Axel Rudolph

Axel Rudolph (born December 26, 1893 in Cologne- Nippes; † October 30, 1944 in Brandenburg-Görden prison ), also Heinrich Weiler and Richard Erden , was a German author of crime and adventure novels in the 1930s. He was executed in 1944.

Life until 1932

Axel Rudolph was born (under the name Oskar Karl Alexius Rudolph) as the only child to a Danish mother and a Swedish father in Cologne-Nippes. The father worked as a primary school teacher. Axel Rudolph worked as a coal worker in the Ruhrpott until the beginning of the First World War - as a volunteer in Belgium and France he was injured and came to the Eastern Front in 1915.

On June 2, 1915, Axel Rudolph was taken prisoner by Russia during a German poison gas attack near Łomża . In custody he revealed his knowledge of the Prussian fortress of Cologne, which the Russians in turn passed on to the allied French. According to his own admission, Axel Rudolph then served a captivity in Siberia, fled the camp near Irkutsk and finally came to the Danish internment camp in Hald through the mediation of Elsa Brändström . In 1918/19 Axel Rudolph was a member of the Freikorps , but left the corps quickly and worked again as a tiller in the Ruhr area .

In the 1920s, Axel Rudolph tried to stay afloat with odd jobs and his first journalistic work. He had two daughters with a Danish wife, Marie Stenbæk. But the marriage failed and Marie went back to Denmark.

In 1929 Rudolph earned extra income as a lecture traveler for the German Peace Society .

In 1930 Axel Rudolph was unemployed and homeless. He toddled through the country, worked as a day laborer and became a house worker in the homeless asylum in Bochum . In 1932 he learned that he had achieved fourth place in a Ufa competition with an exposé for a sound film . The Universum Film (UFA) asked him to come to Berlin. At the same time, Westdeutscher Rundfunk hired him for a 20-minute report on China, and a Berlin publisher paid an advance for a first novel. Axel Rudolph moved to Berlin , started at Ufa as an assistant dramaturge and was soon able to make a living from his books.

Life from 1932

Axel Rudolph published almost 70 works of trivial literature under his name and the pseudonyms Heinrich Weiler and Richard Erden in the years 1932 to 1943. His crime and adventure novels are set in the Arctic, on the oil fields of Venezuela, on the high seas, underground, in the USA, Asia or the big cities of Germany and in Denmark - whereby his imagined journeys often provide the background for the actions in which not rarely does the German underdog make his fortune through perseverance and honesty against all odds. Several volumes appeared simultaneously as paperbacks and linen editions and were reprinted as abridged booklets or newspaper novels.

Axel Rudolph created the book or worked on the script for at least four feature films; for example with the film Der Stern von Valencia (1933, directed by Alfred Zeisler ), which was simultaneously shown in a French version (directed by Serge de Poligny) with, among others, Jean Gabin as an actor.

In September 1936, Axel Rudolph moved with his fiancée Gertrud, whom he had met in 1933, to the West-Havelland village of Semlin near Rathenow . In 1939, the conditions for German entertainment literature tightened; Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry operated the instrumentalization of detective novels etc. for National Socialist objectives, such as success reports of German police work. Axel Rudolph was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer . As early as 1932 he had been charged after a physical confrontation with SA men and dismissed by Ufa.

Persecution and execution

The exclusion from the Reichsschrifttumskammer was a professional ban for the author. With the help of the African non-fiction author Hermann Freyberg , who published several of Rudolph's novels under his own name, the resulting economic situation could be improved. In 1943 Axel Rudolph married his fiancée Gertrud. Denunciation by Else Peek - a disappointed lover who was the daughter of the Semliner Ortsgruppenleiter of the NSDAP - got into the hands of the Gestapo in which Rudolph made no secret of his contempt for the National Socialist regime.

