Hugo Paul

Hugo Paul (28 October 1905 – 12 October 1962) was a German politician (KPD). In 1932 he was briefly a member of the country's national parliament ("Reichstag").

Early life Hugo Paul was born into a working-class family in Hagen, an industrial city a short distance to the south of Dortmund. On leaving school he embarked on an apprenticeship as a toolmaker. He joined the Young Communists when he was 15, 1932 was a year of mounting political crisis, and a second general election took place in November 1932, in which the Nazi Party lost 34 seats and the Communist Party actually gained 11. This time Hugo Paul was not elected, however.

German Federal Republic On the national stage, the British occupation zone (which included NRW) was merged with the US and French occupation zones and relaunched, in the wake of the 1948/49 Berlin Blockade, as the US-sponsored German Federal Republic. Conspicuously excluded was the region still administered as the Soviet occupation zone, which would itself be relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in October 1949. The German Federal Republic held its first General Election in August 1949 and the Communist Party received more than 5% of the national vote which entitled it to 15 seats. Hugo Paul's name had been on the candidate list, positioned high enough up for him to be one of those who now entered the national parliament ("Bundestag") as a Communist Party member of it. It was also reported that Paul had been distributing Communist Party leaflets urging supporters that the " ... hour has come for the German People to take responsibility" ("Die Stunde der Verantwortung des deutschen Volkes ist gekommen"). His political agitation had already triggered an application from a regional court to lift his parliamentary immunity two months earlier, in August 1951. At the end of 1951 he reacted by temporarily removing himself across the (still relatively porous) inner German frontier into East Germany. He nevertheless remained a member of the Bundestag till the end of the parliamentary term, in July 1953, vociferous in opposition to cutting of bread subsidies, and hostile to the Adenauer government's attempt to push through "Anglo-American colonial policies" in West Germany, accusing the government of applying a "divide and rule" strategy. In 1953 he was briefly imprisoned by the West German High Court, citing "high treason" and "endangering the state" apparently in connection with the government process launched two and a half years earlier.

Personal life On 1 July 1939 Hugo Paul married Luise Klesper (1912–1998) who was, like him, a Communist Party member. They first met in Remscheid after 1926, when he had become the local head of the Young Communist League of Germany.

By the time of his death of 12 October 1962 Hugo Paul had relocated to the German Democratic Republic. He died suddenly from a pulmonary embolism while undergoing back surgery. There are indications that the back surgery had become necessary to avert rapidly developing spinal paralysis which was an after effect of the torture he had undergone during the Nazi period.