Ernst Schneller
Ernst Schneller | |
---|---|
Germany | |
Died | 11 October 1944 (aged 53) |
Cause of death | Execution by shooting |
Occupation(s) | School teacher (briefly) Politician Anti-Nazi activist |
Political party | SPD KPD |
Spouse | Hilde _____ (1894–1989) |
Children | Annemarie Raeder (?-2008) Helmut Schneller (1922–2010) |
Ernst Schneller (8 November 1890 – 11 October 1944) was a German school teacher. In 1914 he volunteered to join the army when
On 11 October 1944, Ernst Schneller was one of 24 German camp inmates deemed culpable of "illegal activities", taken out, and together with three French antifascists shot dead by Nazi paramilitaries (SS).[1][2][3]
Life
Provenance and early years
Ernst Schneller was born in Leipzig, the sixth child of a railway official.[2] His father was also a veteran of the Royal Saxon Army. His father died in 1895 but there are nevertheless indications that aspects of the family's military tradition were inherited by the son.[1]
He attended a teacher training institution from which he briefly withdrew in 1910 under circumstances that remain unclear.[4] He nevertheless passed the necessary exams to become a teaching assistant, and worked in this capacity from 1911 till 1913 at Kirchberg im Erzgebirge, a small town in the mining region south of Zwickau. He then passed more exams and became a qualified teacher, moving to a school in Leipzig. War broke out in July 1914 and Schneller unhesitatingly volunteered for military service.[1][5] In 1916 he was sent on an officers' training course, after which he was promoted to the rank of Leutnant. Further promotions followed. By 1917/1918, still on the Eastern Front, Ernst Schneller was serving as a "Bataillonsadjutant".[1] He also found time, in 1916, to marry Hilde (1894–1989).[5]
A return to teaching amid postwar instability
Widespread destitution, intensified by the burden on government finances of
Landtag member
In November 1920 the party nominated him as a candidate for election to the regional parliament ("Sächsischer Landtag"), which was based in Leipzig. However, the communists polled only 5.7% of the total vote in the election in Saxony, and Schneller narrowly failed to gain a seat. However, on 23 March 1921 Gottfried Weimer, a Communist who had been elected to the parliament, retired and in April 1921 his seat passed to Schneller.[1] In the parliament he spoke frequently on his specialist subject, calling for what amounted to a revolution on public education. Tireless campaigning on behalf of children and young people became a long-standing theme of his political career.[5] Aspects of his party's policy which he advocated on the floor of the parliament included free school meals and access to "learning resources" along with free medical and dental check-ups for school children and pre-school children.
His military skills again came into play during the 1921 March Action (brief uprising) which this time was a Communist-led insurrection, though sources are unclear as to the nature and extent of his involvement.[1] During 1921 there are indications that Schneller may have been drawing close to Paul Levi and his group of "moderates" within the Communist Party. However, he remained a loyal Communist Party member after Levi, who had started 1921 as party leader, was excluded from it. At the end of 1921 Schneller himself was elected to head up the local party leadership team for the Aue-Schwarzenberg sub-district. He nevertheless still managed to combine his various political roles and responsibilities with his work as a school teacher, leading what some regarded as a somewhat ascetic existence. He avoided alcohol. By 1923 he was closely associated with the party leadership around Heinrich Brandler, who in 1923 entrusted him with building up the para-military Proletarische Hundertschaften (loosely, "Proletarian Centurions") in Saxony (within which he took a leadership role) and other quasi-military tasks.[1][2]
Involvement in the
Reichstag and Central Committee member
In
The Ninth Party Congress was held at
The Tenth Party Congress was held at
After the death of
Schneller did indeed receive important appointments under the new leadership, becoming "Polleiter" (loosely, "Head of Policy") with the party leadership team ("Bezirksleitung") in the party's Erzgebirge-Vogtland. He arrived with an instruction from the national party leadership to isolate the left-wingers around Paul Bertz and Heinrich Wesche. At the Eleventh Party Congress, held at Essen in March 1927, he was re-elected to the Party Central Committee, now swollen to 35 members. He was also re-elected to its inner "Politburo".[1]
Career peak
During 1927/28 Schneller was intensively involved in party attempts to uncover the
It was also in 1928 that Ernst Thälmann's comrade and close friend, John Wittorf from the Hamburg party leadership, was involved in a major embezzlement scandal. On 26 September 1928 a meeting of the Central Committee took place at which Ernst Thälmann, like other party leaders before him, was removed from the leadership. The meeting was chaired by Schneller.[10] However, Thälmann arranged for the matter to be referred to the ECCI in Moscow, which gave Stalin the opportunity to reverse Thälmann's removal. The German party's Central; Committee decision to condemn Thälmann had been "mistaken". The result was that Ernst Thälmann was rapidly "rehabilitated" and restored to the leadership: the Communist Party of Germany fell more firmly under Moscow's control than ever. The result of the "error" for Ernst Schneller was rapid removal from the Politburo. The Twelfth Party Congress was held in the Wedding quarter of Berlin in June 1929. This time thirty-eight comrades were elected to Central Committee membership. Ernst Schneller was no longer among them, however. He was nevertheless given a job by the Central Committee, in the "Business department" ("Geschäftsabteilung") where for some months he was made responsible for "party printed matter".[1]
His return to grace was only partial. However, at the Party Conference in October 1932 he was again given management-level responsibilities and then readmitted to the Central Committee. He took over the information Department. A few months later everything changed.
