Walter Reek

Walter Reek

Walter Arthur Reek (born January 26, 1878 in Danzig ; † May 12 or 19, 1933 ibid) was a German politician ( SPD and Social Democratic Party of the Free City of Danzig ).

Live and act

Reek was born the son of a foreman. After attending St. Katharinen Middle School in Gdansk from 1884 to 1891, Reek was trained as a carpenter from 1892 to 1895. Following several years of wandering through Austria, Germany and Switzerland, from 1895 to 1900, Reek was a member of the military from 1900 to 1902. As a young man he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He also became a member of the union, in which he took on numerous functions. In 1902 he became chairman and in 1906 employed secretary of the Central Association of Carpenters in Gdansk. From 1908 he took part in courses given by the General Commission of the German Trade Unions. After temporarily participating in the First World War , Reek was active in various commissions of the War Food Office in Gdansk from 1916 . In 1917 he became chairman of the Volkswacht press commission . A year later he founded the Gdansk Free Building Cooperative. In May of the same year he also took over the function of a workers' secretary. Finally, he was elected city councilor in Gdansk later this year.

In January 1919, Reek was elected to the Weimar National Assembly as a candidate of the SPD for constituency 2 (West Prussia) , to which he belonged until Danzig was separated from the German Reich by the Treaty of Versailles . He then sat in the Danzig Senate from 1920 to 1927. In 1919 Reek became secretary of the General Trade Union Confederation of Gdansk. In 1925 Reek became mayor of the city of Neuteich in Großer Werder. He was also a member of the first and second Danzig People's Day for the Social Democratic Party of the Free City of Danzig from 1925 to 1926 .

The representations of Reek's death are contradicting: According to the information in older literature and in a database on the Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic, Reek was murdered on May 19, 1933 in " protective custody ". This representation contradicts a research project of the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties : According to this information, Reek, who was most recently involved in several lawsuits, died on May 12, 1933 of the consequences of a stroke. In the Free City of Danzig , the National Socialists came to power after the People's Day elections on May 28, 1933 .

Commemoration

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag

Today, among other things, a plaque commemorates Reek's life and political activities, which is part of the memorial in memory of the “96 Reichstag members murdered by the National Socialists” near the Berlin Reichstag.

literature

• Walter Reek . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, p. 246.
• Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .

Web links

• Walter Reek in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Data record on Reek at BIORAB ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (The exact data record must be determined using the search function) 
2. ↑ Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR, the Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. (Publication of the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties) 3rd edition, Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5169-6 , p. 382.