John Schehr (9 February 1896 – 1 February 1934) was a German political activist who became a Communist Party politician and ultimately, chairman (leader) of the Communist Party of Germany, following the arrest on 3 March 1933 of Ernst Thälmann. By this time the country was very rapidly being transformed into a one-party dictatorship, meaning that the party John Schehr led was outlawed, with those members of the leadership team who had not escaped abroad now living "underground" (unregistered) and in hiding. Schehr was nevertheless arrested on 13 November 1933 and taken to a Berlin concentration camp. He died when he was one of four men shot by Gestapo officials, reportedly "while escaping" during an overnight transport, following arrest.
After the end of the Nazi regime, Schehr and his three murdered comrades were widely commemorated as martyrs by the German Democratic Republic.
Life Provenance and early years John "Jonny" Schehr was born into a working-class family in the Ottensen quarter of Altona, Hamburg, at that time a robustly independent municipality, but subsequently - in 1937 - subsumed into Hamburg. His father worked as a hairdresser. As a boy he was particularly close to his mother, born Martha Fischer. John Schehr's younger brother, Franz, later recalled that the family always read the Hamburger Echo and Wahre Jacob, both staunchly SPD newspapers.: Schehr attended school locally in Ottensen and then completed an apprenticeship as a skilled metal worker with "Firma Meier" (Gerberstraße), an Altona manufacturing company. Towards the end of 1912, still aged only 16, joined the Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands"/ SPD). The next year he also joined the Transport Workers' Union He was working during this period on the Hamburg docks, which is how he came to know Ernst Thälmann.
War years and the beginnings of the Communist Party In 1916 or 1917 Schehr was conscripted into an artillery regiment and sent to serve at Neu Breisach, an important redoubt which at that time was part of Germany. Without intending it, he found himself promoted to the rank of a "sub-officer" ("Unteroffizier"). It is recorded that during one retreat he skilfully led his troops so that they avoided capture. His brother Walter Schehr was killed in action in 1916. The 1914 decision of the party leadership to vote in favour of war funding and forego criticism of the government for the duration of hostilities during the war had been contentious among party activists from the outset, and the SPD finally split over the issue of support for the war in 1917. John Schehr, like his mentor Ernst Thälmann, was one of a large number of mainly left-wing party members who moved across to the breakaway Independent Social Democratic Party (" Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD). After the war there was no immediate return to his skilled work, but the docks continued to function and he joined his brother Franz in work as a stevedore till 1924. In 1919 when, in its turn, the USPD), Thälmann and Schehr, were among the early recruits to the newly launched Communist Party in the wake of the so-called November revolutions. Almost all the USPD activists in the Hamburg district made the same move, which can be seen in large measure as a tribute to Ernst Thälmann's oratorical and political powers of persuasion. Schehr quickly became an energetic party activist: his brother recalled later that during the early 1920s he was out almost every evening, undertaking party work.
From party activist to party officer 1923 was a year of intensified destitution across Germany, and a number of major disturbances. In Hamburg Schehr took part in the storming the Ottensen police station, which was one of police stations in and around Hamburg attacked on 23 October in the context of that year's October uprising, carefully planned and choreographed by Ernst Thälmann on behalf of the party. In 1924 Schehr became a party "Polleiter" (loosely, "policy head") for Altona where he was already, by this time, a municipal councillor. He also regained his skilled work on the docks. The next year he accepted a fulltime job working within the party apparatus, however. It is clear that John Schehr's advancement in the national party over the next few years owed much to the friendship and political patronage of Ernst Thälmann, but he evidently had many friends and admirers among local party activists. A particular friend and political ally was Etkar André.
Party advancement It was nevertheless more likely to have been as a result, primarily, of Thälmann's backing that in 1925, at the tenth party congress, John Schehr was elected to membership of the party appeal's commission ("Beschwerdekommissio"). The same congress also voted Schehr onto the list of candidates for the Party Central Committee. The dire economic situation during the early 1920s made this a period of expansion for the communists in the industrial regions, and during 1925 John Schehr was appointed to lead the party organisation in the recently established Harburg-Wilhelmsburg sub-district ("Unterbezirksleiter") in succession to Johann Skjellerup. The appointment was of short duration, however, since in March 1926 the fulltime paid position was abolished, possibly to save money and possibly in response to a decline in party membership locally. In 1927 he was appointed "Orgleiter" (loosely "Head of Administration") for the party's important Hamburg-Wasserkante district (to the west and north of Hamburg), thereby becoming a key member of the regional party executive under the leadership of regional party secretary John Wittorf.
