Max Matern

Max Matern (19 January 1902 – 22 May 1935) was a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

Max Matern was a communist storm trooper who was convicted of murder and executed for his involvement in the assassinations of Police Captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck. The murders took place in 1931 at Bülow-Platz in Berlin. He was later glorified as a martyr by the KPD and East Germany's Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).

Max Matern was born in Berndshof near Ueckermünde and grew up in meager circumstances in Quitzdorf am See in eastern Saxony. He did an apprenticeship as a moulder in Torgelow and in 1925 moved to Berlin owing to the lack of jobs closer to home. There he found work as a member of the KPD's Parteiselbstschutz (Party Self Defense Unit) in which he demonstrated hard-line conviction and loyalty to the party.

According to John Koehler,

Like their Nazi counterparts, the Selbstschutz men were thugs who served as bouncers at Party meetings and specialized in cracking heads during street battles with political enemies. Besides the Nazis, their arch foes included the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) -- the Social Democratic Party of Germany -- and radical nationalist parties. They always carried a Stahlrute, two steel springs that telescoped into a tube seven inches long, which when extended became a deadly, fourteen inch weapon. Not to be outdone by the Nazis, these goons often were armed with pistols as well.

On August 2, 1931, KPD Members of the Reichstag Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger received a dressing down from Walter Ulbricht, the Party's leader in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. Enraged by police interference, Ulbricht snarled, "At home in Saxony we would have done something about the police a long time ago. Here in Berlin we will not fool around much longer. Soon we will hit the police in the head."

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