Artur Hofmann

This article deals with the KPD politician Artur Hofmann. For the SPD politician see Arthur Hofmann ; for other people see Artur Hoffmann .

Artur Hofmann (born June 24, 1907 in Plauen ; † May 4, 1987 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD ). He was a member of the KPD initiative group Ackermann and from 1949 to 1952 Saxon Minister of the Interior , later, among other things, head of department at the Ministry for State Security .

Life

From Plauen to the Soviet Union

Artur Hofmann was born in Plauen in 1907 as the son of a building fitter. After attending primary school, he learned the trade of machinist . After completing his apprenticeship, he worked in this profession in Thuringia , Bavaria and the Ruhr area .

From 1927 to 1929 he went on a hike that finally took him to Bulgaria via Holland , Austria , Slovakia , Hungary and Yugoslavia . In 1930 Hofmann returned to Germany and worked at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg . A little later, however, he became unemployed. In 1931 he joined the KPD . In March of the same year Hofmann came with a folding boat from Kiel via Denmark , Sweden and Finland to Kronstadt . There he resumed his work as a machinist. He later moved to the Urals , where he was a brigadier in the Nadeschinsk steelworks . He later became a master in a heavy engineering plant in Sverdlovsk . In 1938 he became assembly manager at the Nizhny Tagil and Tagilstroi metallurgical combine before he was arrested as part of the Stalinist purges and spent eleven months in custody in Moscow .

In 1943 and 1944 Hofmann took part in a special course at the KPD school in Pushkino near Moscow. After that he was initially employed as an authorized representative of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD) in the Uman POW camp in Ukraine. From August 1944 Hofmann was partisan and head of the reconnaissance group "Andreas Hofer" in Poland. In spring 1945 he was probably ordered back to Moscow by Anton Ackermann . He became a member of the Ackermann initiative group and took part in training courses that prepared him for his deployment in post-war Germany.

Return to Germany with the "Ackermann Group"

After Ackermann visited Görlitz on his journey through Saxon cities between May 2nd and 8th, Hofmann and Herbert Oehler also came to Görlitz on May 13th. They were presented to the Görlitz city representatives by the Soviet headquarters as “representatives of the freedom movement by General Seydlitz”. While Oehler began to build up the city police, Hofmann was initially the link between the city administration and the commandant's office. In the beginning, he was mainly responsible for the return of confiscated factories, businesses, food stores or livestock by the occupation forces. He also took on numerous complaints from the Görlitz population, which were directed against rape and looting by Soviet and Polish soldiers. However, Hofmann was rarely successful with the complaints, as the city commandant refused to give him the necessary support.

Between mid-May and early June 1945 Hofmann and Oehler traveled through the district to fill a total of 31 community councils. Police patrols were also organized in the countryside. From June 16 to October 1945, Hofmann took over the office of deputy district administrator of the Görlitz district , responsible, among other things, for personnel issues.

Functions in Saxony

In October 1945 Hofmann was appointed head of the People's Police of Saxony . On July 2, 1949, he was appointed Minister of the Interior of the Saxon state government under Max Seydewitz . In the second Seydewitz cabinet he also held the office of interior minister until the federal states dissolved themselves in July 1952. He then took over the office of deputy chairman of the newly created council of the Dresden district .

In the service of the MfS

In July 1953 Hofmann moved to the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in Berlin. It can be assumed that the events around June 17, 1953 played a role here. He was hired as a colonel and at the end of 1953 took over as head of Department III, responsible for economics.

Due to political events in 1956, the Central Committee of the SED decided on February 9, 1957 to re-establish closer ties between the MfS and the SED. In this context, Hofmann was transferred in March 1957 as an officer in the special duty in the full-time function of a sector leader in the department for security issues at the Central Committee of the SED.

In 1960 Hofmann fell seriously ill and was temporarily disabled. After recovering from illness, he became the operational deputy head of the Dresden district administration of the MfS in October 1960 . Hofmann retired in 1970 and then lived in Eichwalde .

Awards

• 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze and 1967 in gold
• 1960 Medal Banner of Labor
• 1977 Gold Medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit
• 1982 Karl Marx Order

literature

• Jeannette Michelmann: The activists from the very beginning. The Antifa 1945 in the Soviet occupation zone between the occupying power and the exiled KPD (PDF; 1.2 MB) ; Dissertation, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, passim.
• Jens Gieseke, Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Hofmann, Artur . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Jens Gieseke : Artur Hoffmann . In: BStU : Who was who in the Ministry for State Security? (PDF, 537 kB), MfS-Handbuch V / 4, Berlin 1998
• Roger Engelmann , Bernd Florath, Helge Heidemeyer, Daniela Münkel , Arno Polzin, Walter Süß , Das MfS-Lexikon . 3rd updated edition, Berlin 2016. Ch. Links Verlag, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , p. 162, online version .

Web links

• An overview of the Saxon interior ministers, Artur Hofmann, Interior Minister 1949–1952
• MfS lexicon: Artur Hofmann

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neues Deutschland from June 24, 1977 and June 24, 1982