Samuel Katelbach was an Austrian-Jewish journalist who lived in Weimar era Berlin.
Biography[]
Samuel Katelbach was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary to a Jewish family, and he later moved to Berlin, Germany and wrote for the magazine Tempo. Katelbach lived at Elisabeth Behnke's boarding house at 25 Bayreuther Street, where he often fell behind on rent, occasionally causing conflict with Behnke. However, the eccentric and comical Katelbach befriended both Behnke and one of his newer neighbors, policeman Gereon Rath, and he harbored Trotskyist sympathies and criticized the Berlin Police's conduct during the Blutmai massacre of 1 May 1929. Katelbach was later put on the political police blacklist for his leftist views, and he became an enemy of the Black Reichswehr while reporting on their shadowy activities. His investigation of Lufthansa's role in illegally rearming the Reichswehr and his Jewish descent made him an enemy of the Nazi Party, and Behnke hid him from their Sturmabteilung (SA) thugs.