Willi Agatz

Wilhelm "Willi" Agatz (10 June 1904 – 29 August 1957) was a German communist trade unionist, politician and resistance fighter of the Communist Party (KPD) who served in the Reichstag before World War II and the Bundestag after.

Early life Wilhelm Agatz was born in the district of Essen, the son of Social Democratic miner Ludgar Agatz and factory worker Maria, née Blondrath. He attended elementary school in Essen and did an apprenticeship as a miner at the and later at the in Bergerhausen. In 1920 he joined and founded a local group of the Socialist Workers' Youth. After completing his apprenticeship, he joined the Union of Miners of Germany (VdBD) and was elected to the works council at the Ludwig mine.

Political career Agatz joined the Young Communist League in 1922 and the Communist Party proper in 1924. He was detained for over a year at Columbia-Haus, Alexanderplatz, and Moabit before the People's Court sentenced him to three more years at the Luckau prison. Rather than being released at the end of his sentence, he was sent to Sachsenhausen, where he was interned until October 1939.

Agatz was taken prisoner by the Soviets and sent to the Klaipeda POW Camp, where he became head of the Antifascist Committee. He was released on 7 May 1946, exactly one year after the German surrender. He lost re-election in 1948 and was expelled from the union altogether in 1950, both as a result of anticommunist sentiment. He was also a member of the KPD Party Executive in West Germany until it was banned in 1956.

Soon after leaving office, Agatz was charged with treason relating to the publication and distribution of propaganda. Although the proceedings were temporarily suspended, Agatz decided to move to East Germany and continue his propaganda work from there. At the same time, his health began to rapidly deteriorate, and he eventually died in East Berlin on 28 August 1957. He was 53 years old.

The chief physician's report stated:

Legacy In East Germany, the (VEB Steinkohlenwerk Freital) was renamed VEB Steinkohlenwerk "Willi Agatz" in 1958. It operated a mine in the Döhlen Basin in Dresden- and was taken over in 1968 as the by the (Soviet-German Joint Stock Company) in order to mine the uranium-rich hard coal there. Additionally, the sanatorium for dust lung patients in Bad Suderode was named after him until 1990.

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