Paul Bertz

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Paul Bertz (born August 2, 1886 in Mühlhausen / Thuringia ; † April 18 or 19, 1950 in Chemnitz ) was a German politician of the Weimar Republic and a member of the Reichstag ( KPD ).

Life

Paul Bertz was a tool fitter in Zwickau and later a works council in the Wanderer works . Member of the SPD since 1910 , Bertz joined the Spartakusbund during the First World War and, when it was founded in late 1918, joined the KPD. In this Bertz belonged to the "left" wing of the party around Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow and, after they had taken over the party leadership in 1924, became the organ leader and at times also the Polleiter of the Erzgebirge-Vogtland district. From 1922 to 1925 he was a member of the Saxon state parliament . For the constituency of Chemnitz-Zwickau he sat in the 3rd and 4th electoral periods from late 1924 to 1930 in the Reichstag . In 1925 he was also elected a candidate for the Central Committee and the expanded Executive Committee of the Comintern , and from 1926 to 1927 he was one of the leading figures in the Chemnitz opposition , an internal party movement in opposition to the party leadership around Ernst Thälmann . From 1928 onwards, Bertz played an important role in the KPD's trade union policy, but after 1930 his influence within the party diminished when he and Paul Merker were accused of “left deviations”. In the following years he was active as a functionary of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO), in whose Reich Committee he was active at times.

After the takeover of the Nazi party , he worked as an instructor in the illegal resistance activities active and he emigrated end of 1933 in the Netherlands, from where it under the pseudonym John the section line West coordinated the KPD. In 1935 and again in 1939 he was reappointed to the party's Central Committee. In 1934 he went to France. From June to December 1935 he was head of the KPD border post in Zurich. After being temporarily interned after the outbreak of war, Bertz was able to flee to Switzerland in 1940 after the defeat of France . From 1940 to 1943 he headed the KPD group in Switzerland and supported the Free Germany movement . Bertz later lost his influence in the party again because he had spoken out against the German-Soviet non-aggression pact , and his German citizenship was stripped from him by the Nazi authorities in November 1939. Jürgen Kuczynski , who worked with Bertz in Paris, valued him as a great person and "manager" who protected him with careful reports to Moscow.

Bertz returned to Germany in 1945. He was initially deputy to the President of the German Central Administration of Justice as well as deputy head of the workshop department of the German Central Administration for Transport in the Soviet Zone , and from 1949 director of the municipal business enterprises (KWU) in Chemnitz. Bertz was one of the few better-known KPD members who opposed the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED , for this reason, among other things, he could no longer hold a full-time position in the SED.

Bertz was suspicious in his own party because he had criticized the party line more often and had fled to the West during the Nazi era. As part of the purges in connection with Noel Field , Bertz then had to write a report to Hermann Matern and was summoned to Berlin in the spring of 1950 before the Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK), which Matern had headed since 1948. Bertz had also had contacts with Noel Field during his time in exile and already in Berlin and was therefore suspect. He put an end to his life in Chemnitz on April 18, or earlier, on April 19, 1950. Today Paul-Bertz-Straße in the city commemorates the former member of the Reichstag.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bertz, Paul. In: Historical minutes of the Saxon state parliament. Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library , accessed on November 19, 2016 . Negotiations of the Saxon State Parliament, 2nd electoral period, p. 4260.
  2. ↑ Cf. Stefan Heinz : Moscow's mercenaries? The “Unified Association of Metal Workers in Berlin”: Development and failure of a communist union . Hamburg 2010, p. 277.
  3. ^ Jürgen Kuczynski: Memoirs. The education of the JK to become a communist and scientist . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1973, p. 292.
personal data
SURNAME Bertz, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johann (alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Mühlhausen / Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1950 or April 19, 1950
Place of death Chemnitz