Paul Schäfer (politician, 1894)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Schäfer (born September 15, 1894 in Erfurt , † July 26, 1938 in Moscow ) was a German communist politician who was executed in Moscow in 1938.

Life

Paul Schäfer attended elementary school and then worked as an unskilled shoe worker in Germany's oldest shoe factory, the Lingel company , in Erfurt . He was a member of the Central Association of Shoemakers and even then chairman of the works council . He was also active as a worker sportsman.

Schäfer took part in the First World War and then returned to Erfurt. There he was a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in 1918/19 and co-founder of the KPD local group . In the following year he was again chairman of the works council of the Lingel company. In this function he was also involved in the defense of the Kapp Putsch .

In 1923 he became the leader of the "Red Hundred" and shortly afterwards co-founder of the Red Front Fighter League . After this first engagement, Schäfer entered politics in 1924, when he became a city councilor and assumed the position of deputy leader of the KPD parliamentary group. In response, he was laid off by his company. However, the KPD arranged for a position as secretary of the International Workers Aid (IAH) in the Greater Thuringia district.

In 1931 he gave up his mandate as a city councilor and moved to Frankfurt am Main . There he was again district manager of the IAH. After the seizure of power of the Nazis Shepherd fled in 1933 first to the Saar . When this was occupied, he fled to France in March 1935, where he continued to campaign for the communists.

In the same year he went to the Soviet Union . There, however, Schäfer was arrested by the NKVD on March 11, 1938 as part of the so-called " German Operation " at the time of the " Great Terror " and charged with " espionage for Germany". Schäfer was sentenced to death on May 17, 1938, shot in the neck in Butowo near Moscow, and buried in a mass grave. Like all 1136 KPD members arrested by the NKVD, he was expelled from the party.

The true fate of Paul Schäfer was known to the highest SED officials , such as President Wilhelm Pieck , State Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht and the writer and President of the National Committee Free Germany Erich Weinert . However, with their power and authority they spread the legend of Schäfer's death as an interbrigadist in Spain.

On September 12, 1989, Schäfer was formally rehabilitated in the USSR , on the basis of a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of January 16, 1989 for the rehabilitation of all those convicted by special courts.

exhibition

Plaque on Paul Schäfer's house until 2018 with false information about death
  • The two deaths of Paul Schäfer - legend and life story of an Erfurt communist. Exhibition from August 25, 2018 to April 28, 2019, category: special exhibition, history, pot and sons . The exhibition discovers the person Paul Schäfer behind the legend and traces his traces to Moscow. In his dramatic life the big questions about utopia and revolution, terror and dictatorship arise.

Honors in the GDR

In the historiography of the German Democratic Republic , the state-mandated friendship with the USSR should not be burdened. Officially, it was said that Paul Schäfer died on March 9, 1937 as a member of the International Brigades in the battle of Guadalajara in the fight against Francisco Franco (although he was never in Spain). Accordingly, Schäfer was included in the official anti-fascism commemoration of the GDR. It was only after the Soviet archives were opened after 1991 that this version was refuted.

In 1954, the important Erfurt shoe factory Lingel, where Schäfer had worked for a long time, was named after him. It was now called VEB Schuhfabrik "Paul Schäfer" . On March 1, 1970, the Radio Technology Battalion 51 (FuTB-51) of the National People's Army was given the "honorary name" troop unit Paul Schäfer . In addition, a street in the Erfurt-Ilversgehofen district still bears Schäfer's name. The widow Hulda Schäfer was present at the award ceremonies. In the grove of honor for those persecuted by the Nazi regime at the main cemetery in Erfurt, the supposed date of death in 1937 is still in 2018.

Until 2018, a memorial plaque from the GDR era on Paul Schäfer's former home said: "PAUL SCHÄFER 1894-1938 - IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCHISM HE GIVED HIS LIFE".

