Werner Hirsch

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Werner Daniel Heinrich Hirsch (born December 7, 1899 in Deutsch-Wilmersdorf ; † June 10, 1941 in Moscow ) was a German journalist , editor-in-chief of the Rote Fahne in Vienna and Berlin, and "secretary" and close companion of Ernst Thalmann .

Life

Werner Hirsch came from a Jewish family of the upper German bourgeoisie. His mother Helene Kallmorgen came from the von Bismarck family . His father Walter Hirsch was a judge at the regional court . Werner Hirsch left his family at the age of 16. During his first political activities as a schoolboy, he was committed against the First World War . He was friends with the USPD functionary Hugo Haase . In 1917 he joined the USPD and the Spartacus League . A year later he was briefly arrested for his pacifist work; he also had contacts with the New Fatherland Federation . During this time, Hirsch was also involved in Leo Jogiches ' organizational activities .

After his release from prison, he was drafted into the Imperial Navy in Kiel due to general conscription . As a war opponent, he took part in the November Revolution . In Hamburg he became a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council and in Cuxhaven co-founder of the People's Navy Division , for which he participated as a delegate at the founding party congress of the KPD , although he was still at the preparatory meeting of the Spartakusbund together with Leo Jogiches and Karl Minster against the establishment of a new party had pronounced. Nevertheless, on January 1, 1919, as a member of the Spartakusbund, he automatically became a member of the KPD. After the party congress he returned to Hamburg. Because of the armed fighting in Berlin after Freikorps troops marched in, Hirsch was back in his hometown and was arrested again there.

After the end of prison he went to Schleswig-Holstein , where he became a KPD functionary in early 1920. During the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, he was already elected a member of the district management, and Hirsch subsequently also became a member of the VKPD's central committee . After the expulsion of party chairman Paul Levi as a result of the internal party controversies after the March fighting in central Germany , Hirsch also left the KPD.

Until 1924 he worked first as a soap punch, then as a freelance writer and then went to Vienna as a correspondent for the Vossische Zeitung . Here he was resumed in the Comintern .

From September 1924 to June 1925 he was the editor of the Red Flag in Austria until he was expelled from Vienna. He then took on the role of editor at the German sister paper and then at the Saxon workers' newspaper . From 1926 to 1928, Hirsch was first editor, then editor-in-chief of the KPD newspaper Der Kämpfer in Chemnitz. In 1928 Hirsch became editor-in-chief of the Rote Fahne in Berlin together with Heinz Neumann . As an editor, he has been charged repeatedly, including insulting officials and "holding an open-air meeting". In April 1930 he was sentenced to a fine of 1,000 Reichsmarks for calling the Berlin Police President Karl Zörgiebel a "mass murderer" and a "... social democratic workers butcher who acted with cool foresight".

In 1932 Hirsch became secretary to Ernst Thälmann, with whom he was arrested after the Ziegenhals Conference on March 3, 1933 in the Kluczinski family's apartment at 9 Lützower Strasse in Berlin.

Werner Hirsch was taken into " protective custody " and subjected to repeated interrogations with severe torture. He spent several weeks in the Berlin police prison on Alexanderplatz and in the prison on Lehrter Strasse . From there he was taken to the Gestapo center in the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus and further tortured in the SA barracks on the ULAP site. Then he was returned to the Lehrter Strasse prison, where he was imprisoned for another four months until he was sent to the “central prison” in Berlin-Plötzensee . Further detention stations were then the Brandenburg concentration camp , the Lichtenburg concentration camp and the Oranienburg concentration camp . In between there was further interrogations in the Columbiahaus , in the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and in the police prison in Leipzig.

After his release from prison , he emigrated to Prague and wrote several reports on his experience in prison. In particular by Hans Kippenberger there were repeated attacks and dossiers in which Hirsch was suspected of being a “ Trotskyist Gestapo agent”. He was also accused of contact with Zenzl Mühsam and, in particular, of the arrest of Thälmann and other leading KPD functionaries. As a result of his release from Nazi custody, Hirsch was suspected of having become a traitor during the Gestapo interrogations. He was therefore ordered by KP headquarters to travel to Moscow to clarify these allegations. Like many of the Comintern officials, Hirsch was a resident of the Hotel Lux . There he was arrested on November 4, 1936 after previous house arrest with absurd accusations. On November 10, 1937, he was sentenced to ten years in a camp. There is a report by Karlo Štajner that Hirsch went on a hunger strike in a Moscow prison in 1938. In June 1941 he died of the consequences of imprisonment in a Moscow prison, heart failure was entered on the death certificate .

Fonts (selection)

  • Social democratic and communist workers in the concentration camp. Publication series of proletarian unity No. 5, Prometheus-Verlag, Strasbourg 1934
  • Behind barbed wire and bars: experiences and experiences in the concentration camps and prisons of Hitler's Germany. Mopr-Verlag, Zurich 1934
  • Kreszentia Mühsam : Erich Mühsam's ordeal. With a foreword by Werner Hirsch; Mopr-Verlag, Zurich 1935

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Hirsch, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hirsch, Werner Daniel Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician and editor
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH German Wilmersdorf
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1941
Place of death Moscow