Willi Wallstab

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Willi Wallstab (born February 26, 1888 in Leopoldshall , † December 15, 1956 in Bahrendorf ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ). He was a member of the provincial parliament of Saxony and after 1945 police president of Magdeburg .

Life

Wallstab, son of a tailor , learned the trade of hairdresser in Berlin . Then he was a journeyman hairdresser in Hanover . From 1910 to 1932 he had his own hairdresser in Leopoldshall. Wallstab joined the SPD in 1908 and joined the USPD in 1917 . With Andreas Bohne, Richard and Karl Roth he formed the left wing within the Staßfurt USPD. During the First World War they provided workers they knew with anti-militarist agitation material. In January 1917 he was conscripted to Magdeburg as an armaments worker. During the November Revolution Wallstab was a member of the Staßfurt Workers 'and Soldiers' Council. In May 1919 he was a co-founder of the KPD local group. Wallstab transferred the majority of the USPD local group to the KPD, of which he remained chairman until 1933.

During the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, Wallstab headed the Executive Council in Staßfurt, which was composed on an equal footing. In view of the unity of the workers' front, the Staßfurt-Leopoldshall temporary volunteer battalion , which sympathized with Kapp and Lüttwitz , and the Wülfing battalion company that had moved from Bernburg had to surrender, surrender their weapons and leave the city.

From 1920 to 1933 Wallstab was a member of the Staßfurt city ​​council and a member of the Prussian provincial council of Saxony. At the 8th party congress of the KPD in January 1923 in Leipzig , Wallstab, who was also a member of the KPD district leadership in Magdeburg-Anhalt, was elected to the central committee as a representative of this district. After the Ruhr occupation by French troops in 1923, Wallstab called for demonstrations against the “impoverishment policy of Stinnes capital” and for the fight against Cuno and Poincaré . In August 1923, the strike of the potash workers of the Berlepsch shaft expanded further because of Wallstab's agitation in Staßfurt and the surrounding area. In autumn 1923 Wallstab was entrusted with the preparations for the uprising in Staßfurt.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Wallstab continued to work illegally for the KPD. He was arrested on March 17, 1933 and remained in " protective custody " until the end of September 1933 . On April 27, 1936, he was arrested again - together with Franz Vollbring and Paul Illhardt . Wallstab was sentenced to four and a half years in prison by the Berlin Superior Court on March 22, 1937 . After the end of the imprisonment that he had spent in the Coswig prison, he was sent in 1941 to the Süplingen labor education camp near Haldensleben in the quarry . At the beginning of 1942, Wallstab was taken to the Neuengamme concentration camp . In the spring of 1945 he was abducted to the Cap Arcona together with other inmates of the Neuengamme concentration camp and was able to save himself when the ship went down.

Wallstab returned to Staßfurt in June 1945 and became head of the KPD sub-district. On September 1, 1945, Wallstab was employed by the SMAD as police chief of Magdeburg. Until his replacement in March 1949, Wallstab pursued a personnel policy which, after the end of the denazification, also led to the ousting of Social Democrats and others who were considered politically unreliable from the police service, as well as to the filling of all responsible positions with communist cadres loyal to the line. Wallstab was relieved of his position as police chief in the spring of 1949, because rumors about his inglorious role as Kapo in the Süplingen labor education camp arose. He was accused of not behaving in a comradely manner, which was not the case. He was then transferred to the Ministry of Justice in Halle (Saale) , where he was senior clerk in the penal system of the Ministry of Justice of Saxony-Anhalt until 1951 , after which he was deputy head of the Magdeburg- Sudenburg prison .

Wallstab died on December 15, 1956 as a result of the long-term imprisonment.

Honors

  • A street in Staßfurt was named after him during the GDR era, and there was also a memorial plaque at Willi-Wallstab-Strasse 29.
  • In Löderburg , the polytechnic high school "Willi Wallstab" was named after him. She was also visited by children from the SWAPO children's home in Bellin , among others .

literature

  • Anna Dora Miethe: Memorials. Labor movement. Anti-fascist resistance. Building socialism . Urania-Verlag, Leipzig / Jena / Berlin 1974, pp. 255f.
  • Wallstab, Willi . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ According to Weber, Herbst (2008) not until 1911.
  2. ^ Erwin Könnemann: Working class wins over Kapp and Lüttwitz . Volume 1. (= archival research on the history of the German labor movement , volume 7.1) Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1971, p. 391.
  3. ↑ William Ersil: unity of action falls Cuno. On the history of the mass struggle against the Cuno government in Central Germany in 1923 . Dietz, Berlin 1963, pp. 77, 79 and 200.
  4. ↑ see Miethe (1974), p. 253.
  5. ↑ Halberstädter Straße No. 2 - (People's) Police Headquarters Magdeburg (1945 to 1952) (PDF; 3.8 MB).
  6. ^ Gerda Meyer-Eberhard: A social democratic mayor in the dictatorship. Rudolf Eberhard . Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-89811-726-X , p. 123, footnote 98.
personal data
SURNAME Wallstab, Willi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wallstab, Willy (incorrect spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD / SED)
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Leopoldshall
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1956
Place of death Bahrendorf