Robert Gehrke

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Robert Gehrke (born January 1, 1892 in Braunschweig ; † May 19, 1972 ibid) was a German politician ( KPD ).

Life

Gehrke trained as a decorator and upholsterer, worked as a cigar dealer and later as a bookseller. In 1909 he became a member of the SPD and in 1911 head of the Braunschweig youth education association. Robert Gehrke was already a member of the socialist working-class youth during the imperial era . Together with Robert Biehl, Rudolf Sachs and Frieda Haase, he took over the escort for Rosa Luxemburg on March 8, 1913 at a rally in Braunschweig.

Gehrke was a participant in the First World War . After being wounded, he remained a war invalid. In 1917 he joined the USPD and the Spartacus group and was the spokesman for a Brunswick young workers' strike. During the November Revolution he was a member of the Braunschweig workers 'and soldiers' council and the council government. In 1918/19 he took part as a delegate at the founding party congress of the KPD in Berlin. He was then one of the founders of the KPD in Braunschweig and was then a full-time party secretary in various KPD districts until 1929 . In addition, he ran a trade in tobacco products and a lending library. This was closed by the National Socialists in 1933.

Gehrke was arrested on August 12, 1933 , and sentenced to two years and six months in prison in Hildesheim in December 1933 at the Peiner Communist Trial. After his imprisonment in the Hameln prison , Gehrke was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1935 and later to Flossenbürg , where he was only liberated in 1945.

In 1945 Gehrke rejoined the KPD and was one of its leading functionaries in the city as well as in the Hanover district leadership. Gehrke became a member of the appointed Braunschweig Landtag from February 21, 1946 to November 21, 1946. He was elected chairman of the KPD parliamentary group. From 1947 he ran a bookstore again and was chairman of the VVN in Braunschweig for many years . From 1968 he was a member of the DKP and its district executive in Braunschweig.

Fonts (selection)

  • From Braunschweig's darkest days. The Rieseberg mass murder . Braunschweig 1962
  • The revolutionary workers' boom in Braunschweig from the beginning until 1919. Written down by someone who was there. , VVN-BdA Lower Saxony, Braunschweig, 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-059572-1 .
  • with Robert Seeboth: 50 years of the November Revolution . A documentary about the revolutionary struggles of the Brunswick workers on the eve of the November revolution. Self-published, Braunschweig 1968.

literature

  • Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996, p. 116.
  • Gehrke, Robert . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rosa Luxemburg in Braunschweig ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dkp-niedersachsen.de
  2. ↑ in the VVN-BdA-Shop
personal data
SURNAME Gehrke, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician of the (KPD)
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1972
Place of death Braunschweig