Paul Hildebrandt (politician)

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Paul Hildebrandt (born August 1, 1889 in Meiningen , † January 8, 1948 ibid) was a German trade union official , local politician ( USPD / SPD / SED ) and prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp .

Life

Hildebrandt came from a working-class family. His father was a railroad switchman . He attended elementary school , and then completed an apprenticeship as a building fitter from 1904 . In 1907 he became a member of the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV), and in 1909 he joined the SPD. From 1909 to 1913 he did military service in Wilhelmshaven . He then worked as a fitter in the construction of the new main workshop of the Prussian State Railways in Meiningen until the beginning of the First World War . During the war he was drafted into the Navy as a soldier . Hildebrandt joined the USPD in 1918. After the war he worked as a fitter in the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk (RAW) Meiningen until 1930 , where he was temporarily chairman of the works council. In 1918 he was elected to the city ​​council with the mandate of the USPD . In 1922 he went back to the SPD. From 1930 to 1933 he was a full-time union secretary in the Union of Railway Workers in Germany (EdED) in Meiningen. He had been a member of the free trade union railway workers' association since 1919 - for the EdED he had previously taken on a number of voluntary functions at the local level. At the same time, Hildebrandt was second chairman of the ADGB in Meiningen from 1930 to 1933 .

Hildebrandt was sentenced to three months' imprisonment in 1931 for disrupting NSDAP meetings .

After the NSDAP came to power , he was taken into " protective custody " several times . He was fired for political reasons and was unemployed until 1936 . Hildebrandt worked as a freelance oven cleaner until 1940. In the meantime he continued the resistance against the Nazi system , among other things with the formation of a hiking group together with Wilhelm Hemming , in which the participants could discuss politically undisturbed and safe from treason. In the illegal group of railway trade unionists around Hans Jahn , Hildebrandt took over the function of head of the Gau Thuringia. On July 27, 1938, Hildebrandt was arrested on suspicion of "preparing for high treason ". Hildebrandt was imprisoned in Stuttgart for a short time. On July 24, 1940, the Gestapo arrested Hildebrandt on charges of involvement in illegal rail union structures of the EdED. He was arrested and sentenced to prison on August 6, 1940 by the Jena Special Court. Hildebrandt was imprisoned in Eisenach prison from August 13, 1940 to November 21, 1940 and from January 9, 1941 to January 10, 1943 in the Hamm and Kassel penal institutions. The Nazi persecutors imprisoned him again in connection with the " Operation Grid ". He was a prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp from August 22, 1944 to May 7, 1945 (prisoner number 81941). In April 1945 he was one of the signatories of the “ Buchenwald Manifesto ”.

After the end of the Nazi tyranny, Hildebrandt was appointed district administrator of the Meiningen district . From 1945 to 1946 he was also chairman of the local SPD branch, became a member of the SED through the union of the SPD and KPD in 1946 and was also a member of the state executive committee of his party during these years. Intolerant administrative forces tried several times to force Hildebrandt out of office, but the SED state secretariat defended him. When he died unexpectedly of a heart attack , the population gathered en masse behind his coffin for his funeral.

Honors

literature

  • Steffen Kachel : A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919 to 1949 . Publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia, Small Series Volume 29, p. 554.
  • Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state: persecution - resistance - emigration (1933–1945) . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 103,106,110,131-134,370,435,502 ff., 626 .
  • Wolfgang Röll: Social Democrats in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-417-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lexicon on the history of the city of Meiningen, pages 113/114, ISBN 978-3-9809504-4-2 .
  2. ↑ Gerd Kaiser: "On life and death". Silent Heroes in the Anti-Fascist Resistance (1933-1945), p. 229, edition bodini 2007, ISBN 978-3-929390-96-4
personal data
SURNAME Hildebrandt, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade union official and local politician (SPD / SED)
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Meiningen
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1948
Place of death Meiningen