Otto Nelte

Otto Nelte (born December 4, 1898 in Berlin-Adlershof , † July 25, 1941 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Life

Nelte, a metalworker and artformer by profession, joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1921 . In May 1933 he was arrested for the first time and imprisoned for several weeks, initially taken by the SA to the "Kaiser club" in Berlin-Adlershof , where he was mistreated, then to the "Blumengarten" SA restaurant in Berlin-Oberschöneweide , and finally to prison Papestrasse again badly mistreated and later released. Nelte suffered permanent physical damage from the abuse and torture.

After his release, he resumed his work in the resistance and took on various party functions: from 1936 he was a member of the illegal KPD sub-district leadership in Adlershof / Bohnsdorf / Alt-Glienicke , and in spring 1938 he became political leader of the communist groups in the southeast Districts of Berlin. During this time Nelte was in contact with a social democratic group of workers in Alt-Glienecke.

In May 1939, the KPD instructor Willi Gall, who came from Denmark , taught him about the KPD's Bern conference . In several pamphlets , Nelte called for the unity of all opponents of Hitler and for the prevention of war. When Willi Gall returned to Berlin in August 1939, Nelte worked with him again. They wrote pamphlets like The enemy stands in their own country , and in November 1939 they published an illegal newspaper, the Berliner Volkszeitung . Before the second issue, Nelte was arrested by the Gestapo on December 7, 1939 . Nelte was sentenced to death on January 23, 1941 together with Gall by the “ People's Court ” and executed on July 25, 1941 in the Plötzensee prison.

Honors

• In the Berlin district of Adlershof, where Nelte lived, a street was named after him in 1957, and a polytechnic high school in Adlershof also bore his name.
• A memorial stele erected in 1977 in the center of the Adlershof district (Dörpfeldstrasse, corner of Nipkowstrasse) commemorated the resistance fighters Otto Nelte, Willi Gall and Walter Gerber . A new building has been located here since 2014. The memorial stele is now in the closed part of the Adlershof cemetery .
• The artillery regiment 26 of the border troops of the GDR (Groß Berliner Damm; was converted into the 40th artillery brigade of the NVA in 1986 and was stationed in Blankenfelde south of Berlin from 1988 ) carried the honorary name Otto Nelte.

literature

• Luise Kraushaar (Ed.): German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters . Volume 2. Dietz, Berlin 1970, pp. 11-13.
• Kurt Schilde, Rolf Scholz, Sylvia Walleczek: SA prison Papestrasse. Traces and certificates . Overall-Verlag, Berlin 1996, p. 160.
• Ulrike Puvogel, Martin Stankowski: Memorials for the Victims of National Socialism. Documentation II: Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia . Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2000, p. 194.
• Hans-Joachim Fieber et al. (Ed.): Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945. A biographical lexicon. Volume 5. Trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 267

Web links

• Neltestrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )