Wilhelm Bahnik

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Wilhelm Bahnik (born May 15, 1900 in Gnesen , † March 12, 1938 in Spain ) was a German KPD functionary and communist resistance fighter.

Life

Growing up as the son of the assistant cook Wilhelmine and the railroad worker Friedrich in the province of Posen , he came to Magdeburg with his parents in 1919 . He joined the SPD in 1921 , then switched to the KPD in 1923 . In 1925 he became a member of the district leadership of the KPD in Magdeburg-Anhalt, where he was entrusted with "military-political tasks".

In 1927 he was arrested and in a treason trial to two years and nine months imprisonment sentenced, but came back in 1928 by an amnesty free again. His son Horst Bahnik was born in Magdeburg in 1930 .

The KPD sent him to Moscow to study in 1930/31 . He then took on leading positions in the party. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he went underground and headed the BB area ("operational reporting ") in the AM apparatus , the KPD intelligence service , in Berlin . In 1935 he emigrated to the Soviet Union , where his family was already. After the call by the Central Committee of the KPD to support the Republic of Spain against the fascist putschists, he volunteered for the Spanish Popular Front and went to Spain in 1936. He became an officer in the Edgar André battalion of the XI. international brigade . In the spring of 1938 he was seriously wounded. In order to save his comrades in arms, who carried him through the mountains of Aragon for three days , from captivity, Wilhelm Bahnik shot himself while resting.

Private

His son Horst served as a colonel in the National People's Army of the GDR.

Honors

In the time of the GDR , public institutions, such as a high school in Berlin , a border regiment in Kalbe (Milde) , the recreation home of the Ministry of the Interior in Benneckenstein and, since 1981, the sports field of TuS 1860 Magdeburg bore his name. Even today a street in Magdeburg is named after him as Bahnikstraße . In 1986 the Packebusch volunteer fire brigade was named after him.

literature

  • Hans-Rainer Sandvoss : The “other” capital of the Reich: Resistance from the workers' movement in Berlin from 1933 to 1945 . Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2007. pp. 400ff., ISBN 978-3-936872-94-1 .
  • Rudolf Engelhardt (Ed.): In unbreakable loyalty to the cause of the working class . Magdeburg 1980.
  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
  • Luise Kraushaar : German resistance fighters 1933 to 1945 . Berlin 1970 Volume 1, p. 66ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Heider et al. a. (Ed.): Living tradition. Life pictures of German communists and anti-fascists. 2nd half volume, p. 32, 1974.
  2. ^ Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945.
  3. ^ New Germany of February 28, 1973
personal data
SURNAME Bahnik, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD functionary and communist resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Gniezno
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1938
Place of death Spain