Wittorf affair Also in 1927 Schehr was again a delegate at the party's eleventh party congress, held that year in Essen. Again he was voted onto the list of candidates for the Party Central Committee. As a member of the Control Commission for the Hamburg-Wasserkante party organisation, Schehr was implicated in concealing the embezzlement of party funds by John Wittorf during the course of a scandal that blew up in 1928. Ernst Thälmann was, by some criteria, more heavily and directly implicated, and he was indeed briefly ousted from the party Central Committee, but Joseph Stalin, whose influence over the German party leadership was immense, intervened to have Thälmann reinstated. From now on Thälmann was seen by party comrades as "Stalin's man": it did his career no harm. There was no intervention with such immediate impact on behalf of John Schehr who was stripped of all his party functions in October 1928. There were even demands for Schehr to be excluded from the party, but that did not happen.
Political recovery and advancement Following Ernst Thälmann's rehabilitation Schehr, as Thälmann's respected protégé, quickly recovered his position in the party. He was reinstated as party "Orgleiter" for the Hamburg-Wasserkante district, retaining the post till March 1930. In 1929, at the eleventh party congress (held in Berlin-Wedding) Schehr was again present as a delegate, and he was yet again included on the candidates list for Central Committee membership.Protokoll XII. Parteitag der KPD 1929 An East German newspaper tribute which appeared in 1967 states that on this occasion he was elected to full membership of the party Central Committee, but other more plausible sources refute this. It is nevertheless clear that by this stage John Schehr was widely respected and liked by party comrades whereas his more formidable mentor, Ernst Thälmann, who had been party leader since 1925, is more usually seen as having been widely feared within the party by this point.
Crisis years
In 1930 John Schehr took over the job of regional party secretary ("Polleiter") with the Hanover-based regional leadership team ("Bezirksleitung") for the Lower Saxony region in succession to Willi Bohn, whom the national party leadership had decided (at very short notice) should be sent to the International Lenin School in Moscow for two years of party training. His slow but steady progression through the party ranks meant that he was beginning to emerge from behind Thälmann's shadow. Meanwhile, a return to widespread economic austerity, as Germany worked through the savage backwash from the Great Depression, was creating a surge across Germany in support for the Communist Party. This was accompanied by increasing political polarisation leading, after 1932, to deadlock in the Reichstag (national parliament) whereby coalition with on or other of the two populist parties, the National Socialists and the Communists was mathematically necessary for the more moderate parties to coalesce to form a majority coalition, but both extremist parties were unacceptable coalition parties either for the moderate parties or form each other. It was in the resulting context of intensifying crisis that in April 1932 Schehr was elected a member of the Prussian Landtag (regional parliament), representing South Hanover–Braunschweig. Three months later, in July 1932, he was elected to the Reichstag. (His Landtag seat was taken over by his party comrade August Tünnermann.)
Within the party Schehr's career continued to advance. During the middle of 1932 he finally became a member of the party Central Committee. This came about not through any vote of delegates at a party congress, but as a result of being co-opted into membership by the existing members. He relocated to Berlin, becoming both secretary to the Central Committee and a member of its inner caucus, the Politburo. Schehr was now, in all but name, deputy to the party leader, Ernst Thälmann. His position in the party apparatus was further strengthened after Heinz Neumann was stripped of his party functions and then officially condemned by the leadership in November 1932 and sent as a Comintern emissary to Spain. (Neumann had clashed with Thälmann who he believed, along with Joseph Stalin, was dangerously underestimating the strength of the threat presented by Adolf Hitler.)
It was probably in October or November 1932 that the police arrested John Schehr and discovered "important material" concerning the party's illegal structures (which included a semi-secret quasi-military operation across the nation and a large "political" espionage network on a scale normally associated with foreign governments rather than with domestic political parties). The arrest was apparently made "because of an instruction from the Ministry of Defence". Although sources differ wildly over the month of Schehr's 1932 arrest, it is apparent that he was released after eight days in detention. Regardless of the legal basis for the arrest (which remains vague and unclear), as a member of the Reichstag (national parliament) till some months after the régime change in 1933, John Schehr enjoyed certain privileges, and it would appear to have been on account of these that on this occasion his release came so swiftly.
Régime change The Hitler government exploited the continuing parliamentary and political deadlock to take power in January 1933. They lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Over the next few weeks the Communist party was outlawed and those of its leaders who had not already gone into hiding or emigrated were rounded up by the security services. On 7 February 1933 Schehr was one of the participants at the held just outside Berlin, and celebrated subsequently (especially during the "East German" years) as the last meeting held by the German Communist Party leadership before the participants were arrested and killed, or in some cases managed to escape abroad.