Peter Blachstein

Peter Blachstein (born April 30, 1911 in Dresden , † October 4, 1977 in Hamburg ) was a German politician ( SPD ). He was ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Yugoslavia from 1968 to 1969 .

Life and work

The son of a textile merchant attended grammar school in Dresden, which he left without a high school diploma, and initially began an apprenticeship as a bookseller, which he did not finish. “While still at school, Blachstein joined the German-Jewish Youth Community (DJJG) , which was founded in 1922 as the youth association of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith . In 1930 the Dresden DJJG group was accepted into the Association of Kameraden-Deutsch-Jüdischer Wanderbund , of which Peter Blachstein was federal leader in 1931/32. When the Wanderbund disbanded as a result of increasing disputes between right-wing, nationalist groups and the socialist wing of Pentecost in 1932, Peter Blachstein joined the Free German-Jewish Youth , which made it its task to educate young Jews to a socialist attitude and conviction. "

From 1929 to 1933 he studied German and economics in Dresden with a special permit from the Saxon Ministry of Science with the aim of being able to work as a journalist. At that time he was already writing for the Dresdner Volkszeitung , the socialist workers' newspaper from Breslau and the youth magazine Junge Pioniere . His articles mostly dealt with cultural topics and secured him a side income during his studies. In addition, he completed guest studies in acting, opera and directing with Erich Ponto , Josef Gielen and Fritz Busch . After the Socialist Workers' Party (SAPD) split off from the SPD, Blachstein became an active member of their youth organization, for which he built the political cabaret “Die Nebelspalter”.

In May 1933 Blachstein was arrested with 90 other SAPD supporters and held in the Hohnstein concentration camp until August 1934 . After his release from prison as part of the amnesty for Hindenburg's death (see Hindenburg amnesty ), he was first placed under police supervision and banned from working. In January 1935, following Walter Fabian's recommendation, he managed to escape to Czechoslovakia . From there he went to Oslo in autumn 1935, where he worked together with Willy Brandt for the youth organization in the London office .

In November 1936 Peter Blachstein went to Spain , where he joined the republican army and the POUM in the Spanish Civil War , for the latter he edited their German-language magazine The Spanish Revolution and participated in the POUM station. In Barcelona he was captured by the Stalinist PSUC in 1937 after being expelled from the SAPD and imprisoned until January 1938. From there he managed to flee to Norway via France , where he began studying economics, history and literary studies, which he continued in Uppsala, Sweden, after the German occupation of Norway from 1943 . Here he was, among other things, active in the national group of German trade unionists.

From 1945 to 1947 he worked in Stockholm for the International Rescue and Relief Committee , where he organized aid programs for Germans in need, until he returned to Germany in April 1947.

After the Second World War Blach stone headed at times the features section of Hamburg echoes , and was from 1955 to 1968 a member of the Board of Directors of the NDR . In 1958 he founded the German Committee for Spanish Refugees. In 1968 he became ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Yugoslavia , but was released from this office after just one year for health reasons. When he got better, he joined the Federal Government's Press and Information Office for two years in 1970 . He then worked as a freelance journalist until his death. Peter Blachstein was a member of the Humanist Union , of which he was a member.

Political party

Blachstein joined the SAJ in 1928 and the SPD in 1929. In 1931 he joined the SAPD with part of the party left. After the ban he became head of the illegal work of the Dresden SAPD and the SJVD . Together with Walter Fabian and Erwin Heinz Ackerknecht, he was excluded from the SAPD in 1937 as part of the “Neuer Weg” group, of which he was the representative in Spain.

After his re-entry into the SPD after his return from exile in 1947, he belonged to the left wing of the party. In 1948 he became chairman of the Hamburg-Eimsbüttel district association . In the same year he joined the state executive committee of the SPD Hamburg , of which he was a member until 1976. He was one of the spokesmen for left-wing criticism of the draft of the Godesberg program . At the state party of the SPD Hamburg in January 1970, he spoke out together with Hans Apel , January Ehlers , Jens Litten and Wilhelm Nölling contrast from, is that the Axel Springer Verlag at Studio Hamburg , a 100 percent subsidiary of the Norddeutsche Rundfunk involved. The state party congress then passed a resolution in which, among other things, it said: "The state party congress expects all decision-making bodies of the NDR and its subsidiaries to oppose the planned transaction in its current form."

About National Socialists and Communists

Blachstein compared concentration camps and GULag :

“Slavery systems: It is not extermination through work , which was the password of the concentration camp system, but rather 'work without consideration for extermination'. That is why the Russian system lacks the trait of deliberate cruelty and killing rage which was characteristic of the SS camps and which can only be explained by the purpose of extermination and extermination. (1948) "

MP

Blachstein was a member of the German Bundestag from 1949 until his resignation on May 31, 1968 and was also a member of the advisory assemblies of the WEU and the Council of Europe .

Peter Blachstein entered the Bundestag in 1953 via the Hamburg state list and otherwise always as a directly elected member of the Hamburg III constituency and in 1965 of the Eimsbüttel constituency . When he tried to become a candidate for the Bundestag again in Eimsbüttel in 1969, he did prevail in the district association, but was defeated by Wilhelm Nölling at the state delegates' conference .

Publications

• A lawsuit , Tiden Norsk Verlag, Oslo 1938.
• The flag of freedom lives in us. Testimonies to the early Hohnstein Castle concentration camp . and edit by Norbert Haase & Mike Schmeitzner (series: Lebenszeugnisse - Leidenswege, issue 18) Dresden: Stiftung Sächs. Memorials, 2005. ISBN 3934382169 .

literature

• Willy Albrecht: Jeanette Wolff , Jakob Altmaier , Peter Blachstein: The three Jewish members of the Bundestag until the beginning of the sixties. In: Julius H. Schoeps : Life in the land of perpetrators. Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-934658-17-2 , pp. 236-253.
• L. Joseph Heid : Peter Blachstein. Political biography of a Hamburg social democrat (1911-1977). Published by the Morgenland Gallery / Eimsbüttel History Workshop. VSA Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-89965-612-1 .
• SPD-Hamburg: For freedom and democracy. Hamburg Social Democrats in Persecution and Resistance 1933-1945. Hamburg 2003, pp. 29/30.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Blachstein in the archive of social democracy (see web link). The Free German-Jewish Youth was one of the comrades' successor organizations .
2. ^ "Studio participation is checked" , in: Hamburger Abendblatt from January 26, 1970, accessed on March 22, 2020.

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Blachstein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peter Blachstein in the archive of social democracy