Arvid Harnack

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Portrait of Arvid Harnack

Arvid Harnack (born May 24, 1901 in Darmstadt ; † December 22, 1942 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German lawyer , economist and resistance fighter against National Socialism in the Rote Kapelle group .

family

Harnack was a son of the literary scholar Otto Harnack and the painter Clara Harnack , nee. Reichau and a nephew of the theologian Adolf von Harnack . He was the older brother of the director and screenwriter Falk Harnack , who also worked in the resistance.

Life

Memorial stone for Arvid and Mildred Harnack at the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin
40 + 10 Pfennig - special stamp of the GDR Post 1964 with Arvid Harnack and his wife Mildred
"Field judgment" of the Reich Court Martial on December 19, 1942
Stolperstein , Genthiner Strasse 14, in Berlin-Tiergarten

Arvid Harnack was born in 1901 at Hochstrasse 68 in Darmstadt, where his father Otto Harnack taught as a professor of history and literature at the TH Darmstadt from 1896 . When he was appointed to the University of Stuttgart on April 1, 1905, the whole family moved. The father took his own life in 1914. Due to the First World War, Arvid graduated from high school in 1918. From 1919 to 1923 he studied law at the universities of Jena , Graz and Hamburg and was awarded a Dr. jur. PhD . From 1926 to 1928 he studied with the help of a Rockefeller Fellowship economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), where he in 1926 the literary scholar Mildred Fish married. 1929/30 he was in casting in which economists Friedrich Lenz (1885-1968), with whom he 1931 Arplan founded (Association for the Study of the planned economy), Dr. phil. PhD. At the height of the Great Depression the capitalist system had obviously failed and the Soviet model seemed an interesting alternative. In 1932 he organized a study trip to the Soviet Union .

In 1933 he was initially employed as a research assistant in the Reich Ministry of Economics , where he later became a government and senior government councilor. Together with his wife Mildred, the writer Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta , he set up a discussion group that discussed political perspectives after the expected overthrow of the National Socialists . Harnack was a secret member of the KPD .

From 1935 he maintained contacts with employees of the Soviet intelligence service NKGB, which led him without his knowledge under the code name Korsikanez (Korse). In 1936 he contacted the US Embassy through his wife Mildred to warn of the danger of war from Germany. Contact with Donald Heath , the first secretary of the American embassy, ​​was friendly and lasted until 1941. Heath's assignment was to maintain contacts with the German underground in order to inform Henry Morgenthau and Franklin D. Roosevelt of the dangers that might emanate from Hitler. To cover up his illegal activities, Harnack became a member of the NSDAP in 1937 . In 1939 he made contact with the group around Harro Schulze-Boysen , an air force lieutenant who maintained contact with all classes of the population. This gave rise to the resistance network later slandered by the Gestapo as the “ Red Orchestra ”. (In the Gestapo language, a spy pressing Morse code was a pianist . A group of pianists was a band and red stood for communism. In truth, the group followed, in which political conservatives , Jews and Catholics, as well as social democrats and communists Resistance, in which 40% women as well as people from all age groups and social strata, offered no ideological dogmas.) Harnack met the communists Hilde Rake and Hans Coppi through Schulze-Boysen in 1940 ; he also worked with the social democrat Adolf Grimme and others. In 1941, the year the Americans had to leave Berlin, Harnack was contacted by Alexander Mikhailovich Korotkow , the representative of the NKGB. Reluctantly, since he did not trust Stalin, he agreed to inform the Soviets about the impending German war against the Soviet Union and about economic and military facts connected with Hitler's preparations for war.

In early 1942 he wrote a study The National Socialist Stage of Monopoly Capital , which was disseminated among opponents of the regime in Berlin and Hamburg. In the summer semester of 1942 he had a teaching position at the Faculty of Foreign Studies at the University of Berlin.

On September 7, 1942, Arvid and Mildred Harnack were arrested. On December 19, the Reich Court Martial pronounced the death sentence on Arvid Harnack. On December 22, 1942, at 7:10 p.m., he was hanged in Berlin-Plötzensee prison on the orders of Adolf Hitler .

