Otto Reckstat

Otto Reckstat as a member of the Navy in World War II

Otto Reckstat (born September 11, 1898 on Gut Ramberg , East Prussia , † June 22, 1983 in Bremen ) was a German industrial worker and union official . During the workers 'uprising in the GDR on June 17, 1953 , he was a strike leader in the central German city of Nordhausen and became a symbol of the workers' uprising there.

Life

Origin, World War I, trade unionist

Otto Reckstat was born as the son of the coachman Wilhelm Reckstat on the Ramberg estate in East Prussia and attended school in Berlin-Oberschöneweide . After finishing school he went to sea as a cabin boy and in 1913 joined the Imperial Navy as a professional soldier . He took part in World War I and was discharged in 1919 with the rank of torpedo boatswain's mate . He then worked as a cable solderer in Sondershausen, Thuringia, and became a works council . In 1928 he became a full-time trade union secretary in neighboring Nordhausen and worked there until 1933 as district manager of the transport union .

City councilor, victim of Nazi persecution, Second World War

Reckstat had been a member of the SPD since 1921 , belonged to the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold since 1923 and was a member of the Iron Front since 1931 . In early 1933 Reckstat became a social democratic city councilor in Nordhausen.

In the era of National Socialism Reckstat was the basis of his political functions as a district leader of the Reichsbanner and the Iron Front Nazis persecuted. The NSDAP politician, head of the city ​​council (from March 1933) and later mayor (from July 1933) of Nordhausen, Heinz Sting (1904–1976), called on Reckstat to refrain from continuing to exercise his mandate as city councilor, as this would “endanger the public safety ”.

Shortly after the " seizure of power ", Reckstat was taken into so-called protective custody by the National Socialists in March 1933 . After a short break in detention, he was arrested again on June 26, 1933 and was imprisoned in the Esterwegen concentration camp in Emsland until December 1933 , where he had to do forced labor . He was one of those prisoners who were released due to an amnesty on the occasion of the November elections at Christmas 1933.

After his release from protective custody had Reckstat order of the Secret State Police (Gestapo) Nordhausen leave. He was initially unemployed for some time and then found a job as an inspector with the Herold insurance group . Reckstat later worked for an electrical company, where he passed his master's examination in 1940. During the Second World War he was drafted into the Wehrmacht on August 3, 1940 and served in the Navy . In 1944 he was taken prisoner by the British , from which he was released in May 1947 two years after the end of the war in 1945.

Industrial workers and trade unionists in the GDR, strike leaders, imprisonment

From 1947 Reckstat lived in Nordhausen again. In 1947 he co-founded an electrical company in Nordhausen, which, however, went bankrupt a little later and was dissolved.

At the end of the 1940s he joined the SED , but was expelled in July 1950 for "not signing to outlaw the atomic bomb" and as an "enemy of the socialist Soviet Union". As a result , he was denied recognition as “ persecuted by the Nazi regime ”.

Soviet tanks put down the workers' uprising in June 1953 in the GDR (here in Leipzig)

From 1952 he was a union shop steward at VEB ABUS-Maschinenbau Nordhausen, where he worked as an auxiliary fitter. At this time, the Nordhausen company belonged to VVB ABUS ("Equipment for Mining and Heavy Industry") in Halle (Saale) and a. Cranes . During the workers' uprising in June 1953 in the GDR, Nordhausen became a center of unrest in the Erfurt district. As early as the beginning of June 1953, the first strike actions took place against the decreed increases in labor standards. On June 17th there were strikes in many companies in Nordhausen, including in the VEB IFA tractor works , in the shaft construction and drilling operations and also at Reckstat's workplace, VEB ABUS Maschinenbau Nordhausen. The strikers' slogans soon became political and were directed against both the incumbent GDR government and the state of emergency imposed by the Soviet army . The strikers also spoke out in favor of free elections. The strikes and riots continued on June 18, when people's police units occupied the factories under the protection of the Soviet Army .

