Paul Boettcher

Paul Böttcher (also Paul Dübendorfer , Hans Sallbach ; born May 2, 1891 in Leipzig ; † February 17, 1975 ibid) was a German communist politician, member of parliament and journalist.

Life

In SPD, USPD and KPD; journalist

After attending primary school, he learned typesetter. In 1907, at the age of 16, he joined the Socialist Youth , which was anti-militarist in Leipzig and represented Karl Liebknecht's line, and in 1908 became its chairman. In 1908 he became a union member. He traveled to some European countries on a hike, returned in 1914 and became the full-time youth secretary of his union. In the SPD he was on the left wing and went to the newly founded USPD in 1917 . In November 1918 he became editor of the " Leipziger Volkszeitung ". In 1920 he went to Stuttgart and became editor-in-chief of the left organ "Social Democrat". In October 1920 he was a delegate of the party congress of the USPD and the unification party convention in December 1920, at which the USPD left united with the KPD to form the VKPD . There he was elected to the central committee.

Deputy and Minister, KPD-O

In February 1921 he went to Berlin and became editor-in-chief of the KPD central organ “ Die Rote Fahne ”. In 1921 he became a member of the headquarters and in October 1921 went back to Leipzig as editor of the "Kurier". In 1923 he was chairman of the KPD parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament and political leader in the party district of West Saxony. In October 1923 a coalition government of the SPD and KPD was formed, in which Böttcher became finance minister. He held this post from October 10 to 29, 1923. Then Reich President Friedrich Ebert , SPD, sent the Reichswehr , which deposed the government under Erich Zeigner .

At times he was a member of the expanded Executive Committee of the Comintern . In 1924 at the first ultra-left turn of the KPD, he was relieved of all party functions as a leading “legal deviator” and remained only a member of the state parliament. In 1926, after the ultra-left party leadership was dismissed due to political failure, Böttcher was called upon to work with the party again and became editor-in-chief of the “ Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung ”. At the 11th party congress, at which the second ultra-left turn was announced, he was no longer elected to the central committee, but remained chairman of the parliamentary group and a member of the district leadership. At the central Nazi party workers' conference on November 4, 1928, he protested against the new turning point. He was not ready to support the RGO politics and social fascism thesis . Above all, he criticized the dismantling of internal party democracy. At the end of 1928 he was removed from his position as editor and expelled from the KPD on January 4, 1929.

He immediately became a member of the KPD-O and was political secretary for West Saxony, member of the Reichsleitung, editor of the daily newspaper “Arbeiterpolitik”, first in Leipzig, then in Berlin. On January 15, 1929, Böttcher announced his expulsion from the KPD parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament. From then on, until the following state elections, he led a five-member KPO parliamentary group to which Robert Siewert belonged. In subsequent election periods, the KPD-O was unable to win a state parliament mandate.

resistance

In 1933 he was briefly held in “ protective custody ” by the Nazis, but was then able to emigrate to Switzerland. There he worked as a freelance journalist. Together with his partner Rachel Dübendorfer , he became active as an agent for the Soviet and Swiss military intelligence services at the beginning of the Second World War . Among other things, they passed on information between these two services, specifically between Christian Schneider and Sándor Radó, and had connections in France with Leopold Trepper and Henry Robinson .

People of the "Red Chapel"

→ Main article : People of the "Red Chapel"

post war period

After the war he returned to eastern Germany. On February 23, 1946, he and other members of the group were flown to Moscow and arrested there. Martha Böttcher was misled by the SED leadership that her husband could not write because of his special work; but there is nothing to worry about. On February 12, 1947, Paul Böttcher was sentenced to ten years in a camp under Article 58.6 of the Soviet Criminal Code . Until his release in the Khrushchev thaw, the so-called de-Stalinization , he wandered through around 40 prisons and camps under inhumane conditions . Despite his disability, he works as a woodcutter, carpenter, bricklayer, house painter, paramedic, bookbinder and librarian. In March 1956 he was able to return to Leipzig. As a punishment for his membership of the KPD-O from 1929 to 1933, the Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK) did not recognize his party membership until 1934. This was later dated back to 1909 due to his objection. He became a member of the SED and deputy editor-in-chief of the “Leipziger Volkszeitung”. In 1968 he retired. He received numerous medals from the GDR and the Soviet Union, including the Karl Marx Order in 1965 and the Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold in 1971, as well as other honors. For Paul Böttcher, criticism of the Stalinist degeneration and solidarity with the Soviet Union belonged together.

His KPD-O membership was not mentioned in the obituaries. No speeches were given at his burial in the socialists' grove of honor in Leipzig's southern cemetery . The critical communist, a prominent editor of the communist press, did not want lies on his grave.

The writer Erich Loest set Böttcher a literary monument in the story Laundry Basket , published in 2009 .

Journal articles (selection)

In: The Socialist Doctor .

• The struggle for public health. Examples from the work of the Saxon state parliament. Volume 3 (1928), Issue 4 (April), pp. 27-32 digitized

literature

• Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Böttcher, Paul Herbert . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Theodor Bergmann : "Against the Current". The history of the KPD (opposition) . VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-87975-836-0 , (In this book a short biography about Paul Böttcher p. 416).
• Hermann Weber : The change in German communism. The Stalinization of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1969.
• Karl Hermann Tjaden : Structure and function of the "KPD opposition" (KPO). Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1964.

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Böttcher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Paul Böttcher in the Saxon Bibliography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Werther never lived . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1972 ( online ).