During the GDR era, a kindergarten in Erfurt-Süd, today's address “Am Waldblick”, was named after Paul Schäfer.

literature

  • Institute for the history of the labor movement (ed.): In the clutches of the NKVD: German victims of the Stalinist terror in the USSR . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1991. ISBN 3-320-01632-6
  • Hanno Müller: Paul Schäfer's death in Spain was an infamous lie of the GDR leadership . Thuringian regional newspaper, August 29, 2018
  • Ulla Plener ; Natalia Mussienko (ed.): Sentenced to the maximum penalty: death by shooting. Fatalities from Germany and German nationality in the Great Terror in the Soviet Union in 1937/1938. Series: Texts, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Vol. 27, Berlin 2006
  • Jürgen Schmidt: Social democratic and bourgeois national milieus, party leaderships and party careers in Erfurt (1871-1924) . In: Dieter Dowe , Jürgen Kocka , Heinrich August Winkler (eds.): Parties in Transition - From the Empire to the Weimar Republic , Dietz-Verlag, Munich 1999 (= series of publications of the Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte Foundation , Vol. 7). ISBN 3-486-56433-1
  • Shepherd, Paul . 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 .
  • Antje Bauer, Christoph Wirth: The Erfurt communist Paul Schäfer and the Stalinist coming to terms with history . In: City and History. Zeitschrift für Erfurt , No. 48 (2011), pp. 36–37.
  • Christoph Wirth: innkeepers, comrades and business people. Interesting incidents from the life of Erfurt citizens and workers. Researched and told from little known sources . Erfurt 2011 (printed as a manuscript, City and Regional Library Erfurt), pp. 49–57.
  • Annegret Schüle, Stefan Weise, Thomas Schäfer: Paul Schäfer. Erfurt communist, murdered under Stalinism. Erfurt 2019. ISBN 978-3-946939-80-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ casualty lists the first World War, page 19002: Shepherd Paul (Erfurt). Retrieved January 26, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Jürgen Schmidt: Social-democratic and bourgeois-national milieus, party leadership and party careers in Erfurt (1871-1924). In: Dieter Dowe / Jürgen Kocka / Heinrich August Winkler (eds.): Parties in Transition - From the Empire to the Weimar Republic , Munich 1999, p. 260
  3. ^ A b Hermann Weber / Andreas Herbst: German Communists - Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 , Berlin 2008, p. 774
  4. ↑ Jürgen Schmidt: Social-democratic and bourgeois-national milieus, party leadership and party careers in Erfurt (1871-1924). In: Dieter Dowe / Jürgen Kocka / Heinrich August Winkler (eds.): Parties in Transition - From the Empire to the Weimar Republic , Munich 1999, p. 261
  5. ↑ Antje Bauer and Christoph Wirth: The Erfurt communist Paul Schäfer and the Stalinist coping with history. City and history, magazine for Erfurt . No. 48, 02/11. Pp. 36-37
  6. ^ Hanno Müller: Paul Schäfer's death in Spain was an infamous lie of the GDR leadership . Thuringian regional newspaper, August 29, 2018
  7. ↑ https://www.topfundsoehne.de/ts/de/service/aktuelles/ausstellungen/2018/128357.html - accessed on September 8, 2018
  8. ↑ For example: Harald Wessel: Münzenbergs Ende - A German communist in the resistance against Hitler and Stalin , Berlin 1991, p. 248 or Jürgen Schmidt: Social-Democratic and bourgeois-national milieus, party leaderships and party careers in Erfurt (1871-1924). In: Dieter Dowe / Jürgen Kocka / Heinrich August Winkler (eds.): Parties in Transition - From the Empire to the Weimar Republic , Munich 1999, p. 261 fn. 92
  9. ^ VEB shoe factory "Paul Schäfer" , on: ddr-wissen.de
  10. ↑ Radio technology battalion 51 (FuTB-51) , on: www.nva-futt.de
personal data
SURNAME Shepherd, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD)
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1938
Place of death near Moscow