Otto Oldenburg

While her husband was in detention, Cläre Oldenburg
collected money here in the camp and gave him the proceeds when she was allowed to visit him. The money brought some relief to Comrade Oldenburg and his fellow prisoners as it enabled them to buy newspapers or extra food.
Reinhold Kalleja, 1955

Otto Oldenburg was a mechanic and son of a book binder. He joined the Free Socialist Youth in 1918 and was elected to its central committee in February 1919. He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the same year. He worked for Siemens and was a member of the DMW (German Metal Workers' Union). He was dismissed in 1923 for inciting workers to strike. Subsequently blacklisted by the metal industry, he remained unemployed for a long time. In 1925, he was elected to Friedrichshain council. In 1926, he assumed a position as correspondent for the Russian-Austrian trading association as a cover for working for the KPD's intelligence service. In 1928, he was arrested and sentenced to one and a half years’ incarceration by the Imperial Court of Justice for planning high treason. He was freed in an amnesty shortly afterwards. He was re-elected city councillor in 1933. However, he was unseated before the first meeting and barred from the council along with all other communists. Oldenburg was arrested on 28.2.1933, the night of the Reichstag fire. He was not released from the detention camp in Emsland where he was held until July 1934. In April 1937 he was arrested again and detained in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until June. When the war began in September 1939, he was sent back to Sachsenhausen, where he died two-and-a-half years later.

Otto Oldenbourg was a city councillor 1929 – 1933, Constituency 5 Friedrichshain (KPD)