Willy Moritz

Willy Moritz (born February 10, 1892 in Kunzendorf / Silesia; † November 10, 1960 in Neumünster ) was a leading SPD member of the People's Day of the Free City of Danzig . After 1945 he was a labor judge in Schleswig-Holstein.

job

After attending elementary school, Moritz became an office assistant in 1906. From 1912 to 1916 he did military service, from which he was dismissed as severely disabled. From 1920 to 1923 he was managing director of the Reich Association of War Disabled Persons, after which he worked in the main welfare office for war disabled persons at the Danzig labor office until 1933. After the National Socialists came to power, Moritz was terrorized for political reasons and transferred to lower-paid positions within the state administration. Attempts to remove him from the public service failed before the labor tribunal and through intervention by the League of Nations. In addition to his full-time work, he said he was an assessor at the supply court from 1918 to 1934, from 1925 to 1934 an assessor at the rental agreement office and from 1930 to 1933 an assessor at the regional labor court. In addition, from 1929 to 1933 he was chairman of the workers' committee in the state administration of Danzig. After the war and the expulsion from Gdansk he initially for a short period from September 1945 to June 1946 as a so-called people's judge district judge at the district court Neubukow / Mecklenburg, before he moved to Schleswig-Holstein. From 1946 to 1955 he was a labor judge in Neumünster and Kiel.

Political activity

Moritz was a member of the Danzig People's Day from 1928 to 1939 and also an honorary member of the Senate of the Free City of Danzig ( Senate Sahm III ) from 1929 to 1930 . In the course of the increasing power of the National Socialists in Danzig after 1933 - they won an absolute majority in the People's Day after they had forced new elections in May 1933 and formed the government under Senate President Hermann Rauschning - pressure was exerted on the democratic parties and their members in various ways, so also on Moritz. This pressure increased after the premature abdication of the High Commissioner of the League of Nations , Seán Lester , in October 1936. The SPD was banned after weapons were allegedly found in a raid. In June 1937 the German National People's Party was dissolved, in October 1937 the center was banned and the one-party system was anchored in the Danzig constitution. The remaining opposition MPs in the People's Day were pressured to join the NSDAP parliamentary group. In negotiations with the President of the People's Day Edmund Beyl about the dissolution of the SPD parliamentary group, Moritz was able to obtain some assurances for the livelihood of some of the formerly active Social Democrats. The SPD faction then dissolved on January 24, 1938. A number of MPs gave up their seats, others emigrated. Moritz joined the NSDAP parliamentary group under pressure with two other SPD MPs. After the surrender he was one of the founders of the committee of the Social Democratic Party of the former Free City of Danzig, which could only help with the forced resettlement of the Danzigers.

literature

• Marek Andrzejewski, Opposition and Resistance in Danzig 1933 to 1939. Bonn 1994.
• Werner Kind-Krüger, The Reconstruction of Labor Courts in Schleswig-Holstein after 1945, in: Democratic History 30 (2019), pp. 206f., 210f.
• Ernst Sodeikat, National Socialism and the Danzig Opposition, in: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 14 (1966), pp. 139-175.

Web links

Biographical data on Willy Moritz in the database Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Schleswig-Holstein State Archives Section 761 No. 1108.
2. ↑ "Unity through Terror - The Nazi Rule in Danzig - How the United Front came about in the People's Day", Neuer Vorwärts No. 263 of July 3, 1938, Bundesarchiv Berlin R 58/3326.
3. ^ Marek Andrzejewski, Opposition and Resistance in Danzig 1933 to 1939. Bonn 1994, p. 217.