Felix Fechenbach

Felix Fechenbach (January 28, 1894 – August 7, 1933) was a German-Jewish journalist, poet and political activist, who was murdered by the Nazis.

He was born in Mergentheim as the son af a baker and worked in a shoe store. He took vocational education in Würzburg until 1910. In 1911 he worked in Frankfurt but got fired because of a strike he led against unpaid work. From 1912 until 1914 he was a party secretary of the SPD in Munich,he served in WW1 was wounded, became a pacifist, later becoming state secretary (1918–1919). During World War I he was a pacifist and served as secretary for Kurt Eisner, the prime minister, shortly after the war.

He was jailed in 1922 for publishing an alleged secret diplomatic telegram while Staats Secretary under Eisner, before the Münchner Räterepublik. 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 an editor of the SPD newspaper Volksblatt in Detmold. On March 11, 1933 he was jailed by the new Nazi government for his anti-fascist activities, and was shot on August 7 by the SS in a forest between Detmold and Warburg while being transported to the Dachau concentration camp. The Felix-Fechenbach-Gesamtschule Leopoldshöhe was named after him.