A Communist leader in Germany under National Socialism
The Reichstag fire took place on the night of 27 February 1933. Although the government, with almost indecent haste, identified it as part of a communist plot, many took the view that it was actually the government that appeared to have planned for such an eventuality. Several leading members of the Communist Party were promptly arrested. Ernst Schneller was among those arrested overnight in Berlin on 27/28 February 1933 and taken to the "Investigatory Prison" in Berlin-Moabit.[5] Because of the dangers inherent in the political situation, communist leaders had been instructed by the party not to stay with their families: Schneller was at home with his family in defiance of those instructions when the police came for him. The authorities immediately launched a rumour to the effect that he had defected to the National Socialists and betrayed party-leader Thälmann. Initially this item of fake news was widely believed, even in Communist circles.[1]
In April 1933 he was transferred to the newly opened Sonnenburg concentration camp. Schneller was moved again on 8 July 1933, this time to a penitentiary in Leipzig ("Gefangenenanstalt II") where he was held in investigatory detention. On 9 November 1933 he faced trial at the Supreme Court in Leipzig. Convicted of incitement to high treason, he was sentenced to six year's imprisonment and five years of deprivation of citizens' rights ("Ehrverlust"). On 16 November 1933 he was removed to the Waldheim Penitentiary where, for the next six years, he was held in solitary confinement.[5]
In July 1939, his jail term having been completed, Schneller was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was identified as Prisoner 764. He was later assigned a new number, "1181715". He was seconded to the "Klinkerwerk", effectively a large heavy-tile factory in the concentration camp. The work was inhumanly heavy and there is a report of an occasion when he collapsed, but with the support of comrades he recovered rapidly.[5] In the camp he became one of the leaders of an illegal Communist party group among the inmates:[12] he was able to ensure that the group were able to stay informed about political and military developments in the world outside.[5]
In March 1944 an
Family
Ernst and Hilde Schneller married in 1916.
Legacy
In the
In 1977, the East German Television Service ("Deutscher Fernsehfunk" / DFF) produced a biographical film about Schneller. Horst Schulze played the part of Ernst Schneller. The part of his wife Hilde was played by a leading star of East German cinema, Renate Blume.[14] Schneller was featured again in the 1986 DFF biographical film about Ernst Thälmann. This time Schneller was portrayed by Wilfried Pucher.
In September 1992 a Memorial to the Murdered Members of the Reichstag was erected in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Ernst Schneller is one of the 96 commemorated on it.
On 11 October 2014 the memorial piece "Klang der Erinnerung" ("Voice of remembering") by arts student Eva Susanne Schmidhuber was unveiled at the Sachsenhausen Memorial Centre. Schmidhuber's work commemorates 27 prisoners shot dead at the concentration camp seventy years before. It was selected as part of an arts competition arranged by the Berlin-Weißensee Arts Academy in collaboration with the surviving friends and relatives of the victims.[17]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Hermann Weber; Andreas Herbst. "Schneller, Ernst * 8.11.1890, † 11.10.1944". Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Ernst Schneller (1890–1944)". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstätte“ e.V., Ziegenhals, Königs-Wusterhausen. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
- ^ )
- ^ "Ernst Schneller". Markgraf-Albrecht-Gymnasium Osterburg. Archived from the original on 29 September 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Lisa Oehlert (Georg-Henning-Preis-Trägerin); Herma Lautenschläger (supervisor) (22 December 2009). ""Aus Gefühl wird Überzeugung..." Ernst Schneller, der zum Vorbild einer Generation werden sollte" (PDF). Besondere Lernleistung im Fach Geschichte. Gymnasium St. Augustin zu Grimma. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
- ^ "Parliamentary portrait of Ernst Schneller". Reichstags-Handbuch, Wahlperiode ..., Bd.: 1928 = 4. Wahlperiode, Berlin, 1928. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. p. 534. Retrieved 29 September 2018.
- ^ "Schneller, Ernst; Lehrer in Schwarzenberg (Sachsen). Wahlkr. 30 (Chemnitz-Zwickau)". Reichstags-Handbuch, Wahlperiode ..., Bd.: 1930 = 5. Wahlperiode, Berlin, 1930. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. p. 466. Retrieved 29 September 2018.
- ^ "The Lohmann Affair". Approved for release ... Historical review program 22 Sept 93. Central Intelligence Agency, Langley VA. 1 July 2008. Archived from the original on 30 September 2018. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
- )
- ^ Lea Haro (January 2007). "The Wittorf Affair" (PDF). The beginning of the end: The political theory of the Gernain Communist Party to the third period .... Thesis submitted for degree of PhD. The University of Glasgow. pp. 181–184. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
- ^ "Teilnehmer an der Tagung des ZK der KPD am 07. Februar 1933". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstätte“ e.V., Ziegenhals, Königs-Wusterhausen. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
- ^ Karl Stenzel. "Max Reimann". Es kam dann eine Zeit, wo das internationale Lagerkomitee, unter Führung von Max Reimann sich damit beschäftigte, was ist, wenn wir evakuiert werden. Michael Reimann, Zeesen. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
- ^ Hermann Langbein: …nicht wie die Schafe zur Schlachtbank – Widerstand in den nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern. Frankfurt am Main 1980, p. 227f.
- ^ a b "Ernst Schneller". Ein zweiteiliger Film des Fernsehens der DDR über den Widerstandskämpfer und Kommunist (Brief description of a 1977 television film drama based on episodes from Ernst Schneller's life). Neues Deutschland Druckerei und Verlag GmbH, Berlin. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
- ^ "DDR-Kabarettautor Hans Rascher ist tot". Wie erst jetzt bekannt wurde, verstarb am 25 Juli. Lausitzer VerlagsService GmbH, Cottbus. 3 August 2010. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
- ISBN 978-3-939680-07-9, p. 68
- ^ Andreas Meyer (12 October 2015). "Rede zur Einweihung des Denkmals". Speech delivered at the unveiling of the "Klang der Erinnerung" memorial. Sachsenhausen-Komitee in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland e.V., Berlin. Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 2 October 2018.