Wilhelm Kirschey

Wilhelm (also Willi) Kirschey (born March 27, 1906 in Elberfeld ; † May 13, 2006 in Berlin ) was a German KPD functionary, resistance fighter against National Socialism , publishing director and GDR diplomat .

Life

His father was Wilhelm Kirschey, a bricklayer , his mother was Auguste nee Berghöfer. The parents had an older daughter and four younger sons. Father Wilhelm was a co-founder of the construction union and a member of the SPD . The father was an opponent of the war, was drafted as an army soldier in 1915 and seriously wounded in Verdun . In 1917 he died of the consequences. Mother Auguste joined the USPD in 1917 , later the " International Association of Victims of War and Labor ". She traveled through Germany for the federal government in order to win over people for its goals. In March 1920 the young Willi witnessed the fighting of the Red Ruhr Army against the Kapp putschists . At the union house he helped his mother cook food for the fighters. Shortly afterwards, he was impressed by the police raids on her home.

After graduating from elementary school, Willi joined the Socialist Proletarian Youth , which shortly afterwards joined the Communist Youth of Germany . Mother Auguste was elected to the city parliament as a member of the KPD. For this reason, the city administration denied him the training to become an accountant that was actually planned there . Instead, he was used as a messenger in an apprenticeship at a yarn wholesaler. He and his friend took paid lessons from a private tutor to become accountants.

During the inflationary period he distributed KPD leaflets in front of a company calling for a strike for higher wages. After being arrested for hours, he was sentenced to a fine. In 1923 he joined the KPD . He got his first commercial position at the Remscheid KPD publishing house of the “ Bergische Tageszeitung ”. He was first employed as an accountant at the Elberfeld “ Red Tribune ” . After the KPD was banned, he and twelve of his comrades were jailed for continuing to distribute the illegally printed documents. From 1924 to 1926 Kirschey was subdistrict head of the KJVD. In 1927 he went to Düsseldorf to work as an accountant for the KPD newspaper “Freiheit” in the Lower Rhine district . Because of his successful bookkeeping work, he was brought to the capital by the paper-generating and processing company (PEUVAG) in Berlin as chief accountant and auditor . Fortunately, he found noble quarters in the Schöneberg district . Its main task was to secure the party's assets, also with the help of party companies disguised as private companies. One step towards securing property for the KPD was the establishment of a company "Diligentia" in Switzerland . The German printing equipment was sold to the Basel- based company. PEUVAG, which was dissolved in 1932, was replaced by the trust and auditing company " Profunda ". In March 1933, however, the Nazi government confiscated all party printing facilities and Kirschey had to arrange for Profunda to be liquidated . As a result, no further business activity was possible.

In 1933 he emigrated with hidden party material from Essen to Basel in Switzerland and became an employee of the Comintern for the administration of the printing works and publishing houses of the Communist Parties in Western Europe. The local director Hugo Eberlein entrusted him with trips to several cities in Western Europe. In January 1934 he was entrusted with the management of the » Arbeiterzeitung « in Saarbrücken because those responsible had given up their positions due to the uncertain situation in view of the upcoming referendum .

In Saarbrücken he also found the woman of his life in Karoline, who was employed as a maid for his lodging provider.

His job now was to bring printing machine parts to France . The pregnant Caroline gave birth to their sister's son Walter in Wuppertal. In 1935 Kirschey fled to France. In Forbach he became an employee in the emigration management of the party, which looked after emigrants for their entry into the Soviet Union . When he was released from emigration management, he became an employee of the diplomatic mission of the KPD's central committee in Paris . He had to organize postal addresses and contact points for partisan correspondence and had to find accommodation for couriers .

At the end of 1939 he was interned in the Vierzon camp because the party issued instructions that all emigrants should report to the designated registration office. There he and many others had to endure a terrible life in the camp under inhumane conditions. The internees were put to work in a wood sawmill. This was followed by further relocations to Orléans , Montauban and Agen . Then he went to Auch in the south of France , where he was recognized as a so-called " Prestataires " and was thereby able to be demobilized. In the following weeks and months he became a forest worker, lumberjack and road builder. After a severe kidney disease that could be cured, he found work as an accountant in a cardboard box factory. He was then under police supervision until 1944, when he was arrested and handed over to the Gestapo , which took him to the military prison in Toulouse . On July 30, 1944, he was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp . On August 5, the prisoners were unloaded at the Buchenwald station ramp. He was given the prisoner number 69545. Kirschey was placed in the labor statistics work detail, where he had to keep records of 25,000 prisoner women.

He witnessed the liberation of the prisoners by the 3rd US Army on April 11, 1945 from his block. The now legal camp management of the inmates was able to process the news and information he had compiled while listening to Allied radio stations in a first camp newspaper, which was distributed on April 12. Together with the other 21,000 liberated prisoners, he took part in the funeral ceremony on April 19 and shared the Buchenwald oath of those gathered.

On May 23, 1945, he and 20 other former prisoners left the camp in an omnibus that took them to Hesse . In Fritzlar they managed to have a GI drive them on to Düsseldorf . Soon he was with his family in Elberfeld. In February 1946 he took over the management of the Communist Free Publishing House in Düsseldorf. At the end of 1946 he moved to the Soviet occupation zone and became a member of the SED . First he was commercial director of the Sachsenverlag in Plauen , later head of the audit department in the SED party executive. From 1950 to 1959 he acted as a department head in the " Zentrag ". From 1959 to 1963 Kirschey was consul general of the GDR trade agency in Guinea and then head of the management department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . In 1976 he received the Star of Friendship of Nations in gold.

After 1989 he also summed up the decline of the GDR as a failure of the leadership of his party. His last public appearance took place on the 61st anniversary of the liberation in the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. On the roll call square, he addressed the younger generations with warnings not to allow fascism again. Kirschey died on May 13, 2006 at the age of 100 in Berlin.

literature

• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Second, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag , Berlin, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online (in the biography of his brother Walter) ).
• Buchenwald, I can't forget you , Eds. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Peter Hochmuth and Gerhard Hoffmann. Lebensbilder, Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin, 2007 and 2015 ISBN 978-3-320-02100-9 , pp. 15-30

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Second, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
2. ↑ Buchenwald, I Can't Forget You , Eds. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Peter Hochmuth and Gerhard Hoffmann. Pictures of life, Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin, 2007 and 2015 ISBN 978-3-320-02100-9