As a convincing and prudent strike leader, Reckstat had become a symbol and spokesman for the workers in his company. On July 8, 1953, he presented a 16-point program and put it to the vote. Meanwhile, the SED wanted to prevent any open discussion and immediately after the workers' uprising had begun to consciously cover up the causes and to declare the uprising as a “fascist” and “counter-revolutionary coup attempt”. In the "Reckstat case", for example, at a staff meeting called on July 17th, under pressure from the SED district leadership, it was decided to " exclude Reckstat as an enemy from the FDGB and dismiss it from the company". He was then arrested at his home by employees of the Ministry for State Security (MfS). On the same day, the SED central organ Neues Deutschland reported in detail on the “provocateur” Reckstat and his “deeds”; in addition, Reckstat was described as a “renegade” and “man [Kurt] Schumacher ” who wanted to put the working class in the service of the “fascist coup”.

The Erfurt District Court sentenced Reckstat in October 1953 as an "imperialist agent" for incitement to war and boycotts to eight years in prison and five years of expiatory measures under Control Council Directive No. 38 . At the request of his daughter Herta Simpson, who lived in Great Britain, to President Wilhelm Pieck , he was released early on December 21, 1956 after four years from the Gräfentonna penal institution and the remaining sentence was suspended. He was also made an obligation not to leave Nordhausen. At the beginning of February 1957 he found a job as an electrician in the VEB Werkzeugstielfabrik Nordhausen. After he had brought his father in need of care to his sister in East Berlin , he was under increased surveillance by the MfS; an application for an interzonal passport was rejected.

Escape from the GDR, life in the Federal Republic of Germany

When an electric motor burned out at his place of work, which brought work to a standstill in his department, Reckstat feared he would be charged with sabotage and fled to West Berlin on November 30, 1957 with his wife . A year later he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany to Bremen , where he found both an apartment and a job as an electrician at Klöcknerhütte in January 1958 . For a few years he was chairman of the SPD operating group, and in 1971 Reckstat received a certificate of honor for his 50-year membership in the SPD. In 1963 he retired.

Reckstat was married to Anna Rosa Kretschmann († 1946) since 1921; both had two children.

Commemoration

Memorial plaque on the Otto Reckstat Bridge in Nordhausen

In 1998 in Nordhausen, the road bridge over the Zorge , located between Halleschen Strasse and Barbarossastrasse, was named after him and was given the name Otto-Reckstat-Brücke . Two identical memorial plaques were placed on both sides of the bridge railing bearing the following inscription in memory of Otto Reckstat:

literature

• Rainer Hellberg, Fritz Schmalz: June 17, 1953 in Nordhausen. The events in the Nordhausen district before, during and after the riots. Revised and expanded version from June 2003. le Petit, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-9812078-0-4 .
• Hans-Jürgen Grönke u. a .; Stadtarchiv Nordhausen (ed.): Nordhausen personalities from eleven centuries (=  series of local history research by the Stadtarchiv Nordhausen, Harz. No. 10). 1st edition. Geiger, Horb am Neckar 2009, ISBN 978-3-86595-336-0 , p. 258.
• Memorial plaque for Otto Reckstat. In: Anna Kaminsky (ed.): Places of remembrance. Commemorative signs, memorials and museums on the dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR (=  Federal Center for Political Education, series of publications. Volume 428). Federal Agency for Political Education , Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-89331-528-4 , p. 483.
• Board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century . 2nd Edition. Vorwärts-Buch, Bonn 2013, ISBN 978-3-86602-250-8 , pp. 263, 388.
• Gerbergasse 18 , Thuringian quarterly journal for contemporary history and politics, publisher: Geschichtswerkstatt Jena e. V. in addition. with the Thuringian State Commissioner for Stasi Records , Forum for History and Culture, Issue 29 - Issue II (?), Jena 2003, ISSN  1431-1607 , DNB 018375545 , OCLC 643902458 , OCLC 313714127 , ZDB -ID 1335339-1 , p 24.
• Ilse Spittmann, Karl Wilhelm Fricke (Ed.): June 17, 1953. Workers' uprising in the GDR (=  Edition Germany Archive ). Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik Berend von Nottbeck, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-8046-0318-1 , p. 47.
• Petra Weber : Justice and Dictatorship. Justice administration and political criminal justice in Thuringia 1945 - 1961 (sources and representations on contemporary history; vol. 46; publications on SBZ, GDR research in the Institute for Contemporary History ). Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56463-3 , p. 389.
• Franz Walter , Tobias Dürr , Klaus Schmidtke: The SPD in Saxony and Thuringia between stronghold and diaspora. Studies at the local level from the German Empire to the present (publications by the Institute for Social History e.V., Braunschweig, Bonn). Dietz, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-8012-4039-8 , p. 280 f.
• Beatrix Bouvier : Switched off! Social Democrats in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and in the GDR. 1945 - 1953 (Research Institute of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung ; Political and Social History series; Vol. 45). Dietz, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8012-4075-4 , p. 299 f.

