Jacob Walcher was a German communist politician and trade unionist who was a co-founder of the Communist Party of Germany in 1919.
17 Facts About Jacob Walcher
1.
2.
Jacob Walcher was born on May 7,1887, in the village of Wain in rural Upper Swabia to a family of poor religious Protestant farmers.
3.
Jacob Walcher joined the German Metal Workers' Union and the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1906.
4.
Jacob Walcher was chairman of this left-wing social democratic workers' youth organization from 1906 to 1910.
5.
Jacob Walcher worked as an editorial member of the Stuttgart SPD newspaper Schwabische Tagwacht from 1911 to 1914.
6.
Jacob Walcher took on the role of district chairman of the DMV in 1913.
7.
Jacob Walcher was therefore removed from the editorial board of the Schwabische Tagwacht together with his colleagues Arthur Crispien and Edwin Hoernle.
8.
In December 1918, Jacob Walcher chaired the founding party conference of the Communist Party of Germany together with Wilhelm Pieck and was a member of the executive committee of the Workers' and Soldiers' Council in Stuttgart.
9.
Jacob Walcher was a KPD delegate to the Second Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow in July 1920, and the Congress of Communist and Revolutionary Organisations of the Far East held in Moscow in 1922.
10.
Jacob Walcher was a member of the executive of the Red Trade Union International in Moscow from 1924 to 1926 and then worked as a member of the trade union department of the KPD Central Committee until 1928, when he was expelled from the KPD.
11.
Jacob Walcher sent the young SAPD comrade Willy Brandt to Norway to do political work.
12.
Jacob Walcher was able to escape and received a visa for the United States through the Emergency Rescue Committee.
13.
Jacob Walcher's escape route, like that of many German emigrants, led over the Pyrenees to Lisbon and by ship to the US, where Walcher worked again as a turner.
14.
Jacob Walcher's apartment was in the Bronx, in New York City.
15.
In 1956, Jacob Walcher was formally rehabilitated and was officially considered a "trade union veteran" in the GDR, but only received secondary awards from the GDR, such as the Fritz Heckert Medal of the Free German Trade Union Federation or the Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze in 1962.
16.
Jacob Walcher's urn was buried in the Pergolenweg grave complex of the Berlin Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde by decision of the Central Committee of the SED.
17.
However, the obituary of the Central Committee was worded in such a way that it was easy to see that Jacob Walcher should be erased from the SED's party memory.