Herbert Rutschke

Herbert Georg Julius Rutschke (born October 4, 1905 in Bromberg ; † May 14, 1978 in Potsdam-Babelsberg ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ), resistance fighter against the Nazi regime and trade unionist ( FDGB ). He was chairman of the Potsdam district council .

Life

Rutschke, son of a lithographer and a seamstress who attended from 1913 to 1921, the folk and middle school , and then graduated from 1922 to 1924 an apprenticeship at a Breslauer wholesalers. He became a member of the workers 'swimming club and the workers' gymnastics and sports federation . With the start of his apprenticeship in 1922 he became a member of the Central Association of Employees . Rutschke joined the KJVD in 1924 and the KPD in 1925. Between 1924 and 1926 Rutschke was unemployed. From 1926 he worked as a technical worker for the KPD district leadership in Silesia in Breslau, and from September 1929 as a stenographer for the KPD district leadership in Thuringia in Jena . After the KPD district leadership was relocated to Erfurt , Rutschke worked in 1932/1933 as a volunteer and editor at the Thuringian Volksblatt .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Rutschke took part in the communist resistance. From March 1 to April 1, 1933, Rutschke, together with other comrades, produced four editions of the Kleiner Thüringen Volksblatt , a KPD flight newspaper that was produced on printing capacities specially prepared for illegality. Rutschke was arrested on April 1, 1933 and, after five months in prison in Erfurt, transferred to Kassel . In October 1933 he was sentenced to two years in prison by the Higher Regional Court of Kassel for “preparing for high treason ” . After the end of his prison sentence, which Rutschke spent in Hameln and in the Emsland camp Brual-Rhede , he was taken into " protective custody " on April 7, 1935 and sent to the Esterwegen concentration camp . In 1936 he was one of the first prisoners to be sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . On November 30, 1936, he was released conditionally. Rutschke had to register with the Gestapo in Breslau and then go to the local police every three days. After he was unemployed after his release from prison, Rutschke worked for a year as a civil engineering worker before he took a job as an accountant in a liqueur factory in January 1938. In January 1938 Rutschke married his childhood friend Elfriede Kippke, who had already given birth to their son Günther in December 1937. In 1947 their son Reinhard joined them. Although Rutschke was classified as “unworthy of defense ” in 1940, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in February 1943 and pressed into the 999 penalty battalion . He came to Amaliades in his 4th battalion in the Peloponnese . As the clerk of the battalion staff, he secretly informed Greek partisans about imminent military actions by the Wehrmacht. In the summer of 1944 he was arrested again and taken to Germany. Here in the Rhineland he had to work as a construction pioneer for the Wehrmacht. On March 26, 1945, he was taken prisoner by the United States . In March 1946 he was released by the Western Allied authorities in France .

After his return to Erfurt in 1946, he became a member of the FDGB and the SED. From May 1946 on, Rutschke took care of the development of the press, radio and advertising department as a member of the FDGB state committee for Thuringia, which he took over as head. From 1947 to 1949 he was secretary for economy in the state board of the FDGB Thuringia and from 1950 to 1952 second chairman of the FDGB state board Thuringia. In 1951 he was delegated to the state party school in Erfurt for a course. In 1952 he briefly headed the economic policy department in the SED state management in Thuringia. From 1952 to June 1955 he was the second secretary of the SED district leadership in Suhl .

In 1955/1956 he graduated from the party college of the CPSU in Moscow with a degree in social science . 1955/1956 briefly political employee in the Central Committee of the SED, he worked from 1957 to 1960 as chairman of the council of the Potsdam district. From September 1960 to September 1963 he was Vice Rector for Student Affairs at the German Academy for Political Science and Law in Potsdam- Babelsberg .

Awards and honors

• Medal of Merit of the GDR
• Medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945 (1958)
• Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze and Silver (1970)

• The Polytechnic Oberschule 29 in Potsdam bore his name.

literature

• Federal Ministry for All-German Issues (Ed.): SBZ biography . Deutscher Bundes-Verlag, Berlin 1964, p. 297.
• Andreas Herbst (eds.), Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 3: Lexicon of functionaries (= rororo manual. Vol. 6350). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16350-0 , p. 286.
• Gabriele Baumgartner: Rutschke, Herbert . In: Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990. Volume 2: Maassen - Zylla. KG Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-11177-0 , p. 747.
• Albert Krämer: Rutschke, Herbert (1905–1978) . In: Siegfried Mielke (ed.): Trade unionists in the concentration camps Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen. Biographical manual . Volume 2. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89468-275-2 , pp. 375-377.
• Mario Niemann :  Rutschke, Herbert . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Steffen Kachel: A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919 to 1949 . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20544-7 , p. 207.