Ludwig Philipp Lude

Ludwig Philipp Lude (born October 2, 1895 in Kaiserslautern ; † July 16, 1961 in Stolberg (Rhld.) , District of Aachen ) was a German social democratic resistance fighter and the first regional president of the then administrative district of Aachen after the Second World War .

Life

Ludwig Philipp Lude was born the son of a master brewer . From 1902 to 1905 he attended elementary school , then until April 1910 the upper secondary school . From 1910 to 1915 he worked as an apprentice locksmith. During this time he joined the German Metalworkers' Association in the cartel of free trade unions (ADGB). After his apprenticeship, he worked as a pit fitter in the Aachen district .

In 1912 he was a co-founder of the SPD local association Weiden (later Broichweiden , now Würselen ). His entry into the SPD was not legally correct, as he was not yet of legal age at the time and thus could not yet become a member of the association. For this reason, the local party leadership at the time decided to simply make him a year older.

As a soldier, he experienced the First World War on the Western Front from August 1915 to November 1918. He lost three ribs from a wound.

In December 1918, he accepted the position as a full-time union secretary at the German Metalworkers' Association in Aachen. In 1919 he was a member of the municipal council in Würselen-Broichweiden for the first time. From 1920 to 1925 he was managing director of the German Metalworkers' Association for the ADGB local cartel Stolberg.

During the occupation of the Ruhr, Lude organized the struggle against the separatists in Stolberg and occasionally brought funds from Cologne to Aachen to finance the Ruhr struggle.

From 1925 to 1931 he took over the management of the grocery store founded by his wife in Stolberg.

Third Reich

On June 19, 1935, he was taken to the prison in Aachen by the National Socialists . On December 11, 1936, he was sentenced by the People's Court in Berlin for high treason to six years in prison and six years of loss of honor, including eighteen months of pre-trial detention. Ludwig Philipp Lude had distributed literature for emigrants and delivered news from Germany to former SPD leaders living abroad. Lude maintained the first inland depot of writings smuggled across the border in the Rhineland area. From here the resistance movements of the Ruhr area and the Rhine rail were supplied. Central role played u. a. the "Germania" bread factory located in Duisburg-Hamborn , which distributed the writings smuggled in by Lude to the workers. He served a prison sentence in Siegburg until June 11, 1940 , but was released on pardon due to his serious illness.

When the verdict was pronounced, Lude received mitigating circumstances from the judges. The reason for this was an incident from 1930. Before his imprisonment, he was an active member of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold. During this time there were repeated attacks between the SA , KPD and Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold. Ludwig Philipp Lude observed a brutal attack by several KPD members on some SA men. After he realized that this was not a "normal" brawl, but an attempted lynching, Lude intervened and saved the life of the SA supporters by giving them protection and shelter. This although Lude himself often fell victim to the SA thugs.

Despite the threat of going back to prison, Ludwig Philipp Lude and some of his fellow campaigners organized active resistance against the National Socialists in the Aachen region.

District President

After the war, the Allied military administration appointed Lude as deputy mayor of the city of Stolberg in October 1944. He held this position until March 18, 1945, after which he was appointed regional president in Aachen.

For many this appointment came as a surprise, because the SPD had never gained a majority in the Aachen district up to that point. Lude first had to fight against a civil service that was interspersed with former National Socialists and was strongly oriented towards the bourgeoisie. But he was able to fill some important positions with reliable friends who were either SPD members or politically neutral.

Ludwig Philipp Lude released many former NSDAP members from the administration in the coming period. With these tough measures he tried to free the administration in his administrative district from National Socialists. This led to strong hostility and downright hate speech.

Ludwig Philipp Lude was the first German after World War II to be allowed to carry a weapon by the military government. Startled by the murder of Aachen's mayor Franz Oppenhoff by a “ werewolf squad ”, Lude was allowed to carry a firearm. At a meeting in an Eifel municipality, when there was a vote on the future affiliation of a small village, Lude shot his revolver into the ceiling of the meeting room. The previously wildly articulating and almost thrashing village community, which was completely divided in their opinion, fell silent. Lude then had a vote and stated that he was personally in favor of the place remaining in Germany. Without further discussion, an overwhelming majority shared this opinion. Lude was then nicknamed "Revolverlude".

In March 1950, his critics had successfully sabotaged his political work. “In front of a very small audience”, so a quote from the Aachener Nachrichten, Lude celebrated his five-year term on March 25, 1950. The invited guests were either apologized by third-rate representatives or stayed away from the event. In the course of this celebration, while at the laudation given by Vogel, the ministerial director of the Ministry of the Interior, he learned that he had been given his well-deserved retirement. March 31st was the last day for him, and he retired on October 1st, 1950.

Ludwig Philipp Lude died on June 16, 1961 in Stolberg, and on the initiative of the SPD, the forecourt of the town hall was renamed “Ludwig-Philipp-Lude-Platz” in the mid-1980s.

literature

• Workers' resistance on the Rhine and Ruhr 1933–1945 (Ed. Jusos in the SPD); Dusseldorf.
• 150 years of the government and administrative district of Aachen - contributions to their history (Ed. District President Aachen); Aachen 1967.
• Manfred Bierganz : Stolberg after the war 1945–1948, Ludwig Philipp Lude - 1st district president after World War II , volume 16, publisher: Stolberger Heimat- und Geschichtsverein eV , produced by Burg Verlag & Druck, 1988.

Web links

• Lude and the Wolfgang Franzen trial in Spiegel 38/1950 .