Stanislaw Trabalski

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Stanislaw Bronislaw Boleslaw Trabalski (born October 25, 1896 in Leipzig ; † November 12, 1985 ibid) was a German politician ( SPD , USPD , SED ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Trabalski's father-in-law, Richard Lipinski
Stanislaw Trabalski's grave in the honor grove of the Leipzig South Cemetery

His parents, Franciszek Trąbalski and Maria Trabalski, née Mackowiack, immigrated from Poland in 1888 . His father was already active as a socialist in Poland . In 1901 he moved to Katowice with his parents . From 1902 Stanislaw attended middle and high school. Even at a young age he realized how disadvantageous a well-known name can be, because he was labeled as a “stranger and red” because of his father's political activities. He had bad memories of his teachers, who were Catholic pastors or former sergeants. The arguments between his father and the supporters of Wojciech Korfanty as well as the local Catholic Church shaped his emphatically anti-clerical attitude. This comes to life in an autobiography he began in the 1970s: “It was announced in the pulpit that anyone who enters my father's shop is sinning. In front of the shop, women, children and men lined up, spat at and prevented buyers from entering the shop ... "

Since his father had published the newspaper "Gazetta Robotnica" since December 28, 1902, Stanislav, like all other family members, had to help with the production of the newspaper. As a nine-year-old, he was sometimes called upon to perform very delicate tasks. For example, he smuggled a printed appeal to the soldiers not to take part in the fighting of the revolution into a barracks. The Cossacks on watch did not suspect that a child would be used for such tasks. In 1912 the family returned to Leipzig. Since his parents could not afford to pay for another visit to the high school, he was forced to look for an apprenticeship. Stanislaw had to earn the tuition to be paid on the weekends by doing temporary work, for example as a projectionist in some Leipzig cinemas. On December 15, 1915, he was called up for military service. After a short basic training in the 7th Telegraph Battalion in Dresden, he had to go to the Western Front. Here he was in command of a technical unit. In the midst of a hail of shells, he had to repair telephone lines that were repeatedly being shot to pieces. When he witnessed an inhumane order to hold out, he managed to prevent it from being carried out by cutting a telephone line. On June 6, 1916 in the " Hell of Verdun " he was injured in the leg by a shell. He was able to resist a planned amputation and was taken to a military hospital in Weimar. On June 30, 1917, he was dismissed as incapacitated. He then worked as a meter auditor for Thuringia. He was fired when he interfered with executives at grocery shops. Finally he found a job at Carl Zeiss in Jena. In 1919, after a short stay in Leipzig, Trabalski turned to the revolutionary center, Berlin. There he reported on behalf of his Leipzig comrades to the former people's representative Emil Barth , with whom he was able to live for some time. The government's demobilization ordinance forced him back to Leipzig, where he was obliged to resume work in the company in which he was employed on the day the war broke out. In 1921 he married Margarete Lipinski, the daughter of Richard Lipinski . In 1923 his son Karl Trabalski was born, who later was a member of the state parliament of the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia . Trabalski was the father of a total of seven children. His eldest daughter, Eleonore Trabalski, has a son with Kurt Lichtenstein . His grave is in the Leipzig south cemetery .

Political career

Trabalski became a member of the workers' youth in Katowice in 1909. In April 1912, Moritz Fromm accepted Trabalski into the German Metalworkers' Association (DMV) . Since he was initially the only DMV member in his company, this meant that he was also a shop steward for the union. In October 1914, he joined the SPD . In 1916 Trabalski became a member of the Spartakusbund , in 1917 he switched to the USPD , and in 1922 back to the SPD. In 1918 he became a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Weimar and from 1919 in Leipzig.

In his politically active time between the world wars, Trabalski was also a volunteer at the workers' education institute, for example 1928-1933 secretary of the consumer cooperative Leipzig-Plagwitz and 1932/1933 member of the Iron Front in the fight against the NSDAP . Between 1933 and 1945 he was arrested seven times. As early as May 18, 1933, the denunciation of a National Socialist neighbor resulted in a house search , the first of a total of 11 searches during the Nazi era. In June 1933 he and other functionaries of the trade unions and the social democracy were brought to the Leipzig People's House by an SA troop. There it was used for the fun of the National Socialists for scrubbing actions , the removal of election advertising with a knife and pumice stone. In October and November 1939 he was arrested together with Erich Schilling and Heinrich Fleißner . There were proceedings for high treason and treason , but these were discontinued. Among other things, he was imprisoned for 6 weeks in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . It was mainly thanks to Fleißner that Trabalski established contacts with social-democratic friends like Carlo Mierendorff and Julius Leber in Berlin after they were imprisoned together . In early 1944, Trabalski and Fleißner promised the former mayor of Leipzig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , that they would support him in the removal of the Nazi regime. In addition to the military coup and the elimination of the Nazi dictatorship, they also demanded a “right of workers to participate in all state and economic functions”. After the failed Hitler assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Trabalski, Fleißner, Erich Zeigner and other Leipzig Social Democrats were again deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

post war period

On July 3, 1945, Trabalski was elected as a co-founder of the SPD in Saxony as chairman of the SPD district committee in Saxony, from 1946 he was a member of the SED district committee for West Saxony, although he felt massive resentment against the compulsory merger of the SPD and KPD into the SED . His worst opponents were Otto Buchwitz from his own party, who called him "Krawalski", and Ernst Lohagen from the KPD. Together with Rudolf Eckert , Rudolf Friedrichs and Arno Haufe , he fought against Bolshevization . In a conversation with Paul Löbe in autumn 1945, however, he informed him that for fear of the arrest of 20,000 Social Democrats by the Soviets, the Social Democratic leadership was unable to oppose the unification process. Like the Nazis, Stanislaw Trabalski was an annoyance to the SED Stalinists as a critic. Therefore they cleared his house in 1948 and put him on trial for "endangering world peace". Nevertheless, he became the first chairman of the SED district leadership . Until June 1948 he was a member of the SED state secretariat with an office in Dresden and was responsible for the party operations. On October 31, 1948, Trabalski, who had just returned from a party conference in Schneeberg, was arrested at his home by eight detectives without giving any reason. As if that weren't enough, his family was also placed under house arrest. His son Karl tried in vain to find a lawyer in Leipzig to take over the representation. It was not until December 1949 that Dr. Günther Nollau from Dresden ready to take over. Defense information could only be obtained from the cash registers that the wife smuggled out of prison during her visits. He was imprisoned for a year and a half without a trial until the Attorney General dismissed the case on January 17, 1950 and he was released the same day. But the next arrest followed on August 30, 1950. Initially imprisoned in Dresden, he was transferred to Berlin-Hohenschönhausen on November 20 . Here he was given prisoner number 691. On March 25, 1954, he was transferred to Dresden. The conviction did not follow until April 29, 1954: He received six and a half years imprisonment for the criminal offense of " war and boycott agitation ", but was given amnesty in 1956 through an initiative of the British Labor Party. After that, he was no longer able to get involved in political offices, as he was expelled from it in the course of the “party purges”. From December 1, 1960, he was employed as a clerk in the advertising department of the Bibliographical Institute in Leipzig. This job was assigned to him by the MfS . Here, too, he was still under surveillance and was arrested repeatedly, most recently from 1960 to 1961 on charges of engaging in “ social democracy ”. Because of his political convictions, he spent a total of eight years in the prisons in Bautzen , Waldheim , Sachsenhausen and Bützow .

Legal processing

The judgment of April 29, 1954, in which he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison, was overturned as illegal by the Rostock Regional Court on September 30, 1996 at the request of his son Karl Trabalski .

rehabilitation

His relentless efforts to achieve a full rehabilitation finally had an initial success in 1966. The first secretary of the SED district leadership, Paul Fröhlich , handed him his party document on March 2, 1966. After some quarrels, he was recognized as a fighter against fascism . In the seventies and eighties, on the occasion of party and state anniversaries, he received a medal of honor as an anti-fascist resistance fighter , a badge of honor from the Society for German-Soviet Friendship , a medal of honor on the 30th anniversary of the GDR , and a certificate of honor for seventy years of party membership and the title of activist of socialist work . But only on 20./21. January 1990, in the course of commitments to those who have experienced injustice in the past in the name of the party and socialism, Stanislaw Trabalski became complete alongside Leo Bauer , Alfred Drögemüller , Max Emendörfer and Willi Kreikemeyer from the PDS , today “ Die Linke ” rehabilitated.

Quotes

On November 20, 1952, Stanislaw was taken to the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen prison , the so-called submarine prison , about which he wrote in the letter addressed to Wilhelm Fischer , his friend:

  • "[...] I was badly bullied [...]. I have not been allowed to write to my family since my arrest. It was just said that I had fled to the west. [...] It was more cruel than with the Nazis. "
  • “The most difficult time of my stay began here with the aim of making me die. Cells in the basement with no windows hot up to 45 degrees with built-in noise apparatus, cells with sleeping bunk about 1.20 m in length and cold air supply [...] no sleeping or nodding during the day; cell controls every three minutes. All medical treatment was withheld from me until the end of June 1953. "

As the newly elected district chairman of the SPD on August 26, 1945 in his opening speech in the New Town Hall in Leipzig:

  • "As regrettable as it is that we were not able to seize power ourselves, I must nevertheless say that Nazism could not have lasted much longer even without the Allied invasion of Germany."

From an interview with Beatrix Wrede-Bouvier on November 22, 1973

  • “Although I was against the association in principle, my motives for further partisan cooperation were as follows: I was faced with the problem of dissolving the party at a district convention with others. Heinrich Fleißner warned against this risk, however, and actually contributed to the fact that the district executive board approved the meeting. Fleißner said that a party dissolution was not responsible, as otherwise thousands of functionaries would be imprisoned. The camps at that time had a very high death rate, so that it was also uncertain whether the functionaries would ever have come out alive. [...] "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Quoted from: Michael Rudloff: Stanislaw Trabalski. A biography between the political systems. Pp. 13-68.
  2. ↑ Saxon State Archives; SED cadre files: 725, SED report on Stanislaw Trabalski, page 2
  3. ^ The SPD sub-district of Leipzig honored Stanislaw Trabalski on October 25, 1996 with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Südfriedhof , p. 30
  4. ↑ Quoted from: Michael Rudloff: "Stanislaw Trabalski, A Biography Between Political Systems" page 27
  5. ^ A description of this action is contained in the memories of a trade unionist in the estate of Erich Schilling; AdsD, Bonn
  6. ↑ Günther Wagenlehner: Soviet military tribunals: The condemnation of German civilians 1945–1955, Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2003 , p. 327 f.
  7. ↑ Interview with Manuel Reichardt, grandson of Otto Buchwitz, from May 8, 2009.
  8. ↑ Quoted from: Review by Peter Russig of the book by Mike Schmeitzner , Michael Rudloff: History of Social Democracy in the Saxon State Parliament; in Contributions to the History of the Labor Movement, Volume 40 (1998), p. 135.
  9. ↑ Index card of the Stasi Dept. XIV 16762, sheet 80.
  10. ↑ Quoted from: Michael Rudloff, Thomas Adam, Jürgen Schlimper: Leipzig - cradle of German social democracy. P. 235.
  11. ↑ Saxon State Archives; SED cadre files serial number: 725, SED report on Stanislaw Trabalski, p. 1.
  12. ^ Martin Broszat and Hermann Weber : SBZ manual
  13. ^ Rostock regional court, decision in the rehabilitation matter of Mr. Stanislaw Trabalki from September 30, 1996 - II PRO 174/96 - 385 RHS 52/96 - Rostock public prosecutor's office.
  14. ↑ Saxon State Archives; SED cadre files serial number: 725, SED report on Stanislaw Trabalski, p. 5.
  15. ↑ Lothar Hornbogen: Political Rehabilitation - A Lesson from Our History
  16. ↑ Quoted from: Michael Rudloff: Stanislaw Trabalski. A biography between the political systems. P.56.
  17. ↑ Quoted from: Harold Hurwitz: The political culture of the population and the new beginning of conservative politics. Volume 4, part 1.
  18. ↑ Quoted from: Beatrix W. Bouvier, Horst-Peter Schulz: "... but the SPD has ceased to exist". P. 215.

Remarks

  1. ↑ The arrest was lifted after a week. The social ostracism made itself felt for years. Information from Eleonore Trabalski, a daughter of Stanislav.
personal data
SURNAME Trabalsky, Stanislav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Trabalski, Stanislaw Bonislaw Bolislaw
BRIEF DESCRIPTION socialist politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1985
Place of death Leipzig