Max Reimann

Max Reimann ( born October 31, 1898 in Elbing, † January 18, 1977 in Dusseldorf ) was a German politician (KPD, later DKP).

Life

Before 1945

Max Reimann was born in the West Prussian Elbing son of a metal worker. From 1904 to 1912 he attended the elementary school in Elbing, 1912-1916 he worked as a riveter, 1913 he became a member of the German Metalworkers' Federation and its youth department and the Socialist Workers Youth, 1916 of the Spartacus League. Convicted in 1918 for taking part in battles against the Freikorps von der Goltz in Elblag to one year imprisonment, he spent the detention in Königsberg. 1920 moved Reimann as a miner in Ahlen and appeared there at the German miners' association. He was an honorary political leader of the KPD Ahlen and from 1921 full-time Communist Party functionary. In 1923 he took part in the resulting from the occupation of the Ruhr struggle in the Ruhr and then came up short in custody. From 1920 to 1928 he pursued trade union work in the KPD subdistrict Hamm and co-founded the Communist Youth Association in the subdistrict Buer - Recklinghausen, where he was also responsible for receiving the out of the " bourgeoisie " originating Kurt Goldstein in the youth wing. From 1926 Reimann was a member of the leadership of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition ( RGO ) of the German Miners Association and 1929-1932 Secretary of the Communist Party subdistrict Hamm and second secretary of the RGO in the Ruhr.

From 1933 Reimann was a political leader of the RGO Ruhr and from June 1933 politically active as a senior counselor of the RGO in the Middle Rhine and Cologne in illegal use. 1934 went up to Empire Head of the RGO, he became a member of the Western European secretary of the union in Paris. In 1935, he participated in the Saar in the election campaign for the Saar plebiscite, which lost for the opponents of National Socialism, and adopted in the same year at the 7th Congress of the Communist International in Moscow. In 1939 he worked in the KPD Foreign Office in Prague and multiple illegal in Germany. After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, he headed until his arrest on April 4, 1939, the flight of KPD cadres abroad. In May 1940, Reimann was sentenced to three years in prison for " conspiracy to commit high treason". The prison began in prison Hamm and sat from 1942 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp continues, where he was a member of the illegal camp. In 1944, the transfer to the satellite camp in Falkirk.

After 1945

The 15th Communist Party Congress in April 1946 delegated Reimann alongside eleven other top officials (including Kurt Müller, Walter Fish, Fritz Albert and Sperling Buchmann ) in the party leadership of the SED. He - like the other eleven - had to retire again by order of the Western powers, however, since the SED was not admitted in the West. In 1948 he became chairman of the West German Communist Party, after he had already done the party in the British zone.

From 1946 to 1954 Reimann belonged to the North Rhine - Westphalia state, 1946-1948 he was a member of the Zonal Advisory Council of the British occupation zone, and from 1947 to 1949 a member of the Economic Council Bizonia for North Rhine-Westphalia. 1948/49, he became a member of the Parliamentary Council and was chairman of the KPD group, then from 1949 to 1953 a member of parliament and leader of the KPD. His words to the rejection of the Constitution by the KPD became known: "We do not sign. However, it will come the day when we will defend this constitution against the Communists who have accepted it! "

On 13 June 1950 he was excluded from participation in plenary sessions for unparliamentary behavior of Bundestag President Erich Köhler for 30 sitting days.

Reimann rejected the occupation statute vehemently and called it a " colonization " of West Germany. An arrest warrant he withdrew in 1954 moved to the GDR. He led from there to the party, even after the KPD ban in 1956. 's Illegality, he led the first term secretary.

Reimann's role in the internal party purges in 1950

In March 1950, Max Reimann played a significant role in the Moscow- from internal party purges in the wake of Noel Field affair. So was lured among others, the German Communist Party deputy party chairman and North Rhine-Westphalia Member of Parliament Kurt Müller by a telephone call with Max Reimann to East Berlin. After a conversation with Walter Ulbricht Mueller was arrested still in the Central Committee building and brought to the central remand prison of the State Security in Berlin- Hohenschonhausen. Shortly after he was convicted by a Soviet court to 25 years in prison and deported to the Soviet Union. The interrogations were carried out personally by the then Deputy Minister of State Security, Erich Mielke. In addition to Müller et al were piloted also the leader of the KPD in the Hessian Parliament Leo Bauer, Hamburg KPD state chairman Willi Müller's successor as Prince and Deputy KPD party chairman Fritz Sperling using Reimann to East Berlin and arrested there. Those arrested were tortured by the Ministry of State Security of the GDR and the Soviet secret MWD during interrogation, then they were convicted in show trials to long prison terms in labor camps and prisons. Fritz Sperling died two years after his release from prison, 46 years old, suffered from the effects of abuse.

Reconciliation of the KPD in the DKP

From East Berlin from Reimann joined the Federal Republic for the readmission of the KPD. When the SED in 1968 decided to set up with KPD functionaries like Kurt Bachmann, Herbert Mies and the other a legal Communist Party in the Federal Republic of Germany, Reimann first insisted on it, instead advocating the repeal of the KPD ban. It was not until after Brandt's meeting with Brezhnev in Oreanda was seen that the DKP threatened no prohibition Reimann was willing to join the new party in September 1971.

In 1968 he returned to the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1971 he became a member of the DKP and shortly afterwards also the honorary chairman of the party.

Publications

• Sidelights from the life of a Communist - Franz Ahrens Max Reimann; Blinkfüer -Verlag Harald Dötze, Hamburg 1968
• The importance of the III. Party Congress of the SED for West Germany; in: Knowledge and action, 1950, Issue 8, p 17
• With Franz Dahlem: The Immediate Tasks of the Communist Party. Speeches at the conference of the West German guest delegates to the Second Congress of the SED, Hagen / Westphalia, 1951
• For lasting peace, democracy and progress. The 20th Congress and our tasks; in: Knowledge and action, 1956, No. 4, pp. 23-40
• Presentation at the 10th session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party; in: Knowledge and action, 1967, No. 6, pp. 2-15
• 10 years Marxist sheets, in: Marxist sheets, 1973, No. 6, pp. 15-17
• Decisions 1945-1956; Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Marxist Sheets, 1973; ISBN 3-88012-166-4

Honors

In the GDR, several streets have been named after him, some of which to this day are called so.

• In the town of Eberswalde a new housing estate Max Reimann district (now Brandenburg district ) called from the 70s.
• The Max Reimann Street at the swimming pool in Kleinmachnow is named after him because he lived there during his time in the GDR.
• Rügen is a street in old churches in the north of the island, named after him.
• In Ladebow, a district of Greifswald, also there is a Max Reimann Street.

• Based in Kleinmachnow automotive repair operation was also named after him (VEB KIB "Max Reimann ").
• The Max Reimann stadium in Cottbus was named after him.