Willi Beuster (trade unionist)

Willi Beuster (born December 20, 1898 in Bamme , Westhavelland district ; † December 15, 1982 ) was a German KPD and FDGB functionary and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . He was first chairman of the central board of the industrial union agriculture and forestry in the FDGB.

Life

Beuster grew up in a social democratic farm worker family . His father was an active member of the German Metal Workers' Association (DMV) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Beuster attended elementary school and in 1913 became a member of the working class youth .

After three and a half years of apprenticeship, Beuster worked as a skilled worker in the optical industry in Rathenow at “Ruhnke” until 1924 . In the course of the economic crisis, he then had to change job and place of work several times. Among other things, he worked in Berlin as a construction worker, railroad worker, road worker and later as a farm worker for a long time.

Beuster joined the DMV in 1916. In 1928 he switched to the German Agricultural Workers Association. From 1931 to 1933 he was a member of the Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers ( RGO ), in whose Gauleitung Brandenburg Province he was employed during the same period.

In 1917 he joined the SPD, was a member of the Spartakusbund from 1918 and became a member of the newly founded Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919. He was head of organization and from 1926 to 1933 a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg district leadership of the KPD. In the twenties he was a city councilor in Rathenow and a member of the Westhavelland district council. In 1928/29 he attended the Reich Party School of the KPD in Fichtenau near Berlin .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933, he actively participated in the resistance against the Nazi regime. In 1933 and 1934 he was imprisoned in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison , in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp in Berlin, and in the Brandenburg and Oranienburg concentration camps. In 1935/36 he was a member of the resistance group "Kommune Berlin-Ost" and, with interruptions, during his employment in the synthetic resin press shop in Berlin, Mühlenstrasse 31-32, in the "Betriebsgruppe NO". At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 and again after the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, he was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp .

In February 1945 Beuster was forced to participate in the “ Volkssturm ” and was deployed on the Oder front. On February 28, 1945 he was taken prisoner of war , from which he was released on December 16, 1945.

After his return from Soviet captivity in Poland , Beuster took an active part in the re-establishment of the trade unions. From mid-January 1946 he was secretary of the preparatory board of the union for agriculture and forestry in the province of Brandenburg. He traveled tirelessly to promote the new union among farm and forest workers. Beuster became a member of the SED. At the first state delegates' conference in June 1946, Beuster was elected first chairman of the state executive committee of the Brandenburg Agriculture and Forestry Union. On August 1, 1948, he was appointed to the central executive committee of the Agriculture and Forestry Industry Union. As the main department head, he was responsible for training, education, press and broadcasting. The central board of the industrial union for agriculture and forestry elected him at the conference on 16./17. November 1948 in Thondorf as first chairman of the agricultural and forestry industry union in the Soviet zone of occupation .

However, Beuster was dismissed as chairman on November 12, 1949 and dismissed as a full-time functionary. He was accused of a poor management style and poor collective work as well as " Schumacher tendencies". In the resolution of the secretariat of the federal executive committee of the FDGB of December 1949 it was stated that he had "shown a terrible lack of class vigilance in relation to the extensive agent work in the industrial union for agriculture and forestry [...]".

From 1950 to 1952 Beuster was the cultural director of VEG Dechtow , then 1952/53 of VEG Satzkorn . From 1953 to 1955 he held the office of mayor of the municipality of Zauchwitz . From 1955 until his retirement in 1963 he acted as head of industrial security at the Institute for Agricultural Engineering in Potsdam-Bornim .

Beuster, a veteran in Potsdam, was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze in December 1968 .

literature

• Andreas Herbst : Beuster, Willi . In: Dieter Dowe, Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990) . Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-240-6 .
• Marion Goers: Willi Beuster (1898–1982). In: Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz (eds.) With the collaboration of Julia Pietsch: Trade unionists in the Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. Biographical Handbook, Volume 4 (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 6). Metropol, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-148-3 , pp. 365–372.
• Lothar Lindner , Hermann Hunger (Red.): The industrial union for agriculture and forestry in the Soviet occupation zone from 1945 to 1949, the union for land and forest - from 1968 union for land, food and forest - in the German Democratic Republic until 1990 . (= Looking back , Volume V). Federal executive committee of the industrial union building-agrar-environment, Frankfurt am Main 2000, p. 260 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ High awards given . In: Berliner Zeitung , December 10, 1968, p. 2.