On New Year's Eve 1943 Gertrud and Axel Rudolph were arrested in Semlin. After five months of pre-trial detention in the Stapo prison in Potsdam , Priesterstrasse, the two were transferred to Berlin. On July 18, 1944, they were sentenced by Roland Freisler at the “ People's Court ” . Gertrud Rudolph was sentenced to three years' imprisonment with a subsequent education camp for " decomposing military strength " and "favoring the enemy". Axel Rudolph was sentenced to death. On October 30th, he died under the guillotine in Brandenburg-Görden prison .

post war period

Gertrud Rudolph lived in Semlin for some time. Her attempt to gain recognition as politically persecuted by the regional OdF committee ( victims of fascism ) failed, referring to the novel Entreist über Wladiwostok (1938), in which Axel Rudolph wrote an adventure novel (apparently based on his own experiences in Irkutsk ) against the backdrop of Siberian labor camps and Stalinist political commissars . The book made it onto the list of literature to be discarded with two later written ones . Gertrud Rudolph from the Rathenower OdF Committee was also charged with her own way of life - her “anti-social behavior”, her claims for compensation from the looting of the Semlin apartment building, the fact that she “had not worked a day” since she was released from prison. The Rathenower Committee questioned her reason for imprisonment as well as the Nazi-critical attitude of Axel Rudolph and was committed to the revocation of her victim status.

Gertrud Rudolph moved disappointed to Bavaria, then to Gelsenkirchen-Buer . In the 1950s she marketed her husband's estate as penny and booklet novels. She died in Gelsenkirchen-Buer in 1996.

Else Peek , Axel Rudolph's neighbor and lover, who with the - voluntarily or involuntarily - passed on his incriminating letter triggered the arrest, condemnation and execution of the writer, was together with her father, the Semliner NSDAP local group leader Wilhelm Peek, when the Russian army arrived arrested, but soon released again at the instigation of the evangelical superintendent Heimerdinger. They fled to the western occupation zones. While Wilhelm Peek died in 1949, Else Peek built a new existence not far from Hanover and led a peaceful life until she died in 1995 at the age of eighty.

present

In spring 2008, Heike Brett, who was born in Semlin, presented her research on the life of the completely forgotten writer Axel Rudolph in the Semlin parish. As a result - together with the editor of the village website, Martin Keune  - an intensive research into the circumstances of Rudolph's life and death began. On July 6, 2008, the film “Mordsache Holm” was shown in Semlin, exactly 70 years to the day after the Berlin premiere. On September 13, 2008, a memorial plaque with the text “Writer AXEL RUDOLPH * December 26, 1893 † October 30, 1944 Murdered in the Brandenburg-Görden prison” was laid in the sidewalk in front of the Semlin parish hall. Easter 2009 saw the first contact with relatives of the Semlin writer who were still living in Denmark and who visited the village in Westhavelland. In August 2009, Edition Q by be.bra Verlag published Martin Keune's biographical novel Groschenroman about the life and death of Axel Rudolph; 2012 the small addendum Treason in Semlin in the series of Semliner Hefte published by Keune . The implementation of a unanimous decision made by the Semlin local advisory council in 2013 to rename the central village square “Axel-Rudolph-Platz” has so far been prevented on the initiative of individual foreigners and locals. Axel Rudolph's life, it was said in the relevant leaflets and letters to the editor, lacked the role model for this honor.

As part of the rediscovery of Axel Rudolph, a number of his novels have been republished as e-books since 2016 . In the same year Der Rote Faden , Die Eisfrau and Maghena, read by Wolfgang Berger and Kai Henrik Möller, came onto the market as modern audio book productions by renowned publishers.

Novels by Axel Rudolph

• Comrades in the Bush (1933)
• The ice woman. A polar novel (1933) Cover design: Hannah Höch
• Ernst Raumer is looking for happiness. The Story of a Goldfox (1933)
• Give us honest weapons! (1933)
• Ick bün here de Kaptain (1934)
• Attention recording (1934) (also udT Hans Ingenting and his great love 1936)
• Ebba Brahe (1934)
• The Man from Rio (1934)
• The red rooster (1935) (Dutch edition: Vlammen in den Nacht 1937)
• The Other - A Woman (1935)
• Storm over Schleswig (1935)
• Adventures in the East (1935) Cover design: Hannah Höch
• The man from below. A miner novel (1935)
• Miss Gwen and the Captain (1935) (Dutch edition: Rita en har Kapitein 1936)
• Palazzo Grioni (1936) (UdT Adventure in Venice as a serial novel, pseud. Heinrich Weiler)
• Frau im Sturm (1936) (also udT The beautiful Sylvia )
• The perpetrator confesses (1936)
• The Red Thread (1936)
• One of the Rammin Regiment (1936)
• Man must be lucky (1936)
• Sun Death (1937)
• The Star of South Africa (1937)
• Shadows Around Russia's Throne (1937)
• Girl in the Ocean (1937)
• Gas station attendant Schulz (1937)
• To Head and Collar (1937)
• Lore pays for everything (1937)
• Entered via Vladivostok (1937)
• Have you seen Marlaine? (1938)
• Panic on the Perpetua (1938)
• The Yellow Guiana (1938)
• A Ship Goes Out (1938)
• Woman in the Wild (1938)
• Herdis has an idea (1938)
• Virgin the Mysterious Yacht (1939)
• Diamonds in Lüderitz Bay (1939)
• The criminal police succeeded (1939)
• Where was Carl Ermelund? (1940)
• The Portrait of the Unknown (1940) (French edition: Le Portrait de l'Inconnue 1943)
• Mordache Holm (1941)
• 1st class passengers (1941)
• Big Children - Big Worries (1953, posthumous)
• Fire in the Excelsior (no year)
• The man in the plaid coat (no year)
• Danger for Singapore (no year)
• Murder matter Hornemann (undated)
• Wüstenkönig police station (no year)

