Franz Xaver Schwarzmüller (3.4.1910 Munich – 4.6.1942 Chistopol/Russia)

Franz Xaver Schwarzmüller grew up in a working-class family; his father was a trade unionist and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) through the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in 1920. Schwarzmüller himself had already been part of communist children's groups, and in 1926 he joined the Communist Youth League of Germany (KJVD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Soon after completing his bricklaying apprenticeship, Schwarzmüller found himself unemployed in 1930. He was initially involved in the Revolutionary Union Opposition – including organizing construction worker strikes in southern Bavaria – prior to relocating to Berlin to take up a role as a full-time secretary for the Red Construction Workers' Union.

In February 1933, Schwarzmüller returned to Munich, where he set up the illegal KPD organization and took care of the production and distribution of the Neue Zeitung newspaper. As a result of the arrest of countless communists, he rose to become the organizational secretary of the KPD's district leadership before fleeing to Moscow via Czechoslovakia in August and September 1933. There he attended the Lenin School of the Communist International (Comintern). His repeated criticisms drew attention to him, and so he was sent to work in construction as a cleaner rather than being given any further political positions. His desire to migrate to Sweden was refused by the Comintern in 1937. The year after that, the NKVD, the Soviet political secret police, detained Schwarzmüller's companion Anna Etterer. She was then sentenced to five years in a 'correctional labor camp' for alleged espionage activities. Schwarzmüller secured their release in 1940, shortly afterwards coming under suspicion of espionage and anti-Soviet agitation himself. Schwarzmüller was taken into custody in Moscow on September 11, 1941, and passed away from intestinal inflammation in Chistopol detention center on June 4, 1942.