He returned to Germany in 1913.

During the First World War , a court martial in Wilhelmshaven sentenced Heese to two and a half years in prison for refusing to obey. He was released after 13 months in the Cologne naval prison. At the end of October 1918, Heese took part in the uprising of the sailors on the ship " Helgoland " in Wilhelmshaven. He took part in the fighting of the November Revolution in Kiel , Lübeck , Hamburg and Berlin .

After the end of the November Revolution, Heese moved back to Nauen. In March 1919 he became a member of the KPD . Heese was committed to the party and the union in Nauen and in the East and West Havelland districts. Heese was a city councilor for the KPD in Nauen from 1924 to 1933. He was also a member of the Red Front Fighter Association (RFB). From 1928 to 1930 he was the local group leader and 1932/33 political leader of the KPD Nauen. Heese was imprisoned several times for several weeks and months because of his political activities for the KPD and its subsidiary organizations. From 1926 to 1932 he chaired the local committee of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) in Nauen. In addition, Heese was second chairman of the German construction trade association from 1929 to early 1932 . Because of the support of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO) Heese was expelled from the free trade union building trade federation in 1932. Then Heese took over the subdistrict management in the communist union of agricultural and forest workers (EVLF), a small RGO union in East and West Havelland.

After the National Socialists came to power , Heese went into hiding in Berlin-Moabit because of the risk of arrest . Together with the communist Erich Grau he participated in the production and distribution of illegal communist pamphlets. Heese was arrested on May 6, 1933 on the road to Bredow. First he was taken to the Nauen Police Prison. With the help of a "protective custody order", Heese was transferred to the Börnicke concentration camp on May 17, 1933 , which is considered one of the first concentration camps . On July 15, 1933, the Nazi persecutors transferred him to the Oranienburg concentration camp . At times he was obliged to carry out construction work in a subcamp of the concentration camp, the “Rittergutsvorwerk Elisenau”. He was released on July 13, 1934. At the end of October 1934, Heese was again in custody for a few weeks, because the Gestapo suspected Heese of having been involved in setting up illegal communist structures in and around Nauen. During the entire period of National Socialism, Heese was under observation by the Gestapo and other Nazi authorities. Heese was arrested again within the framework of the grate action after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 . He was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on August 20, 1944 , where he was released again soon after, on September 9, 1944.

In February 1945 Heese was drafted into military service by the Wehrmacht and brought to Prague . In April 1945, Heese left the troop. He was captured by the Soviet Army near Görlitz . He was released from captivity at the end of July 1945.

From August 1945 Heese lived again in Nauen. At first he belonged to the re-founded KPD, from 1946 to the SED . From September 1946 to January 1951, Heese took over the mandate of a city councilor and unpaid city council in Nauen. At the same time, Heese was a member of the Brandenburg State Parliament in 1946/47, a member of the SED local leadership from 1948 to 1950 and, from the beginning of 1951, a member of the SED municipal district leadership. From August 1945 to August 1948, Heese was also the full-time chairman of the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) in Osthavelland. Heese was also a member of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN), for which he took on the honorary role of second district chairman from 1949 to 1950. Heese also worked temporarily as a lay judge at the Nauen District Court .

Honors

In his birthplace Nauen, a street was named after Otto Heese.

literature

• Stefan Heinz : Heese, Otto (1891–1968), in: Siegfried Mielke (Ed.): Trade unionists in the Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. Biographisches Handbuch, Vol. 3, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89468-280-9 , pp. 356-362.
• Astrid Ley / Günter Morsch (eds.): Medicine and crime. The sick bay of Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936–1945, Berlin: Metropol 2007 (= series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, vol. 21), ISBN 978-3-93869-012-3