Jakob Dautzenberg (born 2 February 1897, in

Würselen Würselen (, Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ) is a town in the borough of Aachen (district), Aachen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Würselen lies north of the city of Aachen in the immediate vicinity of the tripoint of Belgium, ...

(today part of the

district of Aachen The district of Aachen () is a district in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Heinsberg, Düren, Euskirchen, and also the Netherlands province of Limburg and the Belgian province of Liège. Its administrative b ...

); died 20 August 1979 in

Aachen Aachen is the List of cities in North Rhine-Westphalia by population, 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, 27th-largest city of Germany, with around 261,000 inhabitants. Aachen is locat ...

) was a German politician, member of the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (, ; KPD ) was a major Far-left politics, far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, German resistance to Nazism, underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and minor party ...

, and resistance fighter against the Nazis. He was a member of the German Parliament during the Weimar Republic.

Life

Dautzenberg, the son of foremen, was a trained

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

man. In 1912 he became a union member, and in 1922 he joined the

(KPD). He was a community representative for Haaren in the region of

and, from 1925, in the district assembly of Aachen. In 1928, he became the full-time KPD Secretary in Aachen (until 1932). From 1928 until 1930 he was a member of the German Parliament

Reichstag (Weimar Republic) The Reichstag of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was the lower house of Germany's parliament; the upper house was the Reichsrat (Germany), Reichsrat, which represented the states. The Reichstag convened for the first time on 24 June 1920, taki ...

for the Communist Party, representing the election region of Cologne-Aachen. He stayed Communist Party Secretary of Aachen until 1932, and was subsequently party secretary in Cologne. After the ''

Machtergreifung The rise to power of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919, when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He quickly rose t ...

'', or “seizure of power”, by the Nazis in 1933, he became unemployed. In 1933 and 1934 he was in pre-trial detention, after which he again worked as a foundryman. Dautzenberg put together a resistance group in Aachen and

Eschweiler Eschweiler (, Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ) is a municipality in the district of Aachen (district), Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany on the river Inde, near the German-Dutch-Belgian border, and about east of Aachen and w ...

, which was broken up by the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

in August 1944. Dautzenberg was arrested together with 200 other anti-fascists. In the

Neuengamme concentration camp Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and List of subcamps of Neuengamme, more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme, Hamburg, N ...

, he was subject to medical experimentation that involved exposure to deadly pathogens. Seriously ill, he was taken to the

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen (), or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in Northern Germany, northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen, Lower Saxony, Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, ...

, where he was liberated in April 1945. When he returned to Haaren, his face and body were disfigured by fungal growths. Running as a member of the Communist Party, he was again elected in 1946 to the regional assembly surrounding Aachen. Until the Communist Party was banned in 1956, he worked as district party manager for the

Ruhr region The Ruhr ( ; , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr Area, sometimes Ruhr District, Ruhr Region, or Ruhr Valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 1,160/km2 and a populatio ...

, an urban, industrial area in central

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a States of Germany, state () in Old states of Germany, Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the List of German states by population, most ...

. Afterwards, he retired to Haaren. In 1967, public prosecutors accused him of still working for the outlawed Communist Party, but the courts acquitted him. In 1968, he joined the new

German Communist Party The German Communist Party (, ) is a communist party in Germany. The DKP supports far-left positions and was an observer member of the European Left before leaving in February 2016. History The DKP considered itself a reconstitution of the C ...

References

*
Dautzenberg, Jakob
'. In:

Hermann Weber Hermann Weber (23 August 1928 – 29 December 2014) was a German historian and political scientist. He has been described as "the man who knew everything about the German Democratic Republic". Life Early years Hermann Weber was born into a work ...

, Andreas Herbst (Hrsg.): ''Deutsche Kommunisten. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 bis 1945''. Zweite, überarbeitete und stark erweiterte Auflage. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, , S. 178f.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dautzenberg, Jakob 1897 births 1979 deaths Communist Party of Germany politicians German Communist Party politicians Members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic Communists in the German Resistance Politicians from Aachen