Carl Rudolph (pedagogue)

Carl Rudolph (born January 18, 1891 in Sayda ; † February 3, 1955 in Leipzig ) was a German reform pedagogue and a victim of the Nazi and GDR regimes ( Stasi victim ). He made lasting contributions to reform education.

Life

After completing the teachers' seminar in Dresden-Plauen, he was employed as a primary school teacher in Chemnitz Glösa in 1912 . In 1922 he was promoted to headmaster. In May 1945 Rudolph became a member of the "Socialist Negotiating Committee Chemnitz" and briefly rector of the Glösa elementary school until he was finally appointed to the district school council for Chemnitz-Land by his friend and social democratic companion Moritz Nestler . As a school board member, he paid particular attention to overcoming the differences between city and country schools as well as to the profiling of the so-called core course teaching system, which was still laid down in the Education Act of 1946, but has been dismantled against the background of the administrative reform pedagogy exclusion since 1948 has been. At the same time, he devoted himself to the organization of both talented training and tutoring through the course class system.

politics

From around the mid-1920s he was active in Glösa as an honorary local chairman and councilor. In 1921 he joined both the SPD and the Saxon Teachers' Association. Twelve years later, he was hit hard by the SPD's party ban . All his work came to a standstill as a result of the National Socialist disciplinary measures.

Persecution of the Nazi era

According to Paragraph 4 “ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service ”, Rudolph was dismissed from school service in 1933 and from then on he had to secure the livelihood of his family through commercial employment. He was also sent to Sachsenburg concentration camp from October 1935 to February 1936 . After his return, he had to begin his next sentence in the Gestapo prison in Chemnitz from April 1941 to June 1942. After this time, forced labor followed from August to December 1944. Nevertheless, he was actively involved in illegal work against the Nazi regime. On the initiative of Alfred Langguth , a police officer dismissed by the National Socialists, he took part in the re-establishment of illegal social democratic structures in Chemnitz and the surrounding area from 1943 onwards.

Persecution in the GDR

As during the time of National Socialism, after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD in 1946 , Rudolph had to meet again illegally with like-minded democrats because, as a staunch democrat, he had conflicts with the socialist regime at an early stage. After their discovery - with the exception of himself - all other participants in the Chemnitz discussion group of former SPD members, including Langguth and Nestler, Karl Eger, Gerhard Kaderschafka, Kurt König and Fritz Uhlmann, were removed from their professional fields in the spring of 1948, finally in the On the night of February 18 to 19, 1949, at the instigation of the SED top officials, arrested in Chemnitz and handed over to the Soviet secret service. It was only after brutal interrogation that he could be determined to belong to this group. He was arrested on April 21, 1949.

Military tribunal

The Soviet military tribunal sentenced - as a result of a humanly incomprehensible judgment - on 22/23. June 1949 in Dresden all defendants to 25 years in prison. They were accused of having contacts with the SPD's eastern office as spying. Rudolph was also punished with the confiscation of his property and was imprisoned in the notorious National Socialist prison in Bautzen (Gelbes Elend) until December 13, 1954 . He was then transferred to the Brandenburg-Görden prison. Due to cancer he was transferred to the Leipzig detention hospital in December 1954 and again in January 1955. His remains were never buried. According to the documents of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR, his urn was "disposed of" on March 17, 1965 .

rehabilitation

On November 12, 1997, Carl Rudolph was fully rehabilitated under Article 3 of the Law of the Russian Federation (On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression).

Primary sources

• Saxon State Archives - Main State Archives Dresden, State Government of Saxony, 11401 Ministry of National Education, No. 406, 449, 516, 518
• Sächsisches Staatsarchiv - Staatsarchiv Chemnitz, 30404 Kreistag / Kreisrat Chemnitz 1945–52, No. 1546 to 1552, 1554, 1556, 1558, 1561, 1592
• Chemnitz City Archives, Glösa, No. 412, 430
• Federal archive inventory DR 2/705 Ministry of Education, DO 1 Ministry of the Interior: SMT card files-R
• Saxon Memorials Foundation, Rehabilitation Certificate AZ .: 5uk-1516-97, Public Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation

Literature sources

• B. Bouvier: Switched off! Social Democrats in the Soviet zone of occupation and in the GDR 1945–1953. Bonn 1996
• M. Schmeitzner: Comrades in court. The Soviet prosecution of members of the SED and their predecessor parties 1945–54. In: Andreas Hilger, Ute Schmidt, Günther Wagenlehner (eds.): Soviet military tribunals. Volume 2: The conviction of German civilians 1945–1955. Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-412-06801-2 , pp. 265-344, in particular pp. 328, 329 and 339
• Andreas Pehnke : “To be completely isolated!” The Chemnitz school reformer Moritz Nestler (1886–1976). Beucha 2006 (P)
• Andreas Pehnke : Carl Rudolph (1891–1955) - upright Chemnitz school reformer and social democrat. In: Averages of the Chemnitz History Association. Volume 78/2011, pp. 143-156.
• Andreas Pehnke : Resistant Saxon school reformers in the sights of Stalinist politics (1945–1959). Biographical sketches, new findings and a Czech and Hungarian comparative study. Peter Lang Verlag, 2008
• Mike Schmeitzner, Stefan Donth: The party to enforce dictatorship. KPD / SED in Saxony 1945–1952. Böhlau, 2002
• Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century. Social Democratic Party of Germany, Board member Schüren, 2000

Web links

• Andreas Pehnke : Rudolph, Carl. In: Saxon Biography. 19th January 2017
• Dieter Häcker: Carl Rudolph on the side of the SPD Chemnitz