Christian Mahler

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Christian Mahler
Born
Kurt Hermann Ernst Paul Krüger

12 November 1905
Police Officer
Director of the Sachsenhausen National Memorial
Political partyKPD
SED

Christian Mahler (1905-1966) was a

German Democratic Republic and then an increasingly senior Police officer. He concluded his career as the first director of the Sachsenhausen National Memorial.[1][2]

Life

Christian Mahler was born into a working family. His father was a Hamburg port worker, and Mahler's own working life started with an apprenticeship in shipbuilding. In 1924 he joined the Communist party and the RFB which was effectively the quasi-military wing of the Communist party. Mahler became an official of both organisations in Hamburg, and also employed with the Water-front quasi-military element ("M-Apparat") of the Communist Party's District leadership.[1]

Mahler was arrested in August 1933 for "resistance". In January of that year the

Soviets
who, in April 1945, released him from internment.

In May 1945 he joined the

serious public unrest triggered a heightened level of nervousness on the part of the national leadership, and in November 1953 Christian Mahler was relieved of his police functions, after it had been determined that he had had contacts with the west ("Westkontakten").[1] The contacts in question seem to have involved his long-term partner, a Jewish survivor of the regime in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, whose parents lived in Hamburg.[1] By this time the frontier down the middle of Germany, which in 1945 had simply divided the land controlled by the Soviets
from that under US or British administration, had assumed a degree of permanence which had not been universally anticipated back in 1945: Hamburg was on the "wrong" side of it from the perspective of the German Democratic Republic.

In December 1953 Christian Mahler obtained a position as Second Secretary of the Party's BPO (business management organisation) at the "

war or physically crated up and shipped to the Soviet Union in 1945/46, and which later gained a reputation for building river cruisers: during the early 1950s the ship yard was completing "Reparations Contracts" for the Soviets and specialising increasingly in fishing boats, notably for the coastal herring fishing business in the Baltic Sea (in German "East Sea"). Mahler remained with the "Elbewerft" ship yard till February 1955. In March 1955 he moved to a position as BPO Secretary ("first secretary of the factory party organisation of the SED") with the VEB "KGW Schweriner Maschinen- und Anlagenbau" heavy engineering company at Schwerin.[1]

In 1959/60 he was briefly a member of the regional council in Schwerin, heading up the Home Affairs department. In 1960 he became the first Director of the Sachsenhausen National Memorial, which was a reconfiguration of the former Nazi-Soviet concentration camp in line with the political imperatives of the time. Mahler retained this position till his death in 1966.[1] At the same time he was a member of the national Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters.

Awards and honours

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Bernd-Rainer Barth. "Mahler, Christian * 12.11.1905, † 30.5.1966 Direktor der Nationalen Mahn- u. Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen". Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
  2. ^ "Sachsenhausen — Lehrstätte für die Jugend ... Oranienburg (ADN). Der Präsident der "Vereinigung Junger Rebellen Kubas", Commandante Joel Iglesias, besuchte am Dienstag die Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen. Der Gast wurde vom Direktor der Mahn- und Gedenkstätte. Christian Mahler, sowie von Vertretern .... herzlich begrüßt ..." Neues Deutschland. 18 May 1961. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
  3. ^ „wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat in Tateinheit mit schwerem Landfriedensbruch und Vergehen gegen das Schusswaffengesetz“
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