Willi Agatz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wilhelm "Willi" Agatz (born June 10, 1904 in Heisingen ; † August 28, 1957 in East Berlin ) was a German KPD politician and resistance fighter .

Life

The son of a miner attended elementary school in Essen and completed an apprenticeship as a miner at the Carl Funke colliery , later at the Ludwig colliery in Bergerhausen . In 1920 he joined the Socialist Workers' Youth , which shortly thereafter transferred to the Communist Youth Association of Germany . After completing his apprenticeship, he was elected to the works council of the Ludwig mine. In 1930 he was expelled from the miners' association and became involved in the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO), whose leadership he took over from his predecessor Albert Funk in May 1932 , after he had already become head of the Union of Miners in Germany (EVBD) in 1931 .

In September 1930 Willi Agatz was elected to the Reichstag for constituency 18 Westphalia-Süd and at that time was the youngest member of the Reichstag , to which he belonged until March 1933. He worked illegally during the Nazi era . Agatz took over the function of technical manager and - after the arrest of Roman Chwalek in September 1933 - at the same time the function of Reich organization manager of the illegal RGO. After the previous RGO Reichsleiter Fritz Schulte went abroad, Agatz also took over the management of the illegal RGO Reich Committee at the end of 1933. On January 18, 1934, Agatz and a number of other RGO functionaries were arrested in Berlin. On the basis of the documents seized in the process, a series of arrests of illegal RGO structures followed throughout the Reich. On February 18, 1935, Agatz was sentenced to three years in prison by the People's Court . He served his imprisonment in Luckau . He was then imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , released from the concentration camp in 1939 and placed under police supervision. Until the beginning of 1943 he worked as a bricklayer at Hochtief AG. Since January 29, 1943, he was deployed in the Wehrmacht's Penal Battalion 999 in the war against the Soviet Union . There he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , which he initially spent in a camp near Memel . From 1943 he received training at an Antifa school .

After his release from captivity in May 1946, he returned to Essen and from 1946 to 1948 was deputy chairman of the Mining Industry Association in the British Zone , the forerunner of the mining, chemical and energy industry . In December 1948 he was defeated in the election for the first chairman of the union with 232: 349 delegate votes against August Schmidt ( SPD ). He was not re-elected as 2nd chairman either.

From 1946 until his election to the Bundestag, Agatz was a member of the state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia . From the federal election in 1949 until 1953 he was a member of the German Bundestag . In 1953 Agatz moved to the GDR and worked in the western apparatus of the SED until his death .

Honors

In 1958 the VEB Steinkohlenwerk Freital was renamed VEB Steinkohlenwerk "Willi Agatz" in the GDR . He operated a mine in the Döhlen Basin in Dresden-Gittersee and was taken over in 1968 as the mining company "Willi Agatz" by SDAG Wismut (Soviet-German Corporation) to mine the uranium-rich coal there . In addition, the sanatorium for people with pneumonia in Bad Suderode got his name. After 1990 this designation was reversed.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.landtag.nrw.de/portal/WWW/Webmaster/GB_I/I.1/Abutye/Ehemalige_Abordnunge/details.jsp?k=00212
  2. ↑ Cf. Stefan Heinz : Moscow's mercenaries? The “Unified Association of Metal Workers in Berlin”: Development and failure of a communist union . Hamburg 2010, p. 325 ff.
  3. ↑ See ibid., P. 326 ff.
  4. ↑ Ref .: 5 O Js 4933
personal data
SURNAME Agatz, Willi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Agatz, Willy; Agatz, Wilhelm (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR, MdL, MdB
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH eat
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1957
Place of death Berlin