Karl Huber (14.1.1901 Munich – 15.2.1944 Munich)

Born as the tenth child of a cooper family, Karl Huber learned the trade of blacksmithing and worked in the Maffei and Krauss locomotive factories. In 1923, he married Anna Sprenger, with whom he had two children.

He had joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) at the age of 18 during the soviet republic, but then joined the Communist Youth League and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) . Together with his younger brothers, he frequently campaigned against provocations by the National Socialists in working-class districts even before 1933.

He was arrested on April 21, 1933 and held in ‘protective custody‘ until February 25, 1935 in Dachau Concentration Camp, where his two brothers had also been sent in October 1933. In 1937 and 1941, he was detained three more times, each time for a few weeks. Despite this persecution, Huber maintained his political contacts and was also involved in setting up a resistance group led by Wilhelm Olschewski. His role was to establish connections in enterprises and organize resistance groups there. The Gestapo succeeded in breaking up this network in the spring of 1942. On February 4, 1942, Karl Huber was also arrested, sent to Dachau Concentration Camp again and then transferred to Neudeck Prison for pre-trial detention. Despite serious health problems due to his imprisonment, Huber was not admitted to the infirmary of Stadelheim Prison until January 14, 1944, by then seriously ill, but received completely inadequate treatment there. Only a military physician urged immediate admission to the surgical hospital, which then took place on February 7, 1944, “after obtaining the consent of the prosecutor’s office, as it was a legally serious case“ (StAM (Munich state archive), LEA 18307/I/6151, flio no. 15f.) Karl Huber died in the clinic a week later.

In the trials against his friends on April 19 and 20, 1944, six death sentences were passed and some of them were given long penal servitude sentences.