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Writer's pictureMichael Laxer

Theodor Neubauer and Magnus Poser stamp -- Stamps of the GDR #33


Theodor Neubauer and Magnus Poser stamp, 1970 -- Stamps of the GDR #33


Neubauer and Poser were German Communists who worked and organized against the Nazis inside Germany under the most extreme and dangerous conditions. Men of tremendous courage they both were imprisoned by the Nazis soon after they took power and released only to restart their resistance activities including forming a Communist resistance cell centred around Jena.


In the end both were arrested again by the Gestapo and subsequently executed. The dates of their killings are on the stamp. In the German Democratic Republic they were regarded as heroes of the anti-fascist struggle. Magnus Poser's home in Jena was turned into a museum dedicated to his life which, disgracefully, was closed after the counter-revolution of 1989. A medal of bravery was named after Neubauer after 1959 in the GDR. This award also ended with the counter-revolution.


From the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979):


Theodor Neubauer


Born Dec. 12, 1890, in Ermschwerd; died Feb. 5, 1945, in Brandenburg. A leader of the German labor movement.


Neubauer was a teacher by profession. He was a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1918 to 1920 and then joined the Communist Party of Germany (CPG). He was a deputy to the Landtag of Thuringia from 1921 to 1923 and to the German Reichstag from 1924 to 1933. In 1933, when the fascists came to power, he was placed in a concentration camp. After his release in 1939, Neubauer headed a clandestine antifascist organization in Thuringia, which soon became one of the largest in the country. He was a member of the central operational underground leadership of the CPG. Neubauer was arrested by the Gestapo in July 1944 and later executed.



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