Werner Brodde

Werner Brodde (born August 14, 1898 in Pyritz, Pomerania ; † 1955 ) was a German KPD functionary.

Life and activity

Brodde was born the illegitimate son of a kindergarten teacher. His father was the doctor Walter Gutmann. He died in 1939 by suicide, as he feared he would be deported because of his - according to National Socialist definition - Jewish descent. After attending school, Brodde was trained at a preparation institute . From 1916 to 1918 he took part in the First World War. He then completed a commercial apprenticeship in order to find a livelihood as a traveler and representative. Politically, Brodde began to organize himself in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1925 . In 1928 he became sub-district secretary of this party in Görlitz . A year later Brodde became head of the KPD in the West Wroclaw district. In 1930 he took over functions as a cashier and member of the secretariat of the KPD district leadership in Breslau. At the end of 1930 Brodde was sentenced to 15 months in prison for insulting, trespassing, trespassing and resisting.

After his release, Brodde took over the post of pole leader of the Freethinker Association in Breslau. In the spring of 1932 he was then appointed agitprop secretary of the KPD district leadership in Breslau. At the same time he was chairman of the parliamentary group of the KPD in the city council of Wroclaw. A few weeks after the National Socialists came to power, Brodde was arrested at the end of March 1933. As a prominent communist, he was taken to the wild SA concentration camp Dürrgoy on the outskirts of Wroclaw and held there until the camp was dissolved. In autumn 1933 he was released again.

From 1935 to 1938 Brodde worked in a tobacco shop run by his mother, after which he worked as a traveler and salesman as in earlier times. From 1942 to 1944 Brodde worked as a clerk at the armaments company Rheinmetall-Borsig in Breslau-Hundsfeld. In August 1944, Brodde was arrested again as a former KPD functionary in the course of the grating action and held in the Groß-Rosen concentration camp until November 1944 .

In 1945 Brodde came to Saxony, where he again became a member of the KPD, later the SED and also headed the Sachsenverlag in Dresden . Until 1948 he was also general director of Export und Import GmbH in Dresden. In June 1948 Brodde became secretary for economic policy of the SED regional association of Saxony. In the 1950s Brodde was the full-time chairman of the board of the Association of Saxon Consumer Cooperatives. In 1953 Brodde was expelled from the SED for "behavior that was harmful to the party" and his recognition as a victim of the Nazi regime was withdrawn. After an objection to the ZPKK , he became a member of the SED again.

literature

• Hermann Weber / Andreas Herbst: German Communists , 2004, p. 126.