Otto Kuehne

This article deals with the KPD functionary. For the Air Force Lieutenant General of the same name, see Otto Kühne (General) .

Otto Kühne (pseudonym Friedrich Kuhlmann ; born May 12, 1893 in Berlin , † December 8, 1955 in Brandenburg an der Havel ) was a German politician, union official and resistance fighter. He was a member of the central committee of the KPD , interbrigadist during the Spanish Civil War , commander ( lieutenant colonel ) in the French resistance movement Résistance , head of the main traffic administration in the German economic commission and mayor of Brandenburg / Havel .

Training and union official

As the son of a worker, he learned the trade of machine worker, in which he worked until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. He had already joined the union in 1912. During the First World War he served actively in the army until 1916 and was then - detached - employed in a railway company. As a member of the USPD , which he had joined in 1919, he moved with the left wing of the party to the KPD in late 1920 .

After his discharge from military service in 1918, he took a position in the Pankow depot until 1925 . From 1922 he took on a full-time position at a communist union that had split off from the free - trade union German Railway Workers 'Association and called itself Free Railway Workers ' Association . As chairman, Kühne headed the general works council of the Reichsbahn in Berlin. In the Reich Ministry of Transport , he was a member of the main works council. Since 1925 he was a member of the district leadership of the KPD in Berlin and was elected as a candidate for the KPD Central Committee at the Xth Party Congress of the KPD.

Trade Union Question, Comintern and Emigration

Kühne took a vacillating position on the question of the independence and unity of the trade unions. First he advocated participation in the free trade unions , then he joined the “left” around Ruth Fischer (1895–1961), who in 1924/25 propagated the split between the unions and the founding of “red associations”. In October 1925 he was sent to the Comintern in Moscow for the KPD. When he returned in 1927, he had his post in the Central Committee on the XI. Party congress in Essen lost because he was no longer nominated. From 1931 to 1933 he worked as secretary of the Reichstag faction of the KPD.

He was arrested on February 28, 1933 as part of the persecution following the fire in the Reichstag . As a result of a mistake by the authorities, he was released on March 13, 1933 and went into hiding under the pseudonym Friedrich Kuhlmann . In July 1933 he managed to escape to Denmark. From there he traveled to Norway, where he took over the management of the German refugees who had to leave Germany after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933.

International Brigades, Resistance and Resistance Struggle

After his emigration he traveled several times to various European countries. In England he appeared as a witness in an investigation into the Reichstag fire. From May 1937 to August 1938 he fought in the ranks of the XI during the Spanish Civil War . International Brigade , where he last performed the duties of a Brigade Commissar. In December 1938 he fled to Paris and was later interned in La Rochelle .

In connection with the outbreak of the Second World War , Otto Kühne was interned in the Libourne camp; In 1940 he managed to escape to Marseille . There he joined the Resistance at the end of 1942 . Together with others, he built up the resistance movement against the Nazi-German occupation in the Massif Central in 1943/44 . He also took over the management of the Interregion Nîmes of the MOI (“Mouvement Ouvriers International”). Otto Kühne commanded a group of 2,700 fighters with whom he participated in the liberation of the departments of Gard , Ardèche and Lozère . In June 1943 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel.

Functions in the Soviet Zone / GDR and recall

In Marseille he headed the German section of the Communist Party in Provence from October 1944 . He returned to Germany in May 1945 to set up the Communist Party in the Trier and Koblenz areas. He came to Berlin in July 1945 to take on the position of Vice President of the German Central Administration (DZW) for transport. In the German Economic Commission (DWK) he worked as head of the main administration for transport.

In the course of the political reviews he was relieved of his duties in 1949, as his high position in the Resistance was obviously seen as a political burden. However, these obstacles soon no longer arose when he was appointed Lord Mayor of Brandenburg an der Havel in December 1949 .

After the popular uprising in June 1953 , Otto Kühne had to resign as mayor because, in the opinion of the SED, he had not been resolute enough against the demonstrators. He was accused of capitulating behavior and received a severe reprimand .

tomb

After his death in 1955, he was within the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde on the memorial cemetery of the memorial of the socialists on Pergolenweg buried.

literature

• Gottfried Hamacher, with the collaboration of André Lohmar, Gegen Hitler - Germans in the Résistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement: short biographies , Berlin, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Volume 53, ISBN 3-320-02941- X ( PDF )
• Kühne, Otto . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) . Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 308, 557 f. (Short biography).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography of Otto Kühne, alias Colonel Robert , as a fighter of the Resistance; with photo french.
2. ↑ Événements Otto Kühne ( Memento of the original dated February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. french 
3. ^ Grave site in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery