Theodor Bottländer

Theodor Bottländer (born November 18, 1904 in Schwartau near Lübeck ) was a German political functionary ( KPD ).

Live and act

Bottländer, a trained boiler maker, joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) in 1921 . In 1926 he joined the Communist Party (KPD). He had previously fled to the Soviet Union in order to avoid arrest for participating in bomb attacks in Osnabrück and Einbeck . There he had lived in Leningrad and from the spring of 1925 had attended political training courses at the International Lenin School in Moscow.

After his return to Germany in the summer of 1926, Bottländer was arrested and sentenced in December 1927 by the Reichsgericht in Leipzig to a prison sentence of six years for preparation for high treason. Due to the Reich amnesty in the summer of 1928, however, he was released early from prison.

Since 1928 Bottländer was active in the anti-militarist apparatus (AM apparatus) of the KPD, in which he headed the Reichswehr department. In this position he replaced Arthur Heimburger , who left the apparatus at that time. From 1929 to 1930 Bottländer completed a course under the code name Fritz at the M-School of the Comintern in Moscow. When he returned to Germany, he worked again in the KPD's AM apparatus, where he directed the dismantling work in the police and the Reichswehr.

From 1931 to mid-1933 Bottländer was responsible for the fascist organizations of the AM apparatus. During this time he was employed in 1932 by Hans Kippenberger , the head of the apparatus, as head of the break-up work group (code name Arthur).

After the Reichstag fire in February 1933, Bottländer was sent to the Netherlands to find out more about the person and life of Marinus van der Lubbe , who had been arrested as an alleged arsonist, on behalf of the KPD leadership . He had previously been briefly detained himself as a result of this fire. During this time he was also tasked with exploring the possibility of freeing the imprisoned communist leader Ernst Thälmann from prison.

Bottländer was arrested again in September 1933 and sentenced on June 15, 1935 by the 1st Senate of the People's Court to a prison term of three years and six months in prison. His further career is controversial: the authors of the German Communist Handbook consider it likely that he accepted the offer to act as an informant for the Gestapo in exchange for his release . In any case, he turned up in Paris around 1937, but was unable to establish contact with the Central Committee's secretariat. In 1938 the magazine Internationale published two articles warning against him.

According to Hermann Dünow's memories , Theodor Bottländer allegedly appeared in Berlin in 1945 in a British uniform. Other sources report that he went to Canada after the occupation of France.

The version that Bottländer evaded forced cooperation with the Gestapo by fleeing is supported by the fact that the National Socialist police officers classified him as an enemy of the state at the end of the 1930s: In the spring of 1940 the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, were to be located and arrested by the SS special commandos following the occupation forces with special priority.

literature

• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
• Hans-Joachim Fieber (Ed.): Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945. A biographical lexicon. tape 1 . trafo verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( name register letter B ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Bottländer on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .