Biographie

Karl August Quer was born in 1891 in Eltmannshausen in the district of Werra-Meißner. After attending primary school, he completed his teacher training which was still possible without A levels at the time. After being obligated to serve as a soldier in World War I for four years, he worked as a teacher from 1919. In the same year, he joined the Social Democratic Party. On 1 May 1922, he began working at the Bürgerschule VII in Kassel. From 1924 to 1933, he was a Kassel city councillor.

Karl August Quer was the first teacher in Kassel to be released by the National Socialists on 16 March 1933 and arrested a few weeks later. He was one of the first prisoners of the Breitenau concentration camp, being admitted on 16 June 1933. After his release on 7 August 1933, he was prohibited from working, lost his home as a result and was ultimately forced to move. In 1940, he was summoned to war duty to in a powder factory in the Lüneburg Heath. Here he fell ill, was officially deemed unable to work in December 1940 and released in February 1941. Afterwards, another phase followed during which his house was repeatedly searched and he was spied upon. In 1942, he found employment as an actor and dramaturge at the town theatre of Głogów (Lower Silesia), but soon again found himself in Gestapo custody (13 August to 25 September 1944). He was then forcibly summoned to the Volkssturm and became a Soviet prisoner near the end the war. He was released after ten months.

After 1945, Karl August Quer began working as a teacher again. As he had been persecuted by the Nazis for almost the entire period between 1933 and 1945, he was recognized as a victim of National Socialism and received compensation.