Wilhelm Koenen

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Wilhelm Koenen (7 April 1886 – 19 October 1963) was a German communist activist and an East German politician. He was married to Emmy Damerius-Koenen and was the father of Heinrich Koenen and Johanna Koenen.

Biographical details

Koenen was born in

In 1913, he became a member of the local district SPD leadership and with the majority of the local membership, joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in 1917.^[1] During the German Revolution of 1918–1919, Koenen was the commissar of the Worker and Soldiers' Council of the Halle-Merseburg district. In the 1919–1920 German federal election, he was elected to the Weimar National Assembly. On 16 July 1919, in the National Assembly, he called for the adoption of a constitutional provision that would exclusively grant to the authorities and charitable organizations the right to hold public film screenings for adolescents so that youth would be protected from the wheeling and dealing of "the capitalists".^[3]

In 1919, Koenen was a member of the board of the USPD's

From 1924, he was a member of the "Middle Group" (Mittelgruppe) and in 1925, actively supported the leadership group headed by

Koenen left Germany in June 1933 on the decision of the party leadership,[1] first going to the Saarland, then still under foreign occupation. He then went to France, where he was involved in the "Lutetia circle", trying to build a popular front against the Hitler régime. From 1935 to 1938, he lived in Czechoslovakia, where he was married to Emmy Damerius. They moved to England, where they were both taken into custody as an "enemy aliens" in 1940. She was sent to the Isle of Man until 1941; he was shipped to an internment camp in Canada until 1942. In 1943, he was a founding member of the "Free Germany" movement in London. In 1944, he worked at the British black propaganda radio station, Soldatensender Calais.

In 1945, he returned to Germany and took part in rebuilding the KPD. After the forced merger of the SPD and the KPD into the

Koenen's son Heinrich was arrested by the Gestapo at the home of Ilse Stöbe on 29 October 1942, and in February 1945 was shot at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.^[7]

His brother, Bernard Koenen was arrested briefly during the Great Purge.^[8] He and his brother are both buried at the Socialists' Memorial at the Berlin cemetery, Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde. A street in Sangerhausen is named after Wilhelm Koenen.

Sources

• Horst Neumann: Wilhelm Koenen, Bibliographisches Institut: Leipzig 1971
• Asja Braune: Konsequent den unbequemen Weg gegangen. Adele Schreiber (1872–1957) Politikerin, Frauenrechtlerin, Journalistin 2002 in 2 Bänden = Diss. HU Berlin 2003.- Kap. 7 online: Das Exil mit Ausführungen zur Freien Deutschen Bewegung (FDB) und über die Freie Deutsche Hochschule in Großbritannien

References