Walter Duddins

Walter Duddins (born May 20, 1903 in Königsberg ; † 1945 ) was a German communist politician.

Life

He was the son of a teacher and grew up with foster parents after the death of his father. He became a machinist after school. He moved from Königsberg to Dortmund . Since 1917 he was a member of the socialist youth movement. In 1918 he joined the Spartakusbund and finally the KPD. Between 1918 and 1922 he worked as a youth functionary in East Prussia . He was also a member of the KPD's district leadership in this area. From 1922 he was the party's youth secretary in the Ruhr area . In 1923 he was accused of misconduct and expulsion proceedings were initiated against him. Thereupon he left the full-time functionary apparatus. From 1925 he lived with Hanna Metzler .

After he had been rehabilitated, Duddins became party secretary in Duisburg in 1926 and in Bochum from 1927 . Although he leaned toward the left opposition in the party, he still supported the party line. In 1927, he was sentenced to six months in prison for resisting state violence. A year later he was charged with decomposition of the police to one and a half years imprisonment convicted. He was elected to the Prussian state parliament in 1928 in the constituency of Westphalia-South . In the 1932 election he was re-elected to the state parliament in the Erfurt constituency. From 1930 he was secretary of the Dortmund subdistrict of the KPD. During this time, the SA carried out an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Duddins. Then he worked as political director in the Thuringia district .

After the beginning of the National Socialist rule , he was given illegal work in the Wasserkante district. He was arrested in July 1933 and was one of the first to be sentenced to three years in prison by the new People's Court . His former partner Hanna Metzler was even sentenced to death, but was later pardoned to fifteen years in prison.

After his imprisonment in 1936, Duddins was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . There he is said to have turned away from the KPD and was released in 1939. There are different statements about his further attitude. According to Hanna Metzler, he would have spoken out positively about the war against the Soviet Union, Georg Spielmann reported that Duddins would have helped him with an imminent arrest in 1945. He is said to have died in a camp in East Prussia after the invasion of the Red Army in 1945.

Fonts

• 2 1/2 years of struggle under the leadership of the Comintern and the Central Committee of the KPD: Activity report of the district leadership of the KPD, district of Greater Thuringia for the period from June 1930 to October 1932. Erfurt, 1932

literature

• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).