Ottomar Geschke

Ottomar Georg Alexander Geschke (16 November 1882 – 17 May 1957) was a German politician, trade unionist and anti-Nazi activist.

Biography Geschke was born into a blacksmith's family. After receiving an elementary education he trained as a locksmith and worked in Berlin. From 1908 he participated in the labor movement by joining the German Metal Workers' Union. In 1910, Geschke joined the SPD and in 1917, due to disagreement on the issue of providing military loans, he moved to the USPD. During the November Revolution of 1918 he was elected a member of the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' Council.

Geschke was a member of the Spartacus League and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919. That year, he fought in the Spartacist uprising, for which he was imprisoned from June to November 1919. In 1920 he worked in the KPD's trade union department, and in 1923 he was elected to the Central Committee of the KPD as a representative of the left wing. That same year, he served in the party's military apparatus during preparations for the German October. From 1925 he was a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the party. He was a member of the Executive Bureau of the Red International of Trade Unions and from 1924 was a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. From 1921 to 1924 Geschke was elected to the Prussian Landtag. In the elections of 1924 he was elected to the Reichstag and retained his mandate until July 1932. Geschke did not support party leader Ernst Thälmann during the Wittorf Affair and was sidelined in the party as a result.

For his anti-fascist activities, Geschke was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned in prisons and concentration camps. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Geschke was arrested and held in the Lichtenburg, Sonnenburg and Buchenwald concentration camps. In 1940 he was released from prison and lived in Köslin under police surveillance.

He was buried in the Memorial of the Socialists at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin.