Johann Sedlmair Born on 27 December 1907 in Dachau, died May 20 1979 in Dachau. As a Dachau Communist, he opposes national socialism. Johann Sedlmair grew up in a social-democratic working-class family in Dachau Kolbeckstrasse. After the School he makes a training as a metalformer at the locomotive factory »Krauss-Maffei« in Munich-Allach. Since his school days, he has been friends with Georg Scherer, with whom he meets again after several years in the "Workers sports club" (ATSV), which now offers anti-Nazi forces a political home. Later he shared Scherer's fate as a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp. Political activity Long before 1933 Sedlmair became politically active. He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and fought with his Dachau comrades Franz Klein and Hans Moosrainer against the emerging national socialism: -On October 12 1931, he was present, when in Dachau's streets and on the Amper bridge slogans are placed against the »brown danger« in red bar graph. -On 13 December 1931, the police discovered a tube of vermilion in a search of his house. In this way, he was to write posters of the KPD a few days earlier and to put it on the roof of the town hall. This is enough to put him in prison with Franz Klein for several days. -On March 12 1932, he was found in the gluing of communist posters and again interrogated at the Dachau Police Department. Sedlmair is involved in the production of the KPD member newspaper "Das Rote Dachau". Which appears a total of eight times between June 1932 and March 1933. The police are trying in vain to find out where the newspaper is printed. He also remains undetected when, with his friends in a protest action, he hoists the red flag on the Dachauer paper-factory fireplace. Detainee in the Dachau concentration camp On 17 March 1933, Sedlmair was arrested again. A policeman appears at his workplace in Stangeried near Indersdorf, where he is employed in road construction. During the arrest, some of the papers of the newspaper "Die rote Fahne" are discovered, which Sedlmair has hidden in a barn on a beam. With a bayonet, the policeman takes him to the next train station and then takes the train to Dachau. From there he comes to the Munich police headquarters at the Ettstraße and then to Stadelheim prison. After his arrest, the police searched the parental home and confiscated all his books, which he never recovered. After Stadelheim, his next station is the concentration camp Dachau, which was opened on 22 March 1933. He is one of the first prisoners to be sent to the camp on that day from Stadelheim and Landsberg am Lech. Until July 27 1933, he remained in concentration camp. During this time his girlfriend and later wife, Maria Posch, keeps contact with him: she transfers him several small amounts of money for shopping in the prisoners' quarters. He talks little about the detention in the camp afterwards. Most of all, the fate of his Jewish fellow prisoners has shaken him, who have suffered particularly badly. He also tells his wife that he has watched as a prisoner has been escorted, who later said, "shot in flight." Although she was only short, she has been persecuting him all his life. Even before death, he has nightmares from the camp. A life in poverty After his release from prison, Sedlmair is again unemployed. In 1935, he and Maria Posch married, who also always kept him in the following difficult years. As a worker in a Munich color factory, she had been active in the "Rote Hilfe", a solidarity organization of the workers' movement, and had already supported him in the political struggle before the "attack". For example, she was concerned about the colors for the placards in Dachau. Maria Posch also comes from poor circumstances. The eleven-headed family, which had already lost its father in 1933, lives on a small farm in Dachau Flurstraße. The bride and groom is so poor that he lacks the money for the wedding dinner. The young married couples move to the Siedlungsstraße in Dachau. Despite his imprisonment, Sedlmair's political attitude has not changed. He remains in touch with his old party friends and sportsmen from the ATSV. He is constantly watching the police. The missed insurrection As a former concentration camp prisoner declared "defenseless", Sedlmair was not conscripted into the military during the Second World War, but was sent to "Krauss-Maffei" for night work. In the last days of the war, he encounters the people around Walter Neff and Georg Scherer, who want to prevent the city from becoming a war center. On April 28 1945, the occupying of the town hall by citizens and escaped concentration camp prisoners led to the Dachau insurrection. Sedlmair wants to join the insurgents, but does not reach the town hall in time, because the Amper bridge has already sprung from the SS. He only sees the shot dead in front of the "Sparkasse" bank and returns home horrified. As a communist again pursued After the end of the war, he was still regarded as an antifascist, and he was called into a chamber of judges before whom former Nazi officials and party members were responsible. Numerous of his notes from this activity have been preserved. He initially received a position at "BMW" in Munich. But soon as a communist he is again unwanted and loses his job. It was not until 1949 that he was able to settle at the "Vereinigte Werkstätten" in Munich. He stayed there until he retired in 1972 as a 65-year-old. In 1956 he received an amount of 600 marks as "compensation" for his four months' imprisonment. Seven years later, he was again questioned by the Dachau police, only because he had obtained writings for the 20th congress of the CPSU. On 20 May 1978, Johann Sedlmair died at Dachau in the age of 70.
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