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Karl Plättner (* 3 January 1893 in Opperode/Ballenstedt; † 4 June 1945 in Freising) was a German Communist, militant social revolutionary and author.

Youth and education
Karl Robert Plättner was born into poverty in Opperode on the northern edge of the Harz mountains. After completing elementary school and an apprenticeship in an iron foundry he worked as a metal caster. As a youth he got into trouble with the authorities and was arrested for “offensive behaviour”. After one year in work Plättner left his home district, settling in Hamburg in 1910, where he joined the SPD. In 1912 he became leader of the SPD Youth Federation and a member of the Hamburg party executive. At the outbreak of the First World War he distanced himself from the nationalist politics of the SPD, leaving the party in 1914.

Political development
Plättner was conscripted into the army. Wounded in 1915, he was discharged as unfit for service at the end of that year. With three injured fingers he had to give up his career as a metal caster and worked until 1917 as a clerk with the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse|Allgemeinen Ortskrankenkasse (AOK) health insurance company. He continued to agitate against the war and was active in the underground proletarian youth movement. In 1917 he worked on the newspaper “Proletarier Jugend” and organized meetings of socialist youth in northern Germany, engaging energetically to set up the Linksradikalen (left radicals) party. In September 1917 he was arrested for distributing leaflets written by Liebknecht and sentenced to 18 months in jail. He was released in 1918 following the German Revolution of 1918–19.

In 1918 Plättner co-founded the Dresden branch of the International Communists of Germany (IKD). In the same year he took part in the founding conference of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD Spartakusbund).

In January 1919 Plättner became Chairman of the KPD’s north-western region. After the proclamation of the Bremen Council Republic on 10 January 1919 he had no position in the leadership, but was a member of the  Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council. He demanded that for each Spartakist killed, a leader of the SPD should be killed in revenge. After the Bremen Council Republic was defeated on 4 February 1919 he had to flee to Berlin.

Militant revolutionary commander
In March 1919 Plättner took part in the armed uprising by the working class in Berlin and, in consequence, was detained in jail from September to November 1919. He then spoke as a KPD agitator in Saxony-Anhalt. In March and April 1920 he also took part in the armed uprising following the Kapp Putsch. Following the opportunist turn of the KPD at following the party’s second (Heidelberg) conference, Plättner became a founding member of the KAPD in April 1920. From mid-1920 he led and organized a group carrying out robberies of banks, post offices and collieries following the Marxist slogan of “expropriation of the expropriators”. During the March Action of 1921 in Central Germany Plättner, together with Max Hoelz was one of the leading militant leaders of insurrectionary workers. After the failure of the uprising, he tried to redirect the struggle towards clandestine actions and robberies. The KPD distanced itself from this mode of struggle, which it characterized as Bakuninism“. According to the assessment of the Reichskommissar for Public Order, Plättner was the actual leader and organizer of the “Supreme Action Committee of the KAPD” which was “in practice, a criminal gang”. He was arrested on 3 February 1922 and held under high security at Halle district court jail, where he was strictly isolated from fellow prisoners.

Imprisonment and "Eros in Prison"
After a long legal process Plättner was sentenced to ten years‘ imprisonment and transferred to Brandenburg jail on 12 December 1923. Following his release in 1928, Plättner returned to the KPD. The publication of his book ''Eros im Zuchthaus. Eine Beleuchtung der Geschlechtsnot der Gefangenen'' (Eros in Prison. An Analysis of the Sexual Problems of Convicts) caused a sensation. Plättner discussed, with great frankness for the times, topics such as masturbation and homosexuality. The inspiration for this work was “Eros im Stacheldraht“ (Eros behind Barbed Wire) by Hans Otto Henel (1926), a collection of stories illustrating the sexual frustrations of front-line soldiers during the First World War. Magnus Hirschfeld and Felix Abraham of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin wrote the foreword to Eros im Zuchthaus, advocating matrimonial visits to lessen sexual tension in prisons. Friedrich Lichtneker, author and dramatist at the Vienna Volkstheater, wrote a play of the same name, which was first performed at an unknown venue on 23 November 1929. It was later produced at the Lobe and Thaliatheater, Breslau by  Max Oppenheimer. The book was also mentioned in the opening credits of the 1928 film "Geschlecht in Fesseln" (Sex in Chains) directed by William Dieterle.

In concentration camps
Plättner developed into an opponent of Stalinism but gradually withdrew from political activity. Despite this he was arrested early on during the Third Reich and was interned at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Weakened and sick, Karl Plättner died in May 1945 shortly after his liberation from Buchenwald. His body was interred in the in der Nagelberg War Cemetry in the Franconian town of Treuchtlingen, Bavaria.

Works

 * Das Fundament und die Organisierung der sozialen Revolution, Magdeburg 1919 / Republished by Karin-Kramer-Verlag in 1973 as Die soziale Revolution.
 * Gefangen. 30 politische Juli-Amnestierte berichten über ihre Erlebnisse in deutschen Zuchthäusern / Bearb. u. mit e. Einl. versehen von Karl Plättner. Hrsg. vom Zentralverband d. roten Hilfe Deutschlands, Berlin: Mopr-Verlag, 1928.
 * Der mitteldeutsche Bandenführer, Berlin: Asy-Verlag, 1930.
 * Eros im Zuchthaus. Sehnsuchtsschreie gequälter Menschen nach Liebe. Eine Beleuchtung der Geschlechtsnot der Gefangenen, bearbeitet auf der Grundlage von Eigenerlebnissen, Beobachtungen und Mitteilungen in achtjähriger Haft. Vorwort von Magnus Hirschfeld und Felix Abraham, 1. Edition: Mopr-Verlag, Berlin 1929; 2.Edition: Witte, Hannover 1930.

Film
Karl Plättner was credited as a researcher for the film:
 * Geschlecht in Fesseln. Die Sexualnot der Strafgefangenen (Sex in Chains) by Wilhelm Dieterle, 1928.

Literature

 * Volker Ullrich: Der ruhelose Rebell – Karl Plättner 1893–1945; München 2000; ISBN 3-406-46585-4.
 * Plättner, Karl. In: Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: Deutsche Kommunisten. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 bis 1945. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6.