Walter Trautzsch

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Walter Ehrengott Trautzsch (born March 16, 1903 in Lengefeld (Erzgebirge); † September 23, 1971 in Leipzig ) was a German anti-fascist resistance fighter and a Thälmann courier from 1936 to 1939.

Life

Walter Trautzsch was born into a working-class family as the sixth of seven children. The father worked as a weaver and bricklayer, the mother was a weaver. After graduating from elementary school, he learned metal pusher and worked in his profession in various German cities until 1929, when he became unemployed. In 1923 he became a member of the KPD and took part in the Hamburg uprising . He was then arrested and held until December 1923. Trautzsch had been in contact with the KPD's secret apparatus since 1926 . In 1929 he became head of the unemployment committee in Lengefeld, and in 1931 head of the local anti-fascist fighting association. Trautsch traveled to the Soviet Union as a member of a delegation from the Universum Library . In November 1932, Trautzsch was elected a KPD city councilor in his home town of Lengefeld. Trauzsch was arrested by the SA on March 3, 1933 and, as one of the first "protective prisoners", was deported to the Colditz concentration camp and later to the Sachsenburg concentration camp . After his release in September 1934, he became head of an illegal communist resistance group in Lengefeld and the surrounding area. In September 1935, emigrated Trautzsch to the Soviet Union and took the name Paul Wittig at the Brussels conference of the KPD part.

He then emigrated to Czechoslovakia and was commissioned by Hermann Nuding to establish a connection with Ernst Thälmann as a courier via Rosa Thälmann . From September 1936 to February 1939, Trautzsch was under the party name Edwin "Thälmann-Kurier", traveled between Paris , Prague , Berlin and Hamburg and through Rosa Thälmann kept the connection between the arrested Ernst Thälmann and the emigration management of the KPD. In total, he traveled illegally to the German Reich about 18 times at intervals of four to six weeks . Between the missions he lived isolated in various hotels in Paris. His immediate superiors included Walter Ulbricht , Franz Dahlem , Anton Ackermann , Hermann Nuding and Paul Bertz . His dictated reports were received by Hermann Nuding, who edited them and forwarded them to Moscow .

When Walter Trautzsch was arrested on February 16, 1939 while crossing the border in Aachen , he had a Swiss passport in the name of Wilhelm Bossard with him. But the Gestapo did not believe that he was part of the French secret service. Now he admitted to being a member of the illegal KPD in France , which had been agreed with the Paris management to prevent his activity as a Thälmann courier from becoming known. He apparently accepted the Gestapo's offer to work as her undercover agent in France and immediately informed the KPD leadership in Paris. His detailed statement on arrest and recruitment was lost in the turmoil of the outbreak of war, and so the dangerous assumption that Trautzsch was a traitor could not be credibly refuted later. The sick "double agent" simply ignored the deadly invitation to report to Moscow for many German communists.

After the beginning of the Second World War he was interned in France. 1940 he managed to escape through Belgium to Switzerland . Here he worked as a Czech Kurt Schneider with Maria Weiterer , Leo Bauer and Fritz Sperling , among others . He married the Swiss Rosemarie Muggli (1918–1974).

In 1946 he returned to Germany with his wife. In 1947/48 he was chairman of the SED in the Glauchau district and then worked in various other party functions. In 1954, however, after a review by the Central Party Control Commission, he was removed from the party's control apparatus due to Gestapo obligations and as a former “Western emigrant”. He became a cadre manager, agricultural laborer and elevator operator. Most recently, he received a disability pension in 1959 after frequent illnesses. It was not until 1964 that his work was honored with the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver.

His niece was the long-time head of the Politburo Office of the Central Committee of the SED Gisela Glende .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in Neues Deutschland from September 25, 1971.
  2. ^ Obituary notice in Neues Deutschland from August 6, 1974.
  3. ^ Egon Krenz : Walter Ulbricht. Contemporary witnesses remember . Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-360-02160-1 , p. 548.