Felix Fechenbach (28.1.1894 Mergentheim – 7.8.1933 Scherfede/Warburg)

Felix Fechenbach was an employee of the Munich Workers’ Secretariat from 1912 to 1914 and established the ‘youth section’ of the SPD in 1914. He was severely wounded in the war ion 1914-15. In 1917 he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD); he was a member of the provisional National Council of Bavaria in 1918-19; and Secretary to State Premier Kurt Eisner.

In 1922, he renewed his membership in the SPD. That same year, he was sentenced by the Munich People’s Court to eleven years of penal servitude and 10 years’ loss of civil rights due to treason. In April 1919, Fechenbach, like Kurt Eisner before him, published a diplomatic document from 1914 about the pre-history of World War I. The goal was, by publicizing the German role in the outbreak of World War I , to create trust among the victorious powers in the new German Republic. On October 1, 1924, while in the Ebrach Penitentiary, Fechenbach wrote about the imminent release of Hitler: “I could not and did not want to believe that this rightly sentenced ethnic-chauvinist high traitor to his people should be given his freedom and I should remain wrongly in penal servitude” (Schueler, p. 207).

Given public pressure, he was released from penitentiary in December 1924 with commutation to probation. The Supreme Court of the German Reich voided the judgment in 1926. From 1924 to 1929 he worked as a journalist at the Dietz-Verlag in Berlin; starting in 1929, at the SPD newspaper, Volksblatt, in Detmold. He was informed about internal matters of the Nazi Party in Lippe, about which he reported in the Volksblatt . He was taken into ‘protective custody’ on March 7, 1933. The Lippe State Government entered a plea to the BPP (Bavarian Political Police) to transfer Fechenbach to the Dachau Concentration Camp. On the transport there, he was shot on August 7, 1933 during an alleged escape attempt and died in the Scherfede Hospital of his injuries. His grave is in the Jewish cemetery in Rimbeck.