Otto Weber (politician, 1889)

Otto Weber (born February 17, 1889 in Rathenow ; † December 7, 1972 ibid) was a German politician ( KPD ).

Live and act

German Empire (1889 to 1972)

Weber was born in 1889 into a working class family from Rathenow. After attending primary school, he learned the trade of opticians. In 1906 Weber joined the trade union and in 1907 the SPD .

After living in Berlin for the first few years after completing his apprenticeship, Weber moved to Paris in 1914, where he was briefly interned after the outbreak of World War I in the summer of the same year and then deported to neutral Switzerland . In 1917 Weber returned to Germany. There he became a member of the Spartakusbund and immediately after its founding at the end of 1918 the KPD . During the November Revolution of 1918 he was also a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council.

Weimar Republic

During the Weimar period, Weber, along with Karl Gehrmann, was considered the determining personality of the KPD in Rathenow: In 1924 he was elected to the local city council and in 1925 to the Brandenburg provincial parliament.

As a representative of the left wing of the KPD around Ruth Fischer , Weber headed the internal opposition in the KPD district of Brandenburg against the Thälmann party leadership , whose stronghold was Rathenow. Because of his opposition, when Weber moved up to the Reichstag for the late KPD MP Hans Bohla in January 1928 , the party leadership asked the party leadership to resign. Since he did not comply with this request, he was expelled from the KPD in February 1928. Instead, he joined the Left Communist group in the Reichstag and then, after it was founded in April 1928, the Lenin League . Due to the accusation of breach of the peace , he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, which he did not have to serve due to an amnesty. He then headed the local branch of the Lenin League in Rathenow until 1933, which was one of the strongest groups in the party.

Period of National Socialism (1933 to 1945)

After the takeover of the Nazi Party and the Reichstag fire of February 1933 Weber end of the same month was initially for ten days in " protective custody taken"; after his re-arrest in April 1934 he became the Superior Court sentenced Berlin for a two-year prison sentence. After his release, he worked in optical technology companies in Rathenow, where he supported French prisoners of war and Soviet forced laborers during the Second World War .

post war period

Immediately after the end of the war, Weber was appointed by the Soviet authorities in Rathenow to be a city councilor and department head for popular education in May 1945. He also served as chairman of the local Antifa committee. After its re-establishment, he rejoined the KPD and in 1946 the SED . Since Weber held the line of Lenin League before 1933 continue to be right and the lack of inner-party democracy within the SED criticized, he was soon back in the firing line of the party leadership, was as anti-working class and the party pest called and in October 1948 despite intercession of Karl Gehrmann ( who had supported the KPD leadership after 1927), excluded. Although he was never rehabilitated by the GDR government and was never accepted back into the party, Weber was awarded the medal Fighters Against Fascism in 1965.

literature

• Weber, Otto . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

• Otto Weber in the database of members of the Reichstag