Richard Arlt

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Richard Arlt (born May 5, 1911 in Ober Hartmannsdorf ; † August 25, 1999 ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism , trade unionist and mining engineer.

Life

youth

Richard Arlt was born in 1911 in Ober Hartmannsdorf near Sagan in Lower Silesia, the son of a farmer. His father died on August 1, 1914, so that Richard grew up as a half-orphan in modest circumstances. From 1917 to 1925 he attended the Protestant elementary school in his hometown. Ultimately, he was unable to begin a desired apprenticeship as a bricklayer. Therefore, at the age of 17 he became a miner in brown coal civil engineering, where he initially worked as a pusher .

In addition to his work in mining, Arlt was also politically active. In May 1929 he joined the SPD, but in 1931 he switched to the Wiesau local branch of the KPD. He was also a union cashier for five to six towns.

Resistance under National Socialism

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, his political activities were only possible in illegality. The network he joined underground created and distributed leaflets, among other things. The material was obtained through liaison officers from Berlin or produced in-house. He was arrested on May 16, 1936 for reasons unknown to him later. In October 1936 Richard Arlt was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “preparing for high treason ” . He initially served his sentence in Berlin-Moabit prison , but was soon transferred to Brandenburg-Göhren . A good year later, he was then transferred to a newly built prisoner camp in Dessau-Roßlau , which was a satellite camp of the Elbe regulation prison camp in Griebo and served to regulate the Elbe . There he met the Berlin lawyer and resistance fighter Max Berger (1893-1970), with whom he later cultivated a lifelong friendship and whom he visited repeatedly in Berlin during the war. After the end of his actual prison sentence, he was held for about four weeks by the Gestapo in Frankfurt (Oder) and subjected to interrogation.

At the end of December 1938 he was finally back at work in his home country. He began a correspondence course to become an engineer and received a patent for a utility model for a tunneling machine in mining. From then on he was politically active underground. In the autumn of 1939 Arlt was found "unworthy of military service ", but in October 1942 he was finally drafted into the army . He came to the Penal Division 999 , where he fought in Tunisia , among other places . On May 11, 1943, Arlt was taken prisoner by the French , from which he was only released a good two years after the end of the Second World War in the summer of 1947.

Arlt's work after the war and in the GDR

After initially working in mining near Zeitz again, Arlt soon moved to Weißwasser , where he also worked in mining. As early as 1947 he was a member of in April 1946 by the forced merger of the SPD and KPD incurred SED become. From January 1949 he became a technical employee in Halle (Saale) . A year later he was elected to the central executive committee of the industrial union mining and energy . On April 16, 1951, he became plant manager of the lignite works in Ammendorf , a company with a workforce of around 2,500 at the time. In the same year, Arlt received a patent for a tunnel boring machine, which was presented at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1955 and used in several open-cast lignite mines.

The briquette factory Louise in Domsdorf, aerial photo (2015)

In 1952 he was appointed plant manager in the briquette factory in Domsdorf in what is now the Elbe-Elster district . In Domsdorf , the lignite was extracted in open-cast mining . Nevertheless, Arlt continued to deal professionally with problems relating to civil engineering. He finally moved the center of his life to neighboring Tröbitz . Arlt became a member of several specialist commissions and from July 1955 was appointed by the Minister for Heavy Industry, Fritz Selbmann, to the scientific and technical council of the lignite headquarters . At the end of 1956 he founded VEB Braunkohlen- und Schachtbau Tröbitz , since 1960 Braunkohlen- und Schachtbau Welzow (BuS Welzow). In 1958 he began studying for a degree in engineering and economics in Freiberg and finally in 1960 he became operations manager at the VEB crude oil and natural gas exploration in Gommern . From May 1961 he worked as a production manager and a little later as a drainage technologist in Brieske , which he remained until he retired.

In 1974 Arlt became chairman of the newly founded district committee of the anti-fascist resistance fighters of the GDR Finsterwalde - Calau- Luckau-Lübben (KdAW). He has received several awards in the GDR for his economic and political activities.

