Hanns Kralik, artist and resistant

"Out my window" - 1930

 

Hanns Kralik (1900-1971) was the son of a Ruhr miner. He was a self-taught artist, though he later attended an art school in Düsseldorf. He was early a member of KPD, the Communist Party. He illustrated the song "Wir sind die Moorsoldaten", by Johann Esser and Wolfgang Landhoff, about a concentracion camp in 1933. 

Von Frank Vincentz - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64204387

He had to leave Germany when the Nazis took over. He lived in France and took an active part in the Resistance to the German occupation, falsifying documents and illustrating flyers.

Back in Düsseldorf, his Communist engagement got him in trouble again. It was in 1950, during the Cold War, a time when the Communist Party was forbidden in West Germany.

1927

Anti-nazi propaganda