Bernhard Otte

Bernhard Otte (12 July 1883 – 21 October 1933) was a

Born in Hopsten, Otte completed an apprenticeship as a weaver. In 1905, he founded a branch of the Central Association of Christian Textile Workers in Ibbenbüren. He studied economics and the law in his spare time. In 1907, he was elected as a city councillor in Kempen, for the Centre Party.^[1]

Otte moved to Bocholt in 1911, where he was again elected to the city council, and was chair of the local branch of his union. In 1917, he was appointed as editor of the union's national newspaper, the Textilarbeiterzeitung, and the following year, he became president of the union.^[1]

The Central Association was affiliated to the

In 1932, Otte was elected to the Landtag of Prussia. The following year, after the Nazi takeover of the country, the GCGD was subsumed into the German Labour Front, with Otte's acquiescence. He represented that body at an international labour conference in June 1933, but he and fellow trade unionist Wilhelm Leuschner refused to speak in support of the Nazis. He left the trade union movement, and died in October in a traffic accident, one which may have been a cover for an assassination by Nazis.^[1][2]

References