Edgar André

Edgar Josef André, or Etkar Josef André (17 January 1894 – 4 November 1936) was a politician in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and an antifascist.

Born in Aachen, André was a manual labourer's son. By the time he was five, he had already lost his father, and his mother, who was ill, found it quite hard to look after her three children. Belgian relatives brought them to Liège where for a while, Edgar found himself living at an orphanage. After leaving school, he took up an apprenticeship at a bookshop, where he came into contact with political literature.

In 1911, he became a member of the Belgian Labour Party, and in only two years' time, he had become the Secretary of the Socialist Worker Youth in Brussels. In 1914, he took part in the Party Congress of the Belgian Labour Party. In the First World War, he volunteered for service in the Rhineland and in late 1918 wound up a prisoner of the French. After coming back to Germany, he went first to Koblenz, where he joined the Socialist Worker Youth and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1922, he moved to Hamburg. There he worked in building and at the harbour, and he became a member of the Building Workers' Alliance, and later also the Transport Workers' Alliance.

During the post-war early 1920s depression, which struck Germany especially hard owing to the war reparations exacted from it by the Treaty of Versailles, André came into sharp conflict with the SPD's policies, resulting in his resignation from the party, and his joining the KPD on 1 January 1923. He soon belonged to Ernst Thälmann's circle of friends. As a member of the KPD's Wasserkante District Leadership (1926 - 1930), he was one of the best liked labour leaders in Hamburg. As the Hamburg jobless workers' spokesman, he likewise stepped forward as co-founder and leader of the Wasserkante branch of the Rotfrontkämpferbund, the KPD's protection and defence organization (1924 - 1929). After attending the KPD's party school, André was, in 1931-32, active in the International Union of Seamen and Harbour Workers as an instructor and propagandist, spending much of his time in Belgium and France. His knowledge of French was a great advantage to him in this endeavour.

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