Felix Fechenbach

Felix Fechenbach (28 January 1894 – 7 August 1933) was a German-Jewish journalist, poet and political activist. He served as State-Secretary in the Socialist/Communist regime of Kurt Eisner that overthrew the Bavarian Wittelsbach Monarchy. After its overthrow, he worked as a newspaper editor during the Weimar period. After the Nazi seizure of power, he was arrested and later executed.

He was born in Mergentheim, the son of a lower-middle-class family . He took vocational education in Würzburg until 1910. Later, he worked in a shoe store. In 1911 he secured work in Frankfurt but was later fired for union-activity and because of a strike he led. From 1912 until 1914 he was a party secretary of the SPD in Munich,he served in World War I was wounded, became a pacifist, later becoming state secretary (1918–1919). During World War I he was a pacifist and served as Private Secretary for Kurt Eisner, the prime minister of Bavaria, shortly after the war.

He was jailed in 1922 for publishing secret diplomatic telegrams while Staats Secretary under Eisner, before the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The decision was a scandal because the court at that time had no standing under the Weimar Constitution. He was pardoned in 1924. He thereafter travelled to Berlin and worked for Kinderfreunde (Friends of Children) and criticised the SPD in his children's stories while still a member of the party.

In 1929, he became the editor in chief of the SPD newspaper Volksblatt in Detmold. On 11 March 1933 he was jailed by the new Nazi government for his anti-fascist activities, and was shot on 7 August by members of the SS and SA in a forest between Detmold and Warburg while being transported to the Dachau concentration camp.

There are two schools named after Fechenbach: the Felix-Fechenbach Gesamtschule in Leopoldshoehe and the Felix-Fechenbach Berufskolleg in Detmold. A street in Detmold and in Oerlinghausen was also named after him.