Artur Becker

Artur Becker (12 May 1905 – 16 May 1938) was a German communist politician and functionary of the Young Communist League of Germany (KJVD). Elected to the Reichstag in 1930, he fled the country after the Nazis came to power in 1933 and later volunteered in the International Brigades fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.

During his time in Spain, Becker served as a political commissar in the Thälmann Battalion until he was wounded and captured by the Nationalist side in April 1938, and held for approximately one year before being executed.

Becker was upheld as a national hero in East Germany, and continues to be honored by the modern-day Free German Youth.

Biography Born into a working-class family, Becker's father was active in the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). After graduating from elementary school in Remscheid, Becker was trained as a locksmith and lathe operator. As a youth, he joined the Free Socialist Youth in 1919, the Young Communist League (KJVD) in 1920, and the Communist Party (KPD) in 1922.

During the occupation of the Ruhr area in 1923 he was involved in active resistance.

From 1926 he worked as a politician, first as leader of the communist youth on the Lower Rhine from 1926 to 1928, from 1928 as a member of the executive committee of the Communist Youth International, and from 1931 to 1932 as chairman of the central committee of the KJVD. In 1930 he was elected to the Reichstag on the Reich election proposal of the KPD. In the Reichstag elections in July and November 1932, as well as in March 1933, he was elected as one of the deputies for constituency 23 (Düsseldorf-West) elected. Since the mandates of the KPD in the parliament elected in 1933 were canceled before the constituent session, Becker was a member of the Reichstag from October 1930 to January 1933. He was the youngest member of the house.

As a political opponent of Nazism, he was forced to emigrate in 1933 and fled to Moscow.

He later was an international organizer for the defense of the Spanish Republic. From August 1937 he took part in the armed struggles, from the spring of 1938 as Political Commissar of the Thälmann Battalion of the International Brigades.