Otto Kleine

Otto Kleine (born November 16, 1898 in Apolda ; † November 7, 1968 there ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Kleine came from a working-class family : his father Otto was a label maker, and his mother Klara was a homeworker . After attending elementary school, he learned the trade of knitter from master knitter Burkhard Schäfer. In 1916 he acquired his journeyman's certificate . At the age of 15 he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ). In 1921 he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

Floral studies from a small sketchbook

After the seizure of power of the NSDAP , he continued his anti-fascist activities of continuing illegal. Together with his friend Willi Brümmer, he made contact with the illegal leadership of the KPD, taking advantage of family ties to Asch in Bohemia, and smuggled anti-fascist propaganda material to undercover addresses in Jena , Weimar , Eisenberg and Naumburg . After the Gestapo had uncovered these activities, he and his friend Brümmer on 19 June 1936 in custody and taken to the Apoldaer district court prison spent. His friend committed suicide in prison after suffering abuse. In a high treason trial on July 31, 1936, Kleine was sentenced to 14 years in prison together with other resistance activists, which he initially had to spend in solitary confinement in the “ Red Ox ” in Halle . In his cell he occupied himself with biological studies, during which numerous floral sketch sheets were created. After three years he was employed in a tailor's shop and had to make uniforms . When the end of Nazi rule approached in the spring of 1945, he and fellow prisoners were loaded onto an evacuation transport together with concentration camp prisoners from Buchenwald . This rail transport in the direction of Theresienstadt , who in open Loren was carried out, did not survive hundreds of prisoners. With the approach of Allied troops and the escape of the guards, Kleine was liberated thanks to fortunate circumstances.

After the liberation from National Socialism , Otto Kleine went to Gera , where he helped set up the German People's Police (DVP). After his wedding in 1955, he and his wife Anneliese moved into their parents' house in Apolda. Politically organized in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), he was henceforth active in training young people's police officers and in the penal system . For health reasons he resigned from the service of the DVP in 1957 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Now he worked on a voluntary basis in the party control commission of the Apolda district and in the Society for German-Soviet Friendship (GDSF).

Honors

• 1959 medal for fighters against fascism
• In 1968 after the death of Kleine, the FDJ group of the Apolda People's Police was given the honorary name "Otto Kleine".

literature

• Peter Franz , The city of Apolda and the surrounding concentration camps ; caught in the net. The concentration camps in Thuringia ; Edited by the history workshop Weimar-Apolda in the Prager-Haus Apolda e. V. together with Udo Wohlfeld, in the series "Wanted 3. Save the past for the future!" Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-935275-02-1 , p. 113

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Franz, Udo Wohlfeld: Deadly Resistance. Apolda workers 1933–1945. History workshop Weimar-Apolda e. V., Apolda 2009, ISBN 3-935275-10-2 , pp. 70ff.