Werner Peuke

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Werner Peuke ( code name Konrad ) (born November 30, 1905 in Berlin ; † October 8, 1949 in (West) Berlin) was a communist functionary during the Weimar Republic . At times he was close to the inner-party opposition. During the time of National Socialism he was a resistance fighter and belonged to the group New Beginning . After the war, initially a member of the KPD / SED , he resigned in protest against the Stalinization of the party.

Life

He was the son of a worker, but was able to do his Abitur as a free student . After an apprenticeship, he worked as a technician. He was a supporter of the KPD as a schoolboy. He was unionized from 1922 and became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany . In 1923 he was chairman of the proletarian youth cartel for Berlin. From 1925 he was a member of the KPD. From then until 1933 he worked full-time as a secretary or employee for the party.

In 1929 he became agitpropleiter of the Berlin district management and then political director of the Berlin-Zentrum sub-district. In connection with the campaign against the construction of the armored cruiser A , he and Karl Frank occupied a radio studio in 1928 so that the communist MP Karl Schulz could give a speech against the construction of the armored cruiser. For this, Peuke was sentenced to three months in prison in 1929.

He belonged to the opposition group within the KPD around Paul Merker , but in May 1930 he again accepted the line of the party leadership without breaking off contacts with the opposition. In 1931 he drew criticism from Walter Ulbricht and Paul Langner for a speech deviating from the party line . He argued that he had only quoted older decisions of the Central Committee and the Comintern . During the internal party purge in the sub-district Zentrum, in which Herbert Wehner was involved, Peuke and others were removed from their offices.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he worked again as a technician. He headed a resistance group that emerged from the Merker opposition group. Independent of the KPD, Peuke set up illegal company groups. He was wanted because he was wrongly accused of participating in the murder of SA man Horst Wessel in 1930 and police officers Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck in 1931.

He traveled to Prague several times and had contact with Paul Merker and the Neu Beginnen group. He probably joined this in the spring of 1934. He soon played an important role in the group. Contrary to the instructions of the leadership of New Beginning to maintain the conspiratorial structure, he maintained contact with the operating groups. After the internal dispute and the disempowerment of the older leadership around Walter Loewenheim , he belonged to the new leadership alongside Karl Frank and Richard Löwenthal . In consultation with SOPADE , they also succeeded in working with various left-wing socialist groups.

In 1936 he was arrested in Teltow and imprisoned in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp and in the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrecht Strasse. He was held in strict solitary confinement and severely ill-treated. Later he was sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp and then to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . From this he was released in 1939. After the beginning of the Second World War , he was drafted into the military in 1940. After being captured by the British, he was back in Berlin in 1945. Peuke rejoined the KPD and became a member of the SED in 1946. He worked in the district office of Berlin-Kreuzberg . Later he was director of the Humboldt mill in Berlin-Tegel .

Politically, he criticized the transformation of the SED into a Stalinist party. When the party called for a boycott of the elections to the city council in West Berlin in 1948 , he resigned from the SED in protest. He criticized the blockade of the western sectors in the social democratically oriented Telegraf newspaper : “We did not endure all the torments of fascism in order to now go the same path of suffering under a different flag. The blockade is inhuman. ”He openly announced that he would vote for the SPD . In the summer of 1949 he appeared as a speaker during the federal election campaign for the SPD.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Müller: He loved the party. Herbert Wehner - a typical biography of the Stalinized Comintern? In: Biographical Handbook on the History of the Communist International . Berlin, 2007 p. 155
  2. ↑ Michael Kubina: From Utopia, Resistance and Cold War: the untimely life of the Berlin councilor communist Alfred Weiland (1906–1978) . Hamburg, 2001 p. 194

literature

personal data
SURNAME Peuke, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Konrad (alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1949
Place of death Berlin