Paul Peschke (trade unionist)

Paul Peschke (born December 3, 1890 in Berlin ; † December 4, 1983 there ) was a German communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . He was the first chairman of IG Metall and State Secretary in the GDR .

Life

Peschke, son of a single metal worker, grew up with foster parents from the age of one. After attending primary school, he learned, like his foster father Hermann Schulz, the trade of machine fitter and later worked as a toolmaker in the Auer-Osram company. In 1908 he became a member of the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV) and in 1912 the SPD . Peschke did military service in the weapon master school in Döberitz and from 1915 military service as a soldier in the First World War . He became a member of the USPD in 1917 and was chairman of a company soldiers' council in Estonia in November 1918 . After his return to Berlin, he took part in the January battles there in 1919 . At the end of 1920 he joined the KPD with the left wing of the USPD and in 1921 became KPD sub-district leader in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg . Peschke was unemployed for a long time, worked again as a locksmith at Siemens in 1925/26. From 1925 to 1929 he was a member of the Berlin city council . In 1925 there was a dispute with Ernst Thälmann when he, with the majority of Berlin officials from the Fischer-Maslow direction, turned against the Comintern's “open letter” to the members of the KPD. A few weeks later, however, he switched to the line of the Central Committee. From October 1926 he was a full-time party functionary in the organizational department of the Central Committee (ZK) of the KPD. And from 1927 to 1930 employees in the union department. In 1929 he was expelled from the DMV. When the Unified Association of Metal Workers in Berlin (EMVB) was founded in early November 1930, he became its chairman, and in January 1933 he resigned from this position due to pressure from the KPD leadership. At the same time he was a member of the RGO Reichsleitung between 1929 and 1933 and at times in a management position in their metal industry group.

On the decision of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the KPD, Peschke went to the Soviet Union at the end of January 1933 , where he was delegated to work in the Red Union International (RGI). On behalf of the RGI, he worked in Austria, France and Switzerland. Then in 1936/37 he was an editor at the Deutsche Volkszeitung in Prague . As head of the KPD section command center, he was arrested in 1937 for “passport offense” and spent almost nine months in prison in Strasbourg . He was able to flee to Sweden in 1938 , where he was in the KPD section leadership in Stockholm in 1939/40 together with Karl Mewis . He was arrested there in 1940 and temporarily interned in the Lokabrun and Långmora camps, where Herbert Warnke was also held. After his release he worked as a toolmaker in Sweden from the summer of 1943.

Peschke and fifteen other comrades returned illegally to Berlin in January 1946 via Danzig and Warsaw . In the house of the Central Committee of the KPD, Wilhelm Pieck commissioned him to do trade union work. From February 1, 1946, he was a member of the Berlin executive board of IG Metall and at the same time was chairman of the organizational committee for IG Metall in the FDGB. In April 1946 he became a member of the SED . At the 1st Central Conference of Delegates of IG Metall of the SBZ in the Berlin Theater on Schiffbauerdamm in June 1946 he was elected chairman of the IG Metall central board. From 1947 to 1955 he was a member of the FDGB federal board. Peschke was a member of the 1st German People's Council from 1948 to 1949 and was a member of the constitutional committee.

When the Provisional Government of the GDR was formed, he became State Secretary in the Ministry of Labor and Health on October 14, 1949 and handed over the chairmanship of IG Metall to Fritz Philipp on October 22, 1949 . After only one year he was replaced as State Secretary by Jenny Matern . From July 5, 1951 to 1954, he acted as director of the central administration of social security (successor to Gustav Brack ). In the summer of 1953 he was dismissed for "insensitive behavior towards the medical profession" and was then sector manager at the FDGB federal board in 1954/55. From January 1955 to 1960 he was head of the department for workers' questions in the "Committee for German Unity". At the same time he was a member of the Western Commission of the FDGB Federal Board and from 1960 co-editor of the “Socialist Letters”.

Peschke died at the age of 93 and was buried in the central cemetery in Friedrichsfelde in the Pergolenweg grave complex .

Awards

• Medal for participation in the armed struggles of the German working class from 1918 to 1923
• 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and 1971 in gold
• 1958 medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
• 1960 Medal Banner of Labor
• 1966 Karl Marx Order
• 1972 Fritz Heckert Gold Medal
• 1975 Gold medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit

literature

• Heinz Germany a . Ernst Egon Lange (Ed.): Wegbereiter - 32 portrait sketches , Verlag Tribüne Berlin, 2nd edition 1988, ISBN 3-7303-0169-1 .
• Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990 . Volume 2: Maassen - Zylla . KG Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-11177-0 , p. 635. From Google Books (accessed June 20, 2016).
• Paul Peschke in the DRAFD Wiki portal
• Gottfried Hamacher: Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement. Short biographies . Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-320-02941-X ( PDF )
• Stefan Heinz : Moscow's mercenaries? The "Union of Metalworkers in Berlin". Development and failure of a communist union . VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89965-406-6 (numerous references to Peschke).
• Stefan Heinz : Paul Peschke (1890–1983), In: Stefan Heinz, Siegfried Mielke (Hrsg.): Functionaries of the unified association of metal workers in Berlin in the Nazi state. Resistance and persecution (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - resistance - emigration. Volume 2). Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-062-2 , pp. 211-223.
• Andreas Herbst : Peschke, Paul. In: Dieter Dowe , Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990). Berlin 2009.
• Michael F. Scholz:  Peschke, Paul . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Siegfried Mielke, Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the collaboration of Julia Pietsch: Emigrated metal trade unionists in the fight against the Nazi regime (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 3). Metropol, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-210-7 , pp. 28, 31–32, 56, 59–60, 66 ff., 421, 425, 839–840 (short biography).

Web links

• Paul Peschke's curriculum vitae on the website of the Independent Commission of Historians for Research into the History of the Reich Ministry of Labor 1933–1945

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Constitutional Committee of the People's Council . In: Neue Zeit , April 17, 1948, p. 1.
2. ↑ New chairman . In: Neues Deutschland , October 23, 1949, p. 2.