Otto Tost

Otto Tost

Otto Tost (born January 4, 1883 in Berlin , † January 30, 1954 ) was a German trade union official and politician and commander of the People's Navy Division .

Life

Tost, a trained iron turner , became a union member in 1903 and joined the SPD in 1907 . In 1916 he became Richard Müller's deputy head of the lathe operator in the free trade union German Metal Workers' Association and switched to the USPD . From April 17, 1917, Tost was a member of the nutrition commission of the Berlin magistrate .

On January 28, 1918, Tost was one of 414 elected shop stewards and a member of the newly constituted Greater Berlin Workers' Council , which called for a January strike . Like many other strike leaders, Tost was then drafted into the military and joined a unit of the Imperial Navy stationed in Cuxhaven as a sailor .

In November 1918 Tost became a member of the Cuxhaven Workers 'and Soldiers' Council ; on November 11, 1918 he was back in Berlin, now as a member of the People's Naval Division . Immediately after the assassination of the division commander Obermaat Paul Wieczorek on November 13th, Otto Tost was elected by the sailors as the new commander of the division and held this position until November 23, when he moved to the Central Council of the Navy .

From March 1, 1919, Tost was first head of the Berlin section of the DMV , then the Stuttgart section. In 1922 he left the USPD and returned to the SPD. Tost belonged to the main association of the DMV until 1933.

In 1939 and 1940 Tost was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . After World War II he was in 1946 in the Soviet occupation zone member of the SED and the Federal Executive of the FDGB . From 1945 to 1950 he was the second chairman of IG Metall in the Soviet Zone and from 1947 to 1950 a member of the executive board of the FDGB Greater Berlin.

literature

• Gerhard Engel : From the general strike resolution on March 3, 1919 to the split of the council organs in July 1919 (p. 28). Akademie Verlag, 2002. ISBN 3050036656
• Gerhard Engel: Greater Berlin workers and soldiers' councils in the revolution 1918/19 (p. 73). Akademie Verlag, 1997. ISBN 3050030615
• Marion Goers / Arnd Groß: Otto Tost (1883-1954) , in: Siegfried Mielke / Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers: Functionaries of the German Metalworkers' Association in the Nazi state. Resistance and persecution (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration, Vol. 1), Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-059-2 , pp. 541-550.

Web link

• Otto Tost in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Files Edition . Weimar Republic