Robert Harnau

Robert Harnau (born August 1, 1908 in Klettwitz , Calau district , † February 3, 1977 in Rostock ) was a German politician ( SPD / SED ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism . He was chairman of the District Party Control Commission (BPKK) of the SED Rostock .

Life

Harnau, son of a master blacksmith , attended elementary school . After leaving school, he worked in a glassworks and as a miner in various lignite plants. In 1929 he joined the Workers' Gymnastics and Sports Association and the SPD. He took on various party functions at the local level.

After the SPD was banned on June 22, 1933, he was arrested two days later and taken to the Sonnenburg concentration camp . He was released on December 19, 1933. Since he was again illegally active in politics, Harnau was arrested again on October 19, 1935. After sixteen months of pre-trial detention, he was sentenced in February 1937 by the “ People's Court ” to four years imprisonment and loss of honor in the “Trogisch and Others” trial for “preparing a treasonous enterprise ” and on “suspicion of treason” . In addition to Harnau, Gerhard Trogisch ( Cottbus ), Ernst Tschickert ( Spremberg ), Karl Schmellentin ( Finsterwalde ) and Willi Karich ( Senftenberg ) were the main defendants. Trogisch was sentenced to life imprisonment, Karich to eight years, Tschickert to five years, Schmellentin - like Harnau - to four years imprisonment and loss of honor.

After serving his prison sentence, however, Harnau was not released, but was brought to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on November 10, 1939 . On April 21, 1945, as part of the evacuation of the concentration camp, he was forced to take part in the death march towards Mecklenburg . During the march, he was liberated by the Red Army on May 2nd .

In 1945 Harnau joined the KPD and in 1946 became a member of the SED. Harnau officiated as second secretary of the SED district leadership Senftenberg and attended the party college "Karl Marx" . He was then a member of the state party control commission of the SED in Mecklenburg until 1952 and served as the first chairman of the BPKK in Rostock from 1952 to 1960. Harnau was also a member of the secretariat of the SED district leadership in Rostock and later a simple member of the BPKK.

honors and awards

• In Senftenberg, Robert-Harnau-Strasse was named after him.
• During the GDR era, the VEB Mikroelektronik in Großräschen and the company vocational school of the VEB Fleischwirtschaft in Rostock bore his name.
• In 1973 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold.

literature

• Wolfgang Strehl: In Memoriam Robert Harnau 1908–1970 . Documentary work, University of Rostock 1975.
• Letter from Robert Hanau from Waldheim prison to Martha Wölk in Senftenberg, Weststrasse 1, dated October 1939 . In: Kurt Adamy et al .: What remains is hope: a documentation of letters from Brandenburg concentration camps, penitentiaries and prisons during the Nazi era 1933–1945 . Brandenburg State Center for Political Education, Potsdam 1995, pp. 95f.
• Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990 . Volume 1: Abendroth - Lyr . KG Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11176-2 , pp. 280-281.
• Timothy R. Vogt: Denazification in Soviet-occupied Germany. Brandenburg 1945–1948 . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2000 (= Harvard historical studies , 137), ISBN 0-674-00340-3 , p. 134.
• Roman Guski, Johanna Jawinsky, Hannelore Rabe: Memorials for victims and persecutions of the Nazi regime at the New Cemetery in Rostock (PDF; 6.3 MB). VVN-BdA Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-300-035037-5 , p. 32.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anti-fascist resistance struggle in the province of Brandenburg 1933–1939 . Part 2. District leadership Potsdam of the SED. Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement 1978, p. 429.
2. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , July 5, 1973, p. 5