Max Strobl (1.12.1896 Dachau – 28.4.1971 Oslo)

Strobl, a barber by profession, hailed from the family of a wealthy farmer, who had him brought up in a monastery. He evaded training to become a priest at the age of 16 and became involved in the socialist labor movement. Drafted as a soldier in 1914, he sympathized with the Spartacus League even during the war. After the start of the November Revolution, Strobl became a member of the Munich Soldiers’ Council. During the second communist Soviet Republic, the Executive Council appointed him to head the ‘Commission to Combat the Counter-Revolution’ residing in Wittelsbacher Palais, and to crackdown on ‘enemies of the revolution’ as well as looters and saboteurs. Strobl and his staff arrested members of the right-wing extremist Thule Society, among others, at the Vier Jahreszeiten hotel, who were then shot in the Luitpoldgymnasium secondary school as part of a retaliatory measure (hostage murder) before the ‘white troops’ marched into the city.

After the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic, a Munich summary court sentenced Strobl to seven years of penal servitude on July 25, 1919. After completing his sentence, Strobl worked for the Communist ‘Red Assistance’, but in 1929 he broke with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and joined the Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (KPO). After the Nazis seized power in 1933, he emigrated to Norway and Sweden where he was active in the trade union; he did not return to Germany after the war.