Walter Junker (anti-fascist)

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Walter Junker (born November 27, 1910 in Wannsee ; † July 28, 1938 near Corbera d'Ebre , Spain) was a German anti-fascist resistance fighter and fighter from Spain.

Life

Junker came from a classic working class family in the early 20th century; he was the fourth child of a construction worker and a laundress. His father and two of his older sisters were members of the SPD. In 1925 he finished elementary school and began training as a toolmaker at the Dynamowerk in Berlin-Siemensstadt . In order to support the family of six financially, he also had to work for a retailer and earn money as a ball boy on tennis courts. He used his very little free time to train himself politically and athletically in a workers gymnastics club and he became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ).

In 1928 he became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and founded an operating cell in the Dynamowerk. In June 1929, Junker, as head of the KJVD local branch from Nowawes, organized a large rally on Bassinplatz in Potsdam . His political activities meant that he was dismissed eight months after his successful apprenticeship examination at Siemens.

After Junker had become a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), he was also active in party politics. In 1931 he was elected political leader of the KPD local group Nowawes. He was particularly committed to the creation of an anti-fascist united front. That is why he sought cooperation with the SPD and found a basis for joint political action with Georg Spiegel , the chairman of the SPD district in Potsdam. In addition, Junker organized tent camps in the woods near Wilhelmshorst for the Babelsberg workers' youth and thus established contacts in rural areas. From 1932 he was the editor of the local KPD newspaper Junge Pionier .

Together with Alfred Lehnert , Walter Klausch and Albert Klink , he organized the resistance against National Socialism in February 1933 . In March 1933 Junker was arrested in his apartment and taken to the Potsdam police prison. But after a few days he was released. Because of the danger of being arrested again from now on, he fled Potsdam.

Map of the Battle of the Ebro

In May 1933 he emigrated to Prague. Because of his continued anti-fascist activities he was threatened with deportation in Czechoslovakia . He therefore relocated to Switzerland for a short time in order to be able to travel from there to Spain, and there to support the republican forces against the coup d'état military units. He achieved this goal in June 1938 when he joined the battalion “12. February “ the XI. International Brigade was assigned. Here he was machine gun leader in the machine gun company and he took part in the Ebro offensive of the republican army. The Ebro Offensive was the last major battle in the Spanish Civil War, which began on July 25, 1938. During the storming of the city of Gandesa , Walter Junker was hit by an explosive bullet near Corbera d'Ebre, ten kilometers west of the Ebro , and was fatally injured.

Honors

  • There was a Walter-Junker-Strasse in Potsdam, but in 1993 it was renamed Heilig-Geist-Strasse again.
  • The clubhouse of the BSG Turbine Potsdam was named after him.
  • The regiment GR44 of the border troops of the GDR was named Walter Junker .

In 1973, the Reichsbahn Brigade Walter Junker erected a stele designed by the artist Walter Bullert at the Griebnitzsee station . There was a relief and a plaque with the text:

“We commemorate the great role model Walter Junker, a leading member of the Nowawes labor movement, anti-fascist, internationalist and Spain fighter. Born on November 27th, 1910, killed on July 28th, 1938 near Gandessa / Spain. "

Until the fall of the Wall in November 1989, the stone was not open to the public because it was in the restricted area of ​​the GDR border with West Berlin . In 1992 the stele was removed by Deutsche Bahn AG as the new owner of the station square. The stele was given to the Potsdam Museum , where it is now in a magazine. The base erected for the stele has since been used for a notice board for the regional train station.

literature

  • Wolf Gerhardt: Functionary of the revolutionary workers and youth movement in Nowawes, killed as an interbrigadist on the Ebro - Walter Junker. In: Contributing to history - pioneers of our time. Edited by the Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement. Potsdam 1980; Pp. 72-79

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