Wilhelm Firl

Samuel Karl Wilhelm Firl (born January 26, 1894 in Dresden ; † August 16, 1937 in Berlin-Plötzensee prison ) was a German communist and resistance fighter .

Life

Wilhelm Firl was the oldest of three sons of a tailor in Dresden. From 1900 to 1908 he attended the local elementary school . He then did an apprenticeship as a clerk in a Dresden law firm (1908–1911). From 1911 to 1914 he attended the seminar of the Evangelical Lutheran State Mission in Leipzig . Interrupted from military service (1915-1917), he was employed as an office worker in Chemnitz from 1914 to 1921 .

In 1917 he joined the SPD , but in January 1919 he joined the newly founded Communist Party of Germany . From the spring of 1921 Firl worked as an assistant secretary, later as a secretary of the district leadership of the KPD Erzgebirge - Vogtland . In 1923 he was editor of the newspaper Der Kampf for a few months . In the period from 1923 to 1928 he worked as an employee of the central committee of the KPD and editor of the "Communist Press Service". At the end of 1928 he became a member of the editorial team of the newspaper Die Rote Fahne and responsible editor of the People's Guard , Stettin . On April 30, 1930 Firl was because of his work to fifteen months imprisonment sentenced, he on the fortress Auerbach in Vogtland was serving. After his imprisonment he worked again for Die Rote Fahne and from 1932 for the "Information Service" of the Central Committee of the KPD. Firl was also an elected representative in the “Central Association of Employees”; in the “ International Association for Victims of War and Labor ”; in the workers' swimming club 'Vorwärts' and city district councilor in Berlin-Treptow .

After Adolf Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933 , Firl continued his now illegal activity for the "information service" until the summer of 1934. For a short time Firl was also active in the free Saar area . From August 1934 to August 1935 he was the KPD's representative at the Zurich border post , which was in charge of illegal work in southern Germany. From October 1935 he worked in Berlin under the code names "Friedrich" and "Waldau". He informed his comrades about the VII. World Congress of the Communist International and about the Brussels Conference of the KPD in 1935. Firl ensured connections for illegals in Hanover , Magdeburg , East Prussia and Pomerania .

On January 30, 1936, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Berlin . Firl was tortured physically and mentally. He lay tied up in his cell for fifteen months, not allowed to receive mail or write himself. Firl made no admission. On May 22nd, he stood before the People's Court , which sentenced him to death. Wilhelm Firl was executed on August 16, 1937 in Plötzensee prison.

Firl left a wife and a daughter "Liesel". His brother Herbert, who fought in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War , died on the crossing to Mexico in November 1941. His brother Hans Firl, who also fought against the fascists, died in southern France in 1942.

Farewell letter

“Dear mouse! My last thoughts are with you. Full of gratitude for your loyal, brave love. You know you were my queen. (...) Thanks for this last service of love. Now you must also thank everyone who was good to me. (...) Also tell Liesel to stay brave. And now goodbye, dear one, love. One last kiss!"

- Facsimile in: German Resistance Fighters , p. 259.

Honors

• In 1948 the former Frischenstrasse was renamed “Firlstrasse”.
• There is a “Wilhelm-Firl-Straße” in Chemnitz, Zwickau , Rosenheim and Neubeuert .
• There was a polytechnic high school named after him in Chemnitz and a language therapy school "Wilhelm Firl, Förderschule", Berlin.

see also the Fritz Heckert residential area and the Oberschöneweide forest cemetery .

estate

• Federal Archives, SAPMO signature NY 4122 (letters to sister and wife) 1916, 1936–1937

literature

• Alfred Kantorowicz : Wilhelm Firl and Fritz Giga . Champions of freedom . Chronos Verlag, Berlin 1947
• Alfred Kantorowicz: Portraits. German fates . Alfred Kantorowicz Verlag, Berlin 1949 (East and West. Vol. 13)
• Alfred Kantorowicz: Wilhelm Firl and Fritz Giga. Champions of freedom . 1st - 100th Tsd., Children's book publisher, Dresden 1950 (Our world. Gr. 1, contemporaries tell)
• Heroes of the resistance struggle against fascism and war . VVN Verlag, Berlin 1951 (series of VVN 2, biographies)
• Wilhelm Firl . In: To the living. Last letters from German resistance fighters . Reclam, Leipzig 1959, pp. 70–73 (Reclam's Universal Library Volume 8587/8590)
• Wilhelm Firl . In: Brief descriptions of the lives of Dresden workers' functionaries and resistance fighters 2. They fought and died for future law . Museum for City History Dresden, Labor Movement Department, Dresden 1963, pp. 30–34 ( contributions to the history of the Dresden labor movement 10)
• G. Nitzsche: Firl, Samuel Karl Wilhelm . In: History of the German labor movement. biographical lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 126–127
• Wilhelm Firl . In: German resistance fighters 1933–1945. Biographies and letters . Vol. 1, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 255-259
• SED, Commission for the Study of the History of the Local Labor Movement (ed.): Revolutionary fighters . Issue 3, Anton Ackermann , Karl Dünewald , Wilhelm Firl. Karl-Marx-Stadt 1977
• Firl, Wilhelm . In: 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 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Firl was badly wounded.
2. ^ German resistance fighters , p. 255.
3. ^ German resistance fighters , p. 256.