Hermann Steudner (politician)
Hermann Steudner (born May 9, 1896 in Arnstadt ; † July 13, 1986 in Schwerin ) was a Thuringian KPD member of the state parliament , resistance fighter , victim of fascism , prisoner in the Nohra and Buchenwald concentration camps , Lord Mayor of Arnstadt and Lieutenant Colonel of the MfS .
Life
Steudner came from a working class family in Arnstadt . After attending elementary school, he learned the trade of cabinet maker . At the beginning of the First World War in 1914 he was drafted as an army soldier . After the end of the war and the November Revolution , he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), and in August 1919 he switched to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). For many years he worked as an honorary secretary for the Arnstadt sub-district of his party and was unemployed for many years. In the elections to the Thuringian Landtag , the KPD put him up as a candidate and thus he became a member of the Sixth Thuringian Landtag after his election. In September 1932 he was sentenced by a court to seven months ' imprisonment for “offenses against the emergency ordinance ” , but was released in October 1932. Since then he has worked as an instructor for his party in the Rhön .
After the transfer of power to the NSDAP , one day after the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933, all ten KPD members of the state parliament were arrested and transferred to the Nohra concentration camp, the first concentration camp in the German Reich , from which he was released in April. In September 1933, he was arrested again and brought to trial, which sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. After the end of his imprisonment in 1936 he worked again as a carpenter. In the course of the " Operation Grid ", Steudner was captured again in August 1944 and transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, from which he was released in December.
After liberation from the Nazi regime , he rejoined the newly founded KPD in 1945 and was appointed Lord Mayor of Arnstadt. He held this office until 1950. After a break as a disability pensioner , he became a full-time employee of the Thuringian MfS administration in 1952 and was the first secretary of the SED party organization . In December 1953, Isolde Sobeck became head of the SED district leadership in East Berlin in the State Secretariat for State Security . In this capacity he took part in the meetings of the State Security College from early 1954 and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the same year. From April 1956 he was head of division in Department III for economics . At the beginning of 1957 he left the MfS and moved to Schwerin. Here he was most recently the first secretary of the SED district leadership in Schwerin.
Awards
- 1966 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and 1981 in gold.
literature
- Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 .
- Jens Gieseke: Hermann Steudner . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
- Silke Schumann: Party education in the secret police - On the role of the SED in the MfS in the fifties , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-146-1 .
- Jens Gieseke : Hermann Steudner. In: Roger Engelmann , Bernd Florath , Helge Heidemeyer, Daniela Münkel , Arno Polzin, Walter Süß (eds.): Das MfS-Lexikon. 3rd updated edition, Ch. Links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , p. 319, online version .
Individual evidence
- ^ Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 .
- ^ New Germany of June 9, 1966
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Steudner, Hermann |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German communist resistance fighter, party functionary, member of parliament, local politician and MfS employee |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 9, 1896 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Arnstadt |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 13, 1986 |
| Place of death | Schwerin |