Felix Fechenbach

Who was Felix Fechenbach?

Felix Fechenbach was a German-Jewish journalist, poet and political activist, who was murdered by the Nazis.

He was born in Mergentheim as the son of a baker. He took vocational education in Würzburg until 1910. Later, he worked in a shoe store. In 1911 he worked in Frankfurt but got fired because of a strike he led against unpaid work. From 1912 until 1914 he was a party secretary of the SPD in Munich,he served in World War I was wounded, became a pacifist, later becoming state secretary. During World War I he was a pacifist and served as Private Secretary for Kurt Eisner, the prime minister of Bavaria, shortly after the war.

He was jailed in 1922 for publishing an alleged secret diplomatic telegram while Staats Secretary under Eisner, before the Münchner Räterepublik. The decision was a scandal because the court at that time had no standing under the Weimar Constitution. He was pardoned in 1924. He thereafter travelled to Berlin and worked for Kinderfreunde and criticised the SPD in his children's stories while still a member of the party.

In 1929, he became the editor in chief of the SPD newspaper Volksblatt in Detmold. On March 11, 1933 he was jailed by the new Nazi government for his anti-fascist activities, and was shot on August 7 by members of the SS and SA in a forest between Detmold and Warburg while being transported to the Dachau concentration camp. The man most involved was a storm-tropper.