30 Facts About Fritz Schulte

Fritz Schulte sometimes identified in contemporary sources by his later party code name as Fritz Schweizer, was a prominent and increasingly influential member of the German Communist Party leadership team between 1922 and 1934.

Fritz Schulte represented a Dusseldorf electoral district as a member of the Reichstag between 1930 and the abolition of democracy three years later.

Fritz Schulte died as an inmate of a Soviet labour camp, almost certainly as a result of torture suffered during the course of a long succession of questioning sessions conducted by the Soviet security service.

Fritz Schulte was born in Husten during the high period of Wilhelmine Germany.

The family was powerfully Roman Catholic, and Fritz Schulte is reported to have served for a number of years as a youthful official with Catholic youth organisations, although by the time he grew up he was describing himself as "religionslos" or a "Dissident", indicating subsequent rejection of organised religion.

Fritz Schulte was politicised by his experiences of the First World War, which broke out in July 1914 and lasted for more than four years.

Fritz Schulte fought as a soldier in the German army.

Fritz Schulte himself emerged as a leading figure within the radical left wing break-away group, becoming in 1922 full-time secretary of the new - Communist Party oriented - trades union that had resulted from the split.

Fritz Schulte was a member of the Unterbezirksleitung for the party in the Solingen region.

Fritz Schulte was for a short time replaced in the role by Lex Ende, apparently in order to that he might be made more available for national party functions.

At the Communist Party's eleventh party congress, held in Essen during the first week of March 1927, Fritz Schulte was elected to the Party Central Committee.

Between July 1932 and 1933, possibly at the suggestion of party leader Ernst Thalmann, Fritz Schulte served as the official national leader of the RGO in succession to Franz Dahlem.

In September 1930 Fritz Schulte was elected to membership of the Reichstag, representing Electoral District 22.

Fritz Schulte was re-elected in the General Election of July 1932 and again in that of November 1932.

Sources are silent as to what, if anything, Fritz Schulte contributed as a member of the Reichstag.

Fritz Schulte remained engaged in the internal politics of the Communist Party from his "Lower Rhine" power base, irrespective of any parliamentary or other political duties in Berlin.

Fritz Schulte was re-elected to the Party Central Committee and, this time, elected to membership of the central committee's inner caucus, the Politburo.

Political work - unless in support of the government - became illegal, but Fritz Schulte nevertheless remained engaged, avoiding arrest by "going underground", which meant staying away from one's registered home address and in other ways avoiding the security services by all possible means.

Fritz Schulte was nevertheless able to meet up with comrades, notably Walter Ulbricht, John Schehr and Hermann Schubert.

Between Ulbricht, Schehr and Schubert a struggle for leadership developed, from which Fritz Schulte seems to have remained detached.

Fritz Schulte, crossing the border to the south of Berlin and travelling via Prague, became the last of the four to leave Berlin.

Fritz Schulte had been, in addition, the last member of the party politburo to leave Germany in the wake of the Hitler take-over.

Fritz Schulte now remained in Paris between 1933 and 1935.

In Paris, Fritz Schulte found himself allied with Hermann Schubert, as the two of them adopted the party tactics of imposing control by means of the "ultra-leftist intransigence" to which comrades had become accustomed during the period of Thalmann's leadership.

Meanwhile, between 1933 and 1935 Fritz Schulte briefly resumed at least nominal leadership of the RGO; but the RGO itself was already collapsing, crushed in Germany by the government, while outside Hitler's reach exiled elements decided that the movement had become, at best, a distraction from the need to unite against Hitler.

Fritz Schulte himself settled in Moscow in 1934 por 1935 only after a lengthy stay in Prague.

Between 15 December 1935 and 1 June 1936 Fritz Schulte was placed in charge of the "Agitation and Propaganda" office at the "Profintern", an offshoot of the Comintern tasked with international coordination of communist activism in trades union movements.

Fritz Schulte was then removed and sent to work in a large Moscow-based company.

Fritz Schulte died at the labour camp on 10 May 1943, his death having almost certainly been hastened by the harsh living and working conditions top which he had been subjected in the Soviet "correctional" camp.

Fritz Schulte's son, called Fritz Schulte, had become a wartime soldier and was "killed in action" soon afterwards in the fighting on the Russian front.