Martin Weise (12 May 1903 in

Torgau Torgau () is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district Nordsachsen. Outside Germany, the town is best known as where on 25 April 1945, the United States and Soviet Armies forces first ...

; 15 November 1943 in

Brandenburg-Görden Prison Brandenburg-Görden Prison is located on Anton-Saefkow-Allee in the Görden quarter of Brandenburg an der Havel. Erected between 1927 and 1935, it was built to be the most secure and modern prison in Europe. Both criminal and political prisoners we ...

) was a German journalist, member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and a resistance fighter against the Nazis during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. From 1929 to 1934, Weiss published the socialist

Die Rote Fahne ''Die Rote Fahne'' (, ''The Red Flag'') was a German newspaper originally founded in 1876 by Socialist Worker's party leader Wilhelm Hasselmann, and which has been since published on and off, at times underground, by German Socialists and Communi ...

newspaper. He was arrested and sent to a concentration camp until 1939. When he was released, he decided to resist and made contact with Wilhelm Guddorf and the

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

based group around

Bernhard Bästlein Bernhard Bästlein (; 3 December 1894 in Hamburg – 18 September 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel) was a German Communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi régime. He was imprisoned very shortly after the Nazis seized power in 1933 and wa ...

and

Robert Abshagen Robert Abshagen (12 January 1911 in Hamburg – 10 July 1944) was a German Resistance fighter against National Socialism and a Communist. Biography Abshagen first worked in insurance, then as a sailor and finally, as a construction worker. He j ...

He became associated with an anti-fascist resistance group that was run by

Harro Schulze-Boysen Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen (; Schulze, 2 September 1909 – 22 December 1942) was a left-wing German publicist and Luftwaffe officer during World War II. As a young man, Schulze-Boysen grew up in prosperous family with two sibli ...

and Arvid Harnack, that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr.

Life

Wiese was the son of a teacher. As a secondary school pupil, Weise joined the

Wandervogel ''Wandervogel'' (plural: ''Wandervögel''; English: "Wandering Bird") is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 to 1933, who protested against industrialization by going to hike in the country and commune with n ...

movement, then the (FSJ), then later still in 1927, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), becoming a committed communist. Weise began studying history and philosophy in 1922. However, he had to abandon his studies in 1924 for financial reasons. Before becoming unemployed in 1928, Weise worked for a few years as a clerk in an insurance company. From 1929 to 1933 he was a district councillor for the KPD in Neukölln in Bertlin. From 1930, he wrote articles for the central organ of the KPD, ''

''. Weise was one of the editors who continued to publish this newspaper illegally after the Nazis Seizure of control in 1933. On 5 April 1934, he was sentenced by the Berlin Court of Appeal, to three years in prison, which he spent in the Brandenburg prison. He learned that his fiancée Baroness , who had worked as a courier for the KPD, had committed suicide in prison on 27 May 1936, after succumbing to Gestapo abuse while in custody. After his release from prison in 1937, he was transferred to

Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...

. After his release from the concentration camp in April 1939, Weise re-established contact with his friends, including Wilhelm Guddorf. Weise and Guddorf established links with the Hamburg communists,

and

. Together they collaborated on the pamphlet "Organised the Revolutionary Mass Struggle" (Organisiert den revolutionären Massenkampf). Together with John Sieg, Fritz Lange and Walter Husemann, Weise regularly distributed the underground journal ''Die innere Front'' (The Inner Front) in Berlin from the end of 1941, which contained appeals, information about the general situation and references to the broadcast frequencies of Moscow radio. Weise was arrested in December 1942. On 8 October 1943 the 2nd Senate of the People's Court condemned him to death because of "preparation for high treason and because of enemy favouritism". Weise was executed by beheading in Brandenburg prison on 15 November 1943.

Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weise, Martin 1903 births 1943 deaths Red Orchestra (espionage) People from Torgau German communists German resistance members Executed communists in the German Resistance German journalists People executed by Nazi Germany by guillotine