Jakob Dautzenberg (born 2 February 1897, in Würselen (today part of the

district of Aachen The district of Aachen (german: link=yes, Städteregion 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 pro ...

); died 20 August 1979 in

Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

) was a German politician, member of the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

, 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, which represented the states. The Reichstag convened for the first time on 24 June 1920, taking over from the Wei ...

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 Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...

'', 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, which was broken up by the

Gestapo The (), 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 Prussia into one organi ...

in August 1944. Dautzenberg was arrested together with 200 other anti-fascists. In the Neuengamme concentration camp, he was subject to medical experimentation that involved exposure to deadly pathogens. Seriously ill, he was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration 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, an urban, industrial area in central

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia (german: Nordrhein-Westfalen, ; li, Noordrien-Wesfale ; nds, Noordrhien-Westfalen; ksh, Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale), commonly shortened to NRW (), is a States of Germany, state (''Land'') in Western Germany. With more tha ...

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

References

*
Dautzenberg, Jakob
'. In: Hermann Weber, 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 People from Aachen