Honors

  • On October 6, 1969, Arvid Harnack was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR . This honor has now proven dubious as it mistakenly interpreted the group as a communist spy network spying for the Soviets. This interpretation of the resistance group, based on original slander by the Gestapo, was used in reverse in the West, in that the resistance groups were not honored there, but persecuted as traitors until the 1970s.
  • In Magdeburg's old town, Harnackstraße is named after him and Mildred, as well as in Berlin-Lichtenberg and Leipzig- Reudnitz.
  • In Jena (Damenviertel), Arvid-Harnack-Straße (formerly Paulinenstraße) is named after him.
  •  There is a memorial stone in the courtyard of the Humboldt University in Berlin-Mitte ( Unter den Linden 6).
  • In Berlin-Neukölln , a plaque commemorates the Harnack couple and their roommate Stefan Heym in the Hasenheide corner of Lilienthalstrasse .
  • In Torgau there is a memorial stone next to the Harnack Ring named after him .
  • In 1979 there was a torpedo speedboat "Arvid Harnack" in the People's Navy of the NVA .
  • In 1983 the German Post of the GDR issued a stamp pad as a souvenir.
  • Stumbling blocks for Mildred and Arvid Harnack were laid in front of the house at Genthiner Strasse 14 ( Berlin-Tiergarten ) on September 20, 2013 in the presence of US Ambassador John B. Emerson .
  • A plaque has been commemorating him since 2002 on the house where he was born at Hochstrasse 68 in Darmstadt .
  • A memorial stone commemorates Arvid and Mildred Harnack at the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin. The grave of Arvid's brother Falk Harnack (1913–1991) is in this cemetery.

literature

  • Stefan Roloff : The Red Chapel. Ullstein 2002, ISBN 3-548-36669-4 .
  • Friedrich Lenz : In memoriam Arvid Harnack. In: Friedrich Lenz: Economic planning and planned economy. Berlin 1948.
  • Jürgen Danyel: Between Nation and Socialism. Genesis, self-image and regulatory ideas of the resistance group around Arvid Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen. In: Peter Steinbach , Johannes Tuchel (eds.): Resistance against National Socialism. Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 1994 (series of publications, Volume 323), pp. 468–487.
  • Shareen Blair Brysac: Mildred Harnack and the “Red Chapel”. The story of an unusual woman and a resistance movement. Scherz-Verlag, Bern 2003, ISBN 3-502-18090-3 .
  • Heinz Höhne : Password Director. The story of the Red Chapel . (1st edition 1970) S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-10-032501-X .
  • Gert Rosiejka: The Red Chapel. "Treason" as an anti-fascist resistance. Results-Verlag, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-16-0 .
  • Martha Dodd : My years in Germany 1933–1937. Nice to meet you, Mr. Hitler !. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8218-0762-8 .
  • Greta Kuckhoff: From the Rosary to the Red Chapel. A life story. New Life Publishing House, East Berlin 1976.
  • Tina Mager: The Schulze-Boysen / Harnack resistance organization. Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2000.
  • Heinrich Scheel : The "Red Chapel" and July 20, 1944. In: Journal of History. Ed. 33, Nos. 1-6, Rütten & Loenig, 1985, p. 330.

Web links

Commons : Arvid Harnack  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Locations in Giessen
  2. ^ Letter from Georgi Dimitrov dated April 12, 1941 to the head of the NKGB Pawel Michailowitsch Fitin. German translation in: Boris Chawkin , Hans Coppi, Juri Zorja: Russian sources on the Red Chapel. In: Hans Coppi, Jürgen Danyel, Johannes Tuchel: The Red Chapel in the Resistance to National Socialism. Berlin 1994, pp. 118-120.
  3. ↑ a b c Boris Chawkin , Hans Coppi, Juri Zorja: Russian sources on the Red Chapel. In: Hans Coppi, Jürgen Danyel, Johannes Tuchel: The Red Chapel in the Resistance to National Socialism. Berlin 1994, p. 104 f.
  4. ↑ Johannes Tuchel : “You have to celebrate Christmas properly” . In: Die Zeit , No. 51/2007.
  5. ^ Heinrich Scheel in: Journal for History Science. 33, 1985, p. 330. books.google.de
  6. ^ Brigitte Oleschinski : Plötzensee Memorial . (PDF) p. 50.
  7. ^ Peter Koblank: Harro Schulze-Boysen. Rote Kapelle: Resistance against Hitler and espionage for Stalin . Online edition Myth Elser 2014; accessed on January 27, 2014.
  8. ^ Stefan Reichardt: Memorial in memory of the book burning on May 10, 1933. Humboldt University, archived from the original on February 2, 2007 ; accessed on May 9, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Torpedo speedboat "Arvid Harnack" at the fleet parade on the 30th anniversary of the GDR's foundation on Wikimedia Commons
  10. ↑ Stumbling stone ceremony in memory of Mildred Fish-Harnack and Arvid Harnack
  11. ↑ Pictures from the ceremony
  12. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 674.
  13. ↑ Review on Hagalil
personal data
SURNAME Harnack, Arvid
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, economist and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1942
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee