Max Sellheim

Location 
Naunynstr. 2
District
Kreuzberg
Stone was laid
June 2009
Born
26 June 1883 in Berlin
Occupation
Lithograf, Maler
Dead
03 May 1945 in Siggelkow
My husband and I separated amicably in 1932. After I was bombed out the first time, my son was allowed to visit him in Sachsenhausen. My daughter went with him and they asked my husband if he would like to come back home. According to my son, my husband answered that he would like to but was worried that I would be angry. My son then told him I would apply for his release. [...] When my children visited him in 1944, he said it wouldn't be long now till he came back home.

Stanislawa Sellheim, 1950



A trained lithographer, Max Sellheim worked as a painter. He joined the trade union ‘German Association of Painters, Varnishers and Whitewashers’in 1905 and the SPD in 1910. He fought in the First World War from 1915 to 1918 and left the SPD for the USPD during this time. He was elected to Kreuzberg council for the USPD in 1920 but went over to the KPD the same year. At this time, he worked for Siemens and was a member of the works council. In 1924, he was elected to the Prussian state parliament and began working as a dispatch manager for communist newspapers. He became a member of the KPD regional committee for Berlin-Brandenburg in 1925. After some years, he began to take a less prominent role in politics and left the Prussian state parliament in 1928. After 1933, he was unemployed but active in the district committee of the banned ‘Red Aid’organisation that supported the families of people who had been arrested. The Nazis saw this as planning an act of high treason and he was arrested on 7.4.1935. He was sentenced to five years’imprisonment by the People's Court on 2.11.1936. Instead of being released after completing his term, he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Max Sellheim was one of 1,500 prisoners forced to vacate Sachsenhausen in anticipation of the end of the war and go on a death march to Mecklenburg. He was shot by a guard as he lay weak on the path in Siggelkow near Parchim in Mecklenburg. A bridge in the district of Pankow is named after him.

Max Selheim was a city councillor 1923 – 1924, Constituency 6 Kreuzberg (KPD); 1925, Constituency 6 Kreuzberg (KPD) / nominated for election (KPD); 1926 – 1929, nominated for election (KPD)