Kurt Lichtenstein
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Kurt Lichtenstein (Born 1 December 1911 Berlin, Died 12 October 1961 inner German border in Klötze) was a communist journalist, and his death was a notable result of the German Democratic Republic's border control policies.
Lichtenstein was the first man shot on the inner German border after the establishment of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. The circumstances were revisited in a criminal trial in 1997. The two defendants were acquitted of manslaughter.
Kurt Lichtenstein was the son of Jewish merchant and shoemaker Georg Lichtenstein and Henriette Lichtenstein (née Haase). He grew up in Berlin in the Prenzlauer Berg district, where he attended primary and higher secondary school. He left high school to work as an errand boy at a clothing store, later training as a tool maker. Unemployed in 1932–1933, Lichtenstein emigrated for political reasons. His parents divorced in 1924, and were deported with his sister to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941, where they are presumed to have died. In 1946, Lichtenstein married Gertrud Klapputh, an affiliate of the German Communist Party. They had two daughters, born in 1946 and 1948 and a son, born in 1947, with a daughter from Stanislaw Trabalski.[1] Lichtenstein spent the most part of his later life as a journalist for political newspapers.
Political life
At the age of 17, Liechtenstein joined the Communist Youth League (KJVD) in 1928, and by 1931 was a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In 1933, he emigrated to the Soviet Union due to racial and political persecution. After political training, Lichtenstein worked for the KJVD in the then politically autonomous Saarland. At this time he personally knew Erich Honecker. After the Saarland was annexed by Germany in 1935, he went to Paris where he was active in the communist movement, using the pseudonyms "Herbert", "Lauterbur", "Gaston Bergeaud" and "Jules Bardier".
Spanish Civil War and World War II
At the end of 1936 Lichtenstein went to Spain as an International Brigade volunteer, serving the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Until 1937 he served in the Thälmann Battalion as a Political Commissar. At times he was involved as a journalist in the work of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain. In this capacity he acted as the editor of the German edition of the International Brigade newspaper, Volontaire de la Liberté. He also worked for a Republican radio station. During the Battle of Ebro in 1938, as a member of a machine gun unit, he was wounded. In the final phase of the war he was demoted for cowardice before the enemy for his involvement in a withdrawal. After the Spanish Civil War, Lichtenstein fled to France. Due to the Second World War, the French state interned Lichtenstein in southern France in 1939 as an enemy alien. Fearing that the Vichy government would hand control of the camps to the Gestapo, Lichtenstein fled. On Communist Party instructions he joined the French Resistance in Toulouse. Also on Communist Party orders, Lichtenstein became a foreign worker in France, working using a false identity in a defense industry in Thuringia. In 1945 he was handed over to French forces and interned as a suspected Nazi. The French Communist Party intervened to free him, and he returned to Germany.
Post-War
After the Second World War Lichtenstein worked in the Ruhr for the Communist Party. He was a journalist for several communist-oriented newspapers. He also edited the Neuen Volkszeitung (New People's Daily). Between 1947 and 1950 he was a Communist Party member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. During inner-party purges in 1950, he was associated with the disgrace and fall of Kurt Müller. In 1953 Lichtenstein was expelled for anti-party activities and dismissed as chief editor of the Neuen Volkszeitung. For several years he worked odd jobs. He joined the German Socialist Party (SPD). In 1958 he received a journalistic appointment to the SPD-oriented Westfälische Rundschau which appeared in Dortmund.