Lost train

Wildgrube Memorial

Richard Arlt had been with Erika Arlt (1928–2015), b. Röder, married. Both earned great merit in researching the fate of the lost train , a prisoner transport that started in April 1945 with around 2,400 people in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and stranded in Tröbitz. The KdAW Finsterwalde-Calau-Luckau-Lübben , chaired by Arlts, initiated the erection of a memorial site with a memorial stone at the site of a mass grave with 28 Jewish victims of the train in Wildgrube in 1974/75 . Furthermore, on April 23, 1975, with the participation of prominent personalities such as CDU politician Günther Grewe , State Secretary for Church Affairs Hans Seigewasser and the President of the Association of Jewish Communities in the GDR Helmut Aris as well as international delegations, a state ceremony in memory of the Victim of the lost train.

Erika Arlt together with the Holocaust survivor Arieh Koretz (2008)

Many other events of this kind followed, often with international participation. Arlt acted as a guide at the local memorials. In addition to the memorial in Wildgrube, there is also one at the Protestant village church in Tröbitz, at the Tröbitz Jewish cemetery, in Schilda and, since 1989, in Langennaundorf .

At Arlt's suggestion, his wife Erika has been researching and documenting the events since the 1980s and has developed into the most important contact person for the relatives of the victims from all over the world. In 1997 she was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for her research work on the fate of the survivors of this train and the associated events in the last days of the Second World War, as well as for her commitment to the preservation and care of the Tröbitz Jewish cemetery .

The work of the two spouses continues to remember the events around the Lost Train to the present day. Andreas Claus, the mayor of the city of Uebigau-Wahrenbrück , warned at a memorial event in April 2017 in Tröbitz with the words: “Don't forget Erika and Richard Arlt from Tröbitz. You have earned great merit in research on lost transport and in commemoration of the victims. "

Patents (selection)

  • Coal extraction device, especially for driving routes in lignite underground mining (utility model No. 1522113), 1942
  • Tunneling machine (Pat. No. 243), 1951
  • Protective device for mining shields (Pat. No. 13229), 1954

literature

  • Rainer Bauer (ed.): Erika and Richard Arlt: two lives for the GDR: a German history book. Verlag am park, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-945187-90-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Landkreis awarded cultural prizes. In Kreisanzeiger for the Elbe-Elster district. No. 10/2009
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Richart Arlt: "My life report" (audio file) in the media archive BV Tröbitz @ René Born
  3. ↑ Holdings of the Elbe Regulation prisoner camp in the Saxony-Anhalt state archive , accessed on June 17, 2017.
  4. ^ IG Bergbau-Energie in the Federal Archives, accessed on June 21, 2017.
  5. ↑ a b "Report on the introduction of new working methods through the use of tunneling machines in lignite", Domsdorf, March 1, 1956
  6. ↑ a b "More briquettes for our republic - the tunneling remains behind - mechanization unavoidable / some inquiries to the HV brown coal" in Neues Deutschland , March 21, 1957, p. 3
  7. ^ Richard Arlts' appointment certificate to the Scientific Technical Council of the main administration dated July 12, 1955.
  8. ↑ a b Chronicle of the district committee of anti-fascist resistance fighters of the GDR Finsterwalde-Calau-Luckau-Lübben , 1974–1984
  9. ↑ Commemoration for Jewish victims of fascism. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . April 24, 1975.
  10. ↑ Regina Scheer: Dealing with the monuments . 2003, ISBN 3-932502-36-1 , pp. 116 .
  11. ^ "Documentation of the district committee of the anti-fascist resistance fighters of the GDR Finsterwalde-Calau-Luckau-Lübben 1974–1984" in the media archive BV Tröbitz @ René Born
  12. ^ A b "Farjon Israel: There is no greater obligation than remembering," FOCUS Online, April 25, 2017
  13. ↑ Stefanie Endlich: “The lost transport” in memorials circular , No. 178 (6/2015), pp. 18–24
  14. ^ "Patent report" in Glückauf - Berg- und Hüttenmännische Zeitschrift , issue 38, September 19, 1942, p. 521
  15. ↑ Patent Specification No. 243 of May 22, 1957
  16. ^ Patent specification No. 13229 of February 13, 1952
personal data
SURNAME Arlt, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter against National Socialism, trade unionist and mining engineer
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Ober Hartmannsdorf , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1999