Under the pseudonym Heinrich Weiler :

• Cupid in the Pacific (1934)
• Fire in the Ship (1935)
• Inshallah. A Fliegerroman (1935) Cover design: Hannah Höch
• The Girl from the Geisterchaussee (1935)
• Hotel in Angola (1940)
• Kowalsky murder case (undated)

Under the pseudonym Richard Erben :

• Usan and the Raiders (1935)

Under the name of his friend Hermann Freyberg :

• Five Groschen for My Life (1941)
• Three Crosses in Siberia (1942)
• Coolies from Ping-Hu (1942)
• Foreign passport No. 188042 (1943)
• Riddle about Herta (1943)
• A dead man breaks in (1943)
• The last wages (1943)
• Unasked appears ... (1944)
• ... seems sufficiently suspicious (1944)
• ... but otherwise a decent guy (1948, posthumous)
• Maghena (1948, posthumous)
• We're looking for Germaine. A Parisian detective novel ( announced in Maghena in 1948 , not published)
• The blue limo. Detective novel ( announced in Maghena in 1948 , not published)
• Ingrid's riddle. Detective novel ( announced in Maghena in 1948 , not published)

Unpublished novels and novel exposés in the lost estate of Gertrud Rudolph:

• Carat (exposé)
• Station Bembe (Exposé)
• His honor the murderer (synopsis)
• Between cathedral and high court (manuscript)

The majority of the novels appeared in different editions as serial novels, linen edition, paperback, and abridged booklet. Several works were published under several author names, mostly Heinrich Weiler and Axel Rudolph. Rudolph used the pseudonym Richard Erben only once when, in February 1935, the Neue Illustrierte Zeitung was already running serialized stories under the names Weiler and Rudolph and the third Rudolph story, Usan and the Human Robbers, required an author's name. The book edition appeared in 1936 under the name Heinrich Weiler.

Scripts and film templates

• The Star of Valencia (1933) Directed by Alfred Zeisler , screenplay by Friedrich Zeckendorf and Axel Rudolph
• L'étoile de Valencia (1933) Director: Serge de Poligny, screenplay by Friedrich Zeckendorf, Jean Galtier-Boissière and Axel Rudolph
• The police radio reports (1939) Director: Rudolf van der Noss, based on the novel Aktenbündel M2-1706 / 45 by Axel Rudolph
• Mordsache Holm (1938) Directed by Erich Engels , based on the novel The Red Thread by Axel Rudolph

literature

• Martin Keune : dime novel. The exciting life of the successful writer Axel Rudolph be.bra verlag, Berlin 2009 ISBN 978-3-86124-639-8
• Andrea Hör: The successful writer Axel Rudolph - a contribution to popular culture in the 1930s / 1940s in Germany Dissertation book studies at the LMU, Munich 2012
• Martin Keune: Treason in Semlin. News from the life of Axel Rudolph Semliner Hefte, Semlin 2012
• Martin Keune: Five groschen for my life in: Heimatkundliche Blätter 38, 12th year, Brandenburg 2015

Web links

• Remembrance project for Axel Rudolph von Semliner citizens
• The Axel Rudolph biography Groschenroman (publisher's website)
• The place naming initiative of the Semlin local council in the “Märkische Allgemeine” from February 27, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rainer Schmitz: Five groschen for a life. Focus , accessed October 3, 2013 .