Robert Keller (resistance fighter)

Robert August Paul Keller (born June 12, 1901 in Trebbin ; † December 6, 1972 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Robert Keller was born in 1901 as the son of a master carpenter . After high school he studied at the German University of Politics, among other things . From 1919 he belonged to the Central Association of Employees . He worked in various wage employment relationships, including as a page, cabin boy and wage clerk. From 1921 to 1926 he was head of the Young Socialist Association and wrote articles for their Young Socialist papers.

In 1919 he joined the SPD . In 1927 he was a member of the Schleswig-Holstein district executive and in 1929 was secretary of the Reichstag parliamentary group. From 1929 to 1932 he was a city councilor and party secretary in Eisleben. There he was also a founding member of the local Reich Banner . He broke with the SPD party leadership after the Papen putsch and the reaction of the SPD to it.

Known as a radical opponent of the NSDAP , he was attacked on the street in February 1933. When the Volkshaus in Eisleben was stormed by the SA , he was one of the defenders. After the seizure of power , he could no longer stand the pressure in Eisleben and fled to Berlin, where he and his family hid for a while.

The family then emigrated to Czechoslovakia . There he lived with Franz Osterroth in a house in Röhrsdorf near Zwickau . The two set up a cadre school for comrades from Germany for the Red Staff . From Czechoslovakia they supplied a network of social democrats with resistance material. He maintained connections with Carlo Mierendorff and Theodor Haubach . He financed the financially expensive resistance work from an inheritance that he was able to hide from the National Socialists.

After the first wave of arrests against the Red Shock Troop, he set up an aid fund for arrested supporters. Although he worked with the Sopade , he had a critical distance from the exile executive of the SPD. After a failed cartel made up of the Revolutionary Socialists and New Beginnings , he moved to Bensen am Polzen , where he appeared as the foreign leader of the New Red Strike Troop. From 1936 he increasingly withdrew from illegal work. On January 26, 1938, he was officially expatriated from the German Reich and his property was confiscated.

In May 1938 he emigrated to France. There he was imprisoned after the outbreak of the Second World War and used for forced labor. On January 12, 1942, he emigrated to the USA. There he initially stayed with Quakers and then worked as an accountant for a shipping company. Politically, he joined the Council for a Democratic Germany in Milwaukee .

After the World War he returned to Germany without his family and joined the KPD and later the SED . He rejected the West German SPD. Nevertheless, he worked for Vorwärts , where he was editor-in-chief from 1947 to 1949. In 1947 he wrote an open letter in which he criticized the anti-KPD attitude of the West SPD and compared Kurt Schumacher with a "Nazi speaker". From 1949 to 1952 he worked as a senior editor for the New Germany and as deputy editor-in-chief for the Berliner Zeitung . He was seen at an unauthorized meeting with Paul Hertz in West Berlin. This brought him into conflict with the SED, which politically isolated him. In February 1953 he fled to the West.

He was also politically isolated in West Germany. He settled in Frankfurt am Main. There he worked as a French teacher for the Bund für Volksbildung Frankfurt am Main Höchst . He then worked for the Union of Railway Workers in Germany and most recently as press secretary for the local police.

He died in Frankfurt am Main in 1972.

literature

Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: The Red Shock Squad. an early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism . Lukas Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-86732-274-4 , pp. 430 f .
Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig: Biographical Handbook of the SBZ / GDR. Volume 1 + 2 . Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-169913-4 , pp. 384 ( google.de [accessed on October 3, 2018]).

Web links

Robert Keller in the biographical database of the Federal Foundation for Processing

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: Der Rote Stosstrupp: an early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism . Lukas Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-86732-274-4 , pp. 430 f .
↑ Harold Hurwitz: The Stalinization of the SED: On the loss of freedom and social-democratic identity in the executive boards 1946-1949 . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-85091-1 , p. 471 ( google.de [accessed October 3, 2018]).

personal data
SURNAME	Keller, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Keller, Robert August Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH	June 12, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	Trebbin
DATE OF DEATH	December 6, 1972
Place of death	Frankfurt am Main

[stoss-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: Der Rote Stosstrupp: an early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism . Lukas Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-86732-274-4 , pp. 430 f .

[2] Harold Hurwitz: The Stalinization of the SED: On the loss of freedom and social-democratic identity in the executive boards 1946-1949 . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-85091-1 , p. 471 ( google.de [accessed October 3, 2018]).