Hans Beimler

Beimler, Hans 

Born July 2, 1895; died Dec. 1, 1936. German communist, one of the heroes of the struggle against fascism.

Beimler was a metalworker. In 1918 he joined the “Spar-tacus Union.” He was a member of the Communist Party of Germany from the day of its founding. In 1919 he took part in the armed defense of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. After 1936 he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany. In 1932 he became a deputy to the German Reichstag. With the establishment of the fascist dictatorship, he was arrested (in April 1933) and sent to the Dachau concentration camp; in May 1933 he escaped from the camp. After the beginning of the fascist mutiny and Italo-German intervention in Spain (1936), Beimler took part in the organization of detachments of German antifascists to aid the Spanish Republican government and was political commissar of the Thälmann Battalion. He died during the battle of Madrid. In 1956 the Beimler Medal was instituted in the German Democratic Republic to reward active participants in the international brigades.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Lager’ smerti Dakhau. Moscow, 1933.

REFERENCES

Helden des Widerstandskampfes gegen Faschismus und Krieg. Berlin, 1952. Pages 32–35.
Erkämpft das Menschenrecht: Lebensbilder und letzte Briefe antifaschistischer Widerstandskämpfer. Berlin, 1958. Pages 59–61.