Paul Schwenk

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Paul Schwenk (right) with Karl Maron in 1946 at a mass rally in Berlin to commemorate the victims of fascism

Paul Gotthold Schwenk (born August 8, 1880 in Meißen , † August 22, 1960 in Berlin ) was a communist politician.

Life

Schwenk, who came from a working-class family, learned the metalworking trade in Dresden; since 1905 he was a member of the SPD several times and had to move to Berlin because he could no longer find a job in Dresden. Here he took on honorary party functions from 1908 and full-time party functions from 1912 and worked as a journalist for Vorwärts .

As an opponent of the SPD's truce policy during the First World War , he was active in the Spartacus group and in 1917 joined the newly founded USPD , in which he initially remained after the KPD was founded at the end of 1918. In the USPD, Schwenk u. a. active as editor of the central daily newspaper Freiheit and as secretary of the parliamentary group in the Prussian constituent assembly. At the end of 1920 he belonged to the left wing of the USPD, which merged with the KPD to form the (V) KPD . Here, too, he worked as secretary of the Prussian parliamentary group and was considered an expert on local political issues.

In May 1924, Schwenk moved up to the Prussian state parliament, to which he belonged until 1933, and from 1924 to 1932 he was co-chairman of the KPD parliamentary group. In addition, he was a member of the Berlin city council , the Berlin-Brandenburg district leadership of the KPD and the local political department at the central committee of his party.

After the NSDAP came to power , he fled together with his wife Martha Arendsee via France to the Soviet Union, where he was imprisoned for almost three years from 1936 to 1939 on charges of espionage during the Great Terror on account of an extorted confession. a. his partner was released. In 1945 Schwenk returned to Berlin as a member of the Ulbricht group , where he was the third deputy mayor from 1945 to 1947. In addition, he took on a few minor functions in the SED and worked in the GDR's Ministry of Industry until his retirement in 1952.

Honors

tomb

Schwenk was awarded the Karl Marx Order in 1955, the Silver Patriotic Order of Merit on May 6, 1955, and the Gold Patriotic Order of Merit in 1960 and the Labor Banner .

His urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin-Lichtenberg . Bernau and Berlin-Marzahn is Paul swivel street named after him. In Berlin, a sports community, a youth brigade and the 8th Polytechnic Oberschule Berlin-Marzahn were named after Paul Schwenk.

Fonts

  • Paul Schwenk, Richard Schnetter (Ed.): 4 years of the Weimar coalition in Prussia. Handbook of the Communist Fraction of the Prussian Landtag . Internationaler Arbeiter Verlag, Berlin 1928.
  • Friedrich Engels : Mr. Eugen Dühring's upheaval in science . Dialectics of nature . 1873-1882 . Marx-Engels-Verlag, Moscow 1935. (= special edition for the fortieth anniversary of Friedrich Engels' death) [editing with the assistance of P. Schwenk]
  • The founding of the Communist Party of Germany. Comrades from Berlin report on the emergence of the German Communist Party . Berlin 1960

literature

  • Gernot Bandur: Schwenk, Paul Gotthold. In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, p. 425 f.
  • Heinz Habedank , Ingo Matern u. a. (Ed.): History of the revolutionary Berlin workers' movement . Volume 2. From 1917 to 1945 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-320-00826-9 , pp. 53. 113, 129-131, 145, 204, 274.
  • Short biography in: Hermann Weber : The change of German communism. The Stalinization of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. Volume 2 . Frankfurt / Main 1969, p. 300f.
  • Joachim Hoffmann : Berlin-Friedrichsfelde. A German national cemetery - cultural and historical travel guide . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-360-00959-2 , pp. 87, 120, 248.
  • Pan, Paul . In: Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. 2., revised. and strong exp. Edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Lutz Heuer: Paul Schwenk ("Paul Scherber") 08.08.1880 - 22.08.1960 - From the barricades of the November revolution, the fight against fascism, from Stalin's prison to deputy mayor of Berlin in 1945 , trafo verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978 -3-89626-723-8

Web links

Commons : Paul Schwenk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Heimann : The Prussian Landtag 1899-1947. A political story. Ch. Links, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86153-648-2 , pp. 401, 405.
  2. ^ Joachim Hoffmann: Berlin-Friedrichsfelde. A German national cemetery - cultural and historical travel guide . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-360-00959-2 , p. 120.
personal data
SURNAME Pan, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwenk, Paul Gotthold (full name); Schreber, Paul (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist politician (SPD, USPD, KPD)
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Meissen
DATE OF DEATH 22nd August 1960
Place of death Berlin