Erich Knauf

Erich Knauf (February 21, 1895 in Meerane, Saxony - May 2, 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel) was a German journalist, writer, and songwriter. He was executed for statements critical of the Nazi regime.

He was born in 1895 as the son of a tailor and party secretary in the German Social Democratic Party.

He was a close friend of Erich Kästner and Erich Ohser (pseudonym "e. o. plauen") and was a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party, an editor of the "Plauener Volkszeitung" newspaper, and from 1928 an editor for the book guild, the "Büchergilde Gutenberg".

In 1934, he spent several months in the concentration camps Oranienburg and Lichtenburg concentration camps because of a controversial theater criticism published in a Berlin paper.

In 1936 he became a press chief for the Terra-Filmgesellschaft.

After a bombing raid in 1943, Knauf was bombed out of his residence in Wilmersdorf and forced to shelter with a doctor in Kaulsdorf along with his friend Erich Ohser. In an air-raid shelter during a night of bombing, they were overheard making mild political jokes and were denounced by a neighbor (according to some sources, by a common friend).

He was arrested on March 28, 1944, and on April 6, 1944 was sentenced to death by judge Roland Freisler for defeatist remarks. On May 2, 1944, he was beheaded and his wife received a bill for the costs of the execution. Ohser avoided execution through suicide.