Size: 30x22cm./11.8×8.6inch.
Weight: 1360gr./47.9oz.
Copper wallpiece made in the DDR with the image of Hans Beimler.
Hans Beimler (1895-1936) was a trade unionist, Communist Party official, deputy in the 1933 Reichstag, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis and a volunteer in the international brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic.
Beimler lived in Munich where he joined the Communist Party. In 1921 he was arrested for attempting to sabotage troop transports and was jailed for 2 years. A fervent Communist and anti-Nazi, he was elected as a KPD deputy to the Reichstag in the German federal election in July 1932.
Hitler came to power in January 1933 and with the Reichstag Fire Decree for the Protection of People and State, one month later, began interning political rivals, including KPD and SPD members, in concentration camps. Beimler and his wife Centa were both arrested in April 1933 and never saw each other again. Already known as an outspoken and defiant anti-Nazi voice in the Reichstag, Beimler and his party colleagues were subjected to two weeks of beatings at the Munich police before being sent to Dachau concentration camp. After four weeks, however, in May 1933 Beimler managed to escape, possibly with the help of some renegade camp guards. He managed to cross into Czechoslovakia and on to the Soviet Union.
After short periods in France and Switzerland, working for the International Red Aid (Rote Hilfe) organisation, Beimler arrived in Barcelona in August 1936 at the head of the first brigade of German anti-fascist volunteers, fighting alongside the Republican troops under the name “Thälmann’s Centurians”. He was subsequently appointed as commissar of all International Brigades supporting the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. In November 1936, while helping to defend Madrid from the Nationalists, he was shot and fatally wounded during the Battle of Madrid.
Hans Beimler was granted national hero status in the German Democratic Republic, with military divisions, ships, factories, schools and streets named in his honour.
