Fritz Dressel (1.6.1896 Welsberg – 7.5.1933 Dachau Concentration Camp)

Fritz Dressel, who originally came from Upper Franconia, learned the craft of carpentry like his father, went traveling, and was subsequently employed by Krupp in Essen. After being wounded as a soldier in the First World War, he worked at the newly founded Krupp-Werke in Munich-Freimann in 1917, became involved in the Free Trade Unions and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Munich in 1919. In 1921, he was sentenced to two years in prison for signing a resolution in favor of the Central German uprising, which he served mainly in Landsberg.

From 1925, Dressel was active in the Southern Bavarian district leadership of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), including as organization leader. He was elected to the Bavarian State Parliament in 1928 and 1932, where he was parliamentary leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). As the leader of an unemployment demonstration, he was sentenced to seven months in prison in 1930 - after his immunity was lifted - which he served in Landsberg. As one of the leading communist functionaries, Fritz Dressel had to live illegally from March 1933; among other things, Oskar Maria Graf made his flat in Hohenzollernstraße available to him. As the police were unable to apprehend Dressel immediately, they arrested his wife Dorothea in their Feldmoching apartment on March 30, 1933, and took her into ‘protective custody’ in Stadelheim Prison. Fritz Dressel was also arrested on May 3 and taken to Dachau Concentration Camp the next day with 28 other inmates. As a known communist, Dressel was subjected to particular cruelty by the SS in his solitary confinement cell. On May 7, 1933, the guards let him bleed to death in cell no. 4, where they subsequently also took Dressel’s close friend Hans Beimler . Beimler managed to flee the following night. The “Amper-Bote” (newspaper published in Dachau) reported on May 11, 1933 that Dressel had “taken his own life in a state of mental depression”.

The day after her husband’s death, Dorothea Dressel’s ‘protective custody‘ was lifted. It wasn’t until she was home that she found out about her husband’s death from her son.