Web links

Commons : Otto Reckstat  - Collection of Images

• Biography at NordhausenWiki
• June 17th: "People got up, showed their backbone"  - article on the website of the city of Nordhausen from June 17th, 2003
• Otto Reckstat Bridge at Structurae
• Federal foundation to come to terms with the SED dictatorship | Topics | June 17, 1953 - A documentary | Online database [1] , [2] , [3] , [4]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Grönke et al .; Stadtarchiv Nordhausen (ed.): Nordhausen personalities from eleven centuries . Horb am Neckar, Geiger 2009, ISBN 978-3-86595-336-0 , p. 258.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Hans-Jürgen Grönke et al .; Stadtarchiv Nordhausen (ed.): Nordhausen personalities from eleven centuries . Horb am Neckar, Geiger 2009, ISBN 978-3-86595-336-0 , p. 259.
3. ↑ Official Journal . 1949. In: Ministry of Justice, Thuringia (Hrsg.): Government Gazette for the State of Thuringia . Part II, issued in Weimar on October 26th [1949]. No. 26 . Landesverlag Thüringen, 1949, DNB  550234004 , OCLC 705260907 , ZDB -ID 563500-7 , p. 249 ( excerpt from Google Books [accessed on April 3, 2015] Otto Reckstat and a business partner jointly took over the former Georg Wienholtz Elektrounternehmung Nordhausen and continued it as a general partnership from March 25, 1947).
4. ^ Rainer Hellberg, Fritz Schmalz: June 17, 1953 in Nordhausen. le Petit, Nordhausen 2007, p. 78.
5. ↑ See inventory: GP Günter Papenburg AG NOBAS-HBM, Nordhausen division . Archive inventory overview of the Thuringian Economic Archives (TWA), online on the Thuringia archive portal (www.archive-in-thueringen.de), as of February 9, 2015; accessed on February 17, 2015.
6. ^ Hubertus Knabe : June 17, 1953. a German uprising . Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-548-36664-3 , pp. 91-92.
7. ^ Secret report of the district authorities of the People's Police on June 17, 1953 (June 29, 1953) .
8. ↑ The cry for freedom. June 17, 1953 in Thuringia . Catalog for the exhibition of the Ettersberg Foundation on the 50th anniversary of June 17, 1953. Last shown in June 2012 in the Thuringian state parliament .
9. ^ Rainer Hellberg, Fritz Schmalz: June 17, 1953 in Nordhausen. le Petit, Nordhausen 2007, p. 79.
10. ^ 16-point catalog of demands by Otto Reckstat . On: NordhausenWiki , as of March 27, 2013 (source according to information provided there: Main State Archive Weimar , BDVP, file access no .: 20/066, sheet 00367); accessed on January 29, 2015.
11. ^ Rainer Hellberg, Fritz Schmalz: June 17, 1953 in Nordhausen. le Petit, Nordhausen 2007, p. 81.
12. ↑ Peter Kuhlbrodt (Ed.): Chronicle of the City of Nordhausen: 1802 to 1989 . Geiger, Horb am Neckar 2003, ISBN 3-89570-883-6 , p. 453.
13. ^ Rainer Hellberg, Fritz Schmalz: June 17, 1953 in Nordhausen. le Petit, Nordhausen 2007, p. 89.
14. ↑ Memorial plaque for Otto Reckstat. In: Anna Kaminsky (ed.): Places of remembrance. Memorial signs, memorials and museums on the dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR. Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 2004, p. 483 ( excerpt from Google Books ).