Willi Schwarz

Willi Karl Heinrich Schwarz (born March 9, 1902 in Stettin ; † March 27, 1975 in East Berlin ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism . He was a founding member of the Red Strike Troop .

Life

Willi Schwarz attended elementary school in Tinz from 1922, then the Academy of Labor in Frankfurt am Main. From 1928 he trained as a youth welfare worker at the German School of Politics . In 1918 he joined the Free Socialist Youth and later the Socialist Proletarian Youth . In terms of trade unions, he remained loyal to the German Woodworkers' Association . In 1920 he became a member of the USPD , then the SPD . For the party he was leader in Berlin-Friedrichshain and a district councilor. He had other memberships in the Freethinkers Association and in the Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold .

After taking power , he was dismissed from his position as a youth worker in the Wedding District Office for political reasons. A contradiction failed.

Willi Schwarz was a co-founder of the Red Strike Troop and head of East Berlin. Among other things, he printed several editions together with his father Heinrich Schwarz and Alfred Loose and his mother. He worked as a courier throughout Germany. On October 3, 1933, he had a serious accident while on a courier ride on a motorcycle, in which his partner died. He was sentenced to a fine.

On December 2, 1933, he was arrested in his apartment , although he was warned by a receipt from Willi Strinz , who was already in custody at that time. On August 27, 1934 he was sentenced to three years in prison by the People's Court . He had previously emphasized in his closing speech that he had acted with full conviction.

He was released on January 27, 1937. However, he remained active in the underground and gathered other resistance actors around him, such as the former raiding party members Curt Bley , Karl Mülle and Elisabeth Küstermeier . He was denounced by an informant and arrested again on November 29, 1939. The GeStaPo tried unsuccessfully to recruit him as an informant. Since he refused, the Nazis took him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he remained imprisoned until shortly before the end of the war. He took part in one of the notorious death marches towards the Baltic Sea. There he managed to escape and he was finally picked up by US troops.

On May 8, 1945, he first joined the SPD. He was a representative of the merger of the SPD and KPD , which made his progress in the GDR very difficult. He eventually joined the SED . In both parties he was district chairman for Berlin-Friedrichshain. Professionally he worked in the district office of Friedrichshain and later in the housing office. Until 1950 he was secretary and department head for party finance in the district leadership of the SED. After attending the Karl Marx party college , he became a manager in the Ministry of Finance. From the point of view of the management, however, he failed there, especially in political terms. Among other things, he was accused of putting financial considerations before the party line. he is also said to have employed a former NSDAP member. He was dismissed in 1953 and later appointed as operations director of the German advertising and advertising company (DEWAG) in Berlin and finally as commercial director of the East Berlin electricity works, where he left in 1964 and retired.

Honors

literature

Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: The Red Assault Troop. An early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism . Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86732-274-4 , pp. 499 f .

Individual evidence

^ Norbert Podewin : Berlin can choose . In: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin (Ed.): October 20, 1946: The first post-war election in Berlin (= booklets on DDR history ). No. 105 . Helle Panke, Berlin ( helle-panke.de ).

↑ Harold Hurwitz: The Stalinization of the SED: On the loss of freedom and social-democratic identity in the executive boards 1946-1949 . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-85091-1 , p. 472 ( google.de [accessed October 7, 2018]).

^ ND archive: Neues Deutschland from April 5th, 1975. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .

personal data
SURNAME	Black, Willi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Schwarz, Willi Karl Heinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH	March 9, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH	Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH	March 27, 1975
Place of death	East Berlin

[1] Norbert Podewin : Berlin can choose . In: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin (Ed.): October 20, 1946: The first post-war election in Berlin (= booklets on DDR history ). No. 105 . Helle Panke, Berlin ( helle-panke.de ).

[2] Harold Hurwitz: The Stalinization of the SED: On the loss of freedom and social-democratic identity in the executive boards 1946-1949 . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-85091-1 , p. 472 ( google.de [accessed October 7, 2018]).

[3] ND archive: Neues Deutschland from April 5th, 1975. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .