Paul Ludwig (resistance fighter)

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Paul Ludwig (born October 5, 1910 in Breslau , † October 2, 1992 in Rostock ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism and a senior police officer in the GDR .

Life

Ludwig was born in the rural community of Klein Gandau in the district of Breslau , which was incorporated into Breslau on April 1, 1928. His father Paul Ludwig was a member of the SPD and a ship carpenter at an Oder shipyard in Breslau, his mother Mathilde also worked as a seamstress . He attended elementary school from 1916 to 1924 . After his father's death, his mother found him an apprenticeship. From 1924 to 1928 he learned the trade of carpenter . In 1926 he joined the Workers' Gymnastics and Sports Association (ATSB) and the union. After completing his apprenticeship, he was initially unemployed, then trained as a carpenter in a construction business . In 1931, after participating in a strike, he was again unemployed. He joined the Red Aid (RH) and in 1932 the KPD . Until January 30, 1933, when the National Socialists seized power , he held the position of organizational manager of a street cell.

He continued to work illegally and had to go into hiding in Wroclaw. By decision of the party, he emigrated to Czechoslovakia , reported to the KPD headquarters in Prague and then organized an illegal transfer of literature to Germany. In May 1934 he was taken into custody by the Czechoslovak gendarmerie. When he was to be handed over to the German police, he managed to escape shortly before the border crossing. He got to Prague in a roundabout way. With new personal documents issued in the name of “Bruno Holder”, he was legalized and used in the technical apparatus of the KPD headquarters in Prague for literature and propaganda. From December 1935 he was again working in the Czech-German border area as a courier in the Glatzer Kessel . In April 1937 he was arrested again, his true identity was recognized and, after three weeks' imprisonment, expelled from Czechoslovakia for life. Since leaving the CSR was not controlled, he turned up for the third time in Prague. Following a decision of the Communist Party headquarters he arrived in June 1937 Austria , the Switzerland and France walking over the Pyrenees to Spain .

There he took part in the Spanish Civil War as an interbrigadist . First in the 11th Brigade, he received partisan training at a special school in Barcelona and then came to the 1st motorized partisan battalion. Its first commander was Richard Stahlmann . After the demobilization of the International Brigades in September 1938, he remained under arms and was still involved in January 1939 to stop the advance of the fascists in Catalonia. On February 9, 1939, he was transferred to France and interned there in the Saint-Cyprien , Gurs and Argelès-sur-Mer camps. After a mutiny in Argelès, he was a prisoner at the fortress of Mont-Louis in the Pyrenees. In April 1941 he was extradited to Germany and taken to Breslau by the Gestapo , where he was sentenced to three years in prison in a high treason trial. He worked in the carpentry shop at the Wohlau prison . In 1943 he was placed on "probation" in the penalty battalion 999 and was promoted directly from the prison to the Heuberg military training area in Baden and assigned to the artillery. After training, he was relocated to the Balkan front with his battery and was deployed in coastal defense. When the battery was to be used to "fight gangs" against partisans in Greece and Albania , he defected to the Albanian partisans in autumn 1944. He became a regular member of the 4th Battalion of the 12th Partisan Brigade, which fought with landed British troops for the liberation of the port city of Saranda and the small town of Delvina . After the fighting ended, he took part in the Victory Parade in Tirana on November 28, 1944 with his 4th Battalion . Ludwig then completed an Antifa course in Moscow and became head of the Antifa school for German prisoners of war in the Golubowka camp near Voroshilovgrad . Ludwig was then taken over by the 3rd Ukrainian Front of the Red Army operating in southern Central Europe . With Max Zaspel and other Germans he reached the Hungarian border via Elbasani , Skopje and Belgrade , where they were attached to the 96th Rifle Division of the Red Army, which was deployed as a reserve in the Subotica - Szeged area . They took part with her in battles near Szombathely before they went home with Austrian anti-fascists on May 11, 1945 and arrived there on May 13, 1945. They were temporarily housed in Prince Eugene's castle , where Bruno Leuschner , Heinrich Rau and Horst Sindermann , who had been freed from Mauthausen concentration camp, also met . On the way from Tirana through Yugoslavia, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Dresden, Soviet soldiers accompanied him and twenty-five of his comrades. Nothing should happen to them on the way.

From Dresden he moved on to Berlin. There, Franz Dahlem instructed him in the summer of 1945 to set up a police apparatus in Bernau in what was then the Niederbarnim district . On August 10, 1945 he became a member of the police (VP) in the Soviet occupation zone and in 1946 a member of the SED . After a short course he became head of the People's Police District Office (VPKA) Niederbarnim. From July to December 1948 he was involved in the establishment of the People's Police readiness in the state of Brandenburg . From January 1949 he was operational chief of the main administration of the German People's Police (HVDVP), later 1st deputy to the chief of the main railway police department. On October 15, 1949, he took up the position of chief inspector ( major general ) as chief of the state police authority of Mecklenburg in Schwerin . After the division of the GDR into districts in 1952, he took over the function of head of the district authority of the People's Police (BDVP) Rostock . By 1953 he completed a distance learning course at the party college "Karl Marx" .

With the separation of the Border Police from the Ministry for State Security (MfS) and reintegration into the Ministry of the Interior (MdI) on March 1, 1957, Chief Inspector Ludwig became Major General on May 16, 1957 with the rank of Major General as Chief of the German Border Police (DGP) used (successor to Hermann Gartmann ). A serious illness that almost resulted in paraplegia forced him to take a seven-month break. From January to May 1960 he was represented by Major General Helmut Borufka as head of the DGP and replaced on May 15, 1960 by Colonel Erich Peter as head of the DGP. While he was still convalescing , he was ordered to succeed Colonel Hans Beyermann as chief of the transport police. As such, he was there when the US pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged on February 10, 1962 at the Glienicke Bridge in Potsdam for Rudolf Abel , a top Soviet spy in the USA. On February 28, 1967, he was retired because of his poor health and has lived in Rostock ever since.

Private

In December 1946 he got married in Bernau. His wife Käte died in 1978. In June 1981 he married again, Herta Quandt. She was a party functionary and first secretary of the SED district leadership in Bad Doberan and Gransee .

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Froh & Rüdiger Wenzke, (Eds.): Die Generale und Admirale der NVA , S. 231f.
  2. ↑ Congratulations on your 60th birthday in New Germany on October 5, 1970.
personal data
SURNAME Ludwig, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ludwig, Paul Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist, resistance fighter and major general of the People's Police
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH 2nd October 1992
Place of death Rostock