Fritz Scherer

In 2024, a book from Fritz Scherer's library was returned.

Albin Ernst Fritz Scherer was born in Berlin on 13 May 1903, the son of Friederike Scherer née Wehner (1874-1961) and Theobald Urban Richard Fritz Scherer (1869-1946). He was the youngest of five brothers. His siblings were Hans (*1897), Willy (1899-1961), Karl (1900-1950) and Ernst (1901-1901). Fritz's father was a belt maker and the family lived in Berlin at Schönleinstr. 6 around 1903. In his youth in Berlin, Scherer was a member of the Berlin Anarchist Association and the Free Labour Union of Germany ("Freie Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands", FAUD). He also trained as a bookbinder in Berlin and then spent eight years as a travelling journeyman.

In 1930/31, Fritz Scherer was the caretaker of the anarcho-syndicalist Bakunin hut near Meiningen (Thuringia), for which he produced the hut book as a farewell gift. In the early 1930s, Scherer lived together with the anarchist, publicist and FAUD functionary Berthold Cahn at Wadzeckstrasse 4 in Berlin.

Cahn and Scherer were arrested on 2 December 1933 and books and propaganda material were confiscated during a house search. Scherer was released after 12 days, Cahn remained imprisoned in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison until 1935, was arrested again in 1938 and finally murdered in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1942.

After his release, Fritz Scherer worked as a bookbinder for the Berlin fire brigade. In 1934, he married Martha Luise Rautenhaus (1911-2000) in Berlin.The couple soon had two daughters. Fritz Scherer was arrested several times by the Gestapo until the end of the war because he continued to be active in anti-fascist activities, including being accused in the so-called syndicalist trial in 1937. In 1941, Scherer was drafted into the Wehrmacht and trained and deployed as a medic. In 1945, he was held in a prisoner of war camp near Meiningen, but was soon released thanks to personal contacts. After the end of the war, he continued to distribute anarchist leaflets and now lived with his family in Vogelsdorf near Berlin. Before he could be arrested for his "anti-communist" leaflets, he fled to West Berlin around 1950. His family was able to join him in 1952.

Scherer continued to be politically active, for example with the Federation of Free Socialists ("Föderation Freiheitlicher Sozialisten", FFS), the successor organisation to the FAUD, or by supporting the "Libertad" publishing house founded in 1976. Fritz Scherer died in Berlin on 18 June 1988.

The restituted volume was from a storage depot of the Reich Security Main Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt", RSHA) at Eisenacher Str. 11-13 in Berlin Schöneberg. The RSHA had collected looted books from all over Europe there. Some of these books were redistributed to libraries in Berlin by a salvage organisation ("Bergungsstelle") after the end of the war in 1945.