Friedrich Lux
* 1892

Friedrich Lux, born in1892
Rathausmarkt 1 (to the left of city hall) (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

FRIEDRICH LUX
MdHB (Member of the Hamburg City Parliament) 1928 – 1933 KPD
Born in 1892
ARRESTED ON 25 JULY 1933
FUHLSBÜTTEL CONCENTRATION CAMP
MISTREATED AT
GESTAPO HEADQUARTERS
DEAD ON 6 NOV. 1933

Friedrich Albert Lux was born on 28 Sept. 1892 in Imten/District of Wehlau (East Prussia) as the son of the worker Carl Lux and his wife Wilhelmine. After finishing eight years of elementary school (Volksschule), he was compelled to earn his own living, and in 1907, at the age of 15, he came to Hamburg on an indirect route. There, he found work in the port and thus his way into the working-class movement. One year later, he joined the “Socialist Young Workers” (Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend – SAJ) and the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD) that same year. In 1911, he became a member of the longshoremen’s union.

In Oct. 1912, Friedrich Lux completed his military service with the 84th Infantry Regiment in Schleswig. In the First World War, he was deployed as a non-commissioned officer of the 213th Infantry Reserve Regiment at the Western front. Initially fighting in the trench warfare on the Isère River, in 1915 he took part in the battles around Ypres, in 1916 in the Battle of the Somme. In Oct. 1916, Lux was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. During the spring offensive of 1918, he was promoted to sergeant at Armentieres. After the end of the war, Lux was discharged from military service on 13 Dec. 1918 to return to Hamburg.

Even prior to the war ending, he had joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – USPD), which had formed in 1917 as a rallying point for opponents of the German war aims policy supported by the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (Mehrheitssozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – MSPD). Like many of his later Communist colleagues in the Hamburg City Parliament, Lux was also among those who were not satisfied with the goals achieved in the German Revolution of 1918/19 (“Novemberrevolution”) and therefore dedicated themselves to the slogan of “pushing the revolution further.” For this reason, Lux, along with the left wing of the USPD, joined the German Communist Party (KPD) at the end of 1920, after the National Assembly had worked out a new Republican constitution, with the first Reichstag elections in 1920 conferring government responsibility to the “Weimar Coalition” comprised of the SPD, DDP (German Democratic Party), and the Catholic Center Party.

In the 1920s, Friedrich Lux was employed as a stevedore in the port, devoting himself primarily to trade union work. After 1923, the Communist trade union official actively participated in setting up the “Red Aid” (“Rote Hilfe”) in Hamburg. During the “October Uprising” (Oktoberaufstand) in 1923, Lux, who lived close to Grossneumarkt, fought on the barricades in Hamburg-Neustadt.

In early 1929, he led, as a trade union official and representative of the “Revolutionary Union Opposition” (“Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts-Opposition” – RGO) a wildcat longshoremen’s strike, which met only with little sympathy among Social Democratic members of the workers’ representative committee. This instance, as well as further attempts to organize wildcat strikes in 1929, contributed to widening the rifts within the working class. Lux belonged to the group around Heinz Neumann, who under the slogan of “Strike at the Fascists wherever you encounter them!” called for engaging in violent street fighting, thus provoking harsh reactions by Hamburg police headed by Senator Adolph Schönfelder (SPD).

In Oct. 1928, Friedrich Lux took up a mandate as a successor to a vacated parliamentary seat in the Hamburg City Parliament, to which he would belong until the dissolution by the Nazis of the last parliament resulting from free elections. In the city parliament, too, he was preeminent as a member of the radical wing of his party. Thus, in 1929, the topics at the center of his speeches were above all the striking shipyard workers of the RGO as well as the social distress of the unemployed, for which he held the SPD responsible for the most part.

On 18 Mar. 1931, Lux was among those deputies of the Communist parliamentary group who began a brawl with the deputies of the National Socialist Party due to the murder of their fellow Communist parliamentary party member Ernst Henning. This incident, unprecedented in the history of the Hamburg Parliament, resulted in this group of deputies being banned from participating in parliamentary sessions for one month.

Lux’ entry into the city parliament marked at the same time the beginning of his rapid rise to the highest bodies of the KPD: In the spring of 1929, he became, as a full-time party secretary, initially a member of the KPD district leadership; in June of that year, at the “Wedding [a Berlin quarter] Party Conference,” he was elected to the Central Committee of the KPD. His long-standing trade union work was decisive for his promotion to full-time RGO Secretary. This rise, however, was followed by a fall that was just as sudden as it was deep: Because of the fundamental, irreconcilable factional disputes within the party leadership, Friedrich Lux, an exponent of the “Neumann wing,” was eliminated from the KPD’s Central Committee in 1932.

Politically disempowered as a party functionary, Lux nevertheless remained active in the military apparatus of the KPD as a close collaborator of Hans Kippenberger. Lux, regarded as a GPU [Soviet State Political Directorate] man of the north, was participating early on in preparations to transition the KPD into illegal underground activity. At the end of 1932, he set up a party base in Copenhagen from which to coordinate political work in Northern Germany in case of a party ban.

Thus, one of the preconditions had been created toward printing the Rote Fahne (“Red Flag”) in the Danish capital in 1933/34 and transporting copies by sea from there to Northern Germany. Starting in 1935, the intention was for Copenhagen office of the “Wasserkante” District leadership to be transformed into the “Section Leadership ‘North’” (Abschnittsleitung “Nord”).

After the Reichstag fire and the subsequent strike against the KPD, Lux played a leading role in building up the illegal party organization in the “Wasserkante” District. Until his arrest, he coordinated the distribution of KPD information and propaganda materials. In this connection, he was in close contact with Emil Schwarz and Egon Nickel, who had established a distributor system in Eppendorf and Barmbek. Even prior to the Nazis assuming power, Lux had set up a secret office in two rented rooms on Pferdemarkt, where important personnel files were evacuated from the KPD’s District leadership at Valentinskamp. This office was used well into the early summer of 1933.

On 15 July of that year, Friedrich Lux was arrested and committed to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, in whose infamous “B wing” prisoners were subjected to the most severe mistreatment and torture. Murders committed either there by the SS special guards or during the interrogations at Gestapo headquarters were usually concealed as suicides. Even the foreign press reported on the severe mistreatment to which Friedrich Lux was exposed: Continuous torture was aimed at extorting information about the illegal party organization of the KPD.

On 6 Nov. 1933, Friedrich Lux allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in cell 86 of the police station in the Holstenglacis pretrial detention facility. His body was buried in Ohlsdorf cemetery a few days later, on 11 Nov. 1933.

Author(s)/copyright: Text courtesy of the City Parliament of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (ed.), taken from: Jörn Lindner/Frank Müller: Mitglieder der Bürgerschaft – Opfer totalitärer Verfolgung, 3rd revised and expanded edition, Hamburg 2012.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.