Karl Plättner - Revolutionary and robbery gang leader

Karl Plättner learned the trade of a mold maker at an ironworks. After completing his apprenticeship, he settled in Hamburg, was drafted into the war, and returned home as a disabled veteran. He joined anti-militarist groups and later the Communists. After the suppression of the Central German workers’ uprisings in 1921, his group robs banks. “Expropriation of the expropriators” is their motto—ten years in prison is the result. He writes about it, distances himself from violence, and withdraws from Stalinism. Nevertheless, the Nazis considered him dangerous. They arrested him in the fall of 1939. He was sent to the concentration camps Buchenwald, Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen. Finally free, he died from the effects of his imprisonment.