Rudi Arndt

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Rudi Arndt (front left) as Lord Mayor at the award ceremony of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1972), with Hilda Heinemann , Hartmut von Hentig and Gustav Heinemann

Rudi Arndt (* 1. March 1927 in Wiesbaden ; † 14. May 2004 near Kiev , Ukraine ) was a German politician of the SPD .

family

Rudi Arndt comes from a social democratic family. His father, Konrad Arndt, was a union secretary. He had been in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for a while (see also “ Protective Custody ”), was also tortured there, was released in 1938 and was called up in 1939 to escape the pressure of persecution from the Wiesbaden Gestapo. Konrad Arndt allegedly died on November 13, 1940 in a car accident under mysterious circumstances; there is strong evidence that he was murdered by SS men. His mother Anna Babette ( Betty ) Arndt, geb. Stunz, (1899–1984) was also a social democrat and local politician in Frankfurt am Main. Her sister was also murdered by the National Socialists in 1940.

Rudi had an older brother named Günter. In 1942, following statements critical of the Nazi regime, he was expelled from a teacher training institution , drafted into military service and sent to the Eastern Front (he returned from a Soviet prisoner of war in 1949).

Arndt was married three times. There was a son from the first marriage.

time of the nationalsocialism

At the age of 17, Arndt joined the NSDAP on April 20, 1944, Hitler's birthday (membership number 10.163.294). The historian Hans-Peter Klausch , who published a study on the NSDAP memberships of the Hessian state parliament members on behalf of the Die Linke parliamentary group in 2011 , warns against sweeping judgments. Many, like the 17-year-old Arndt at the time, had entered "in adolescent delusion after years of indoctrination" and later had a "change of mind". In the last days of the Nazi regime he was also a low-ranking Hitler Youth leader and anti-aircraft helper .

Life and work

After graduating from the Helmholtz School in Frankfurt , Arndt studied law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . In 1952 he passed the first state examination and in 1960 (at that time already as a member of the state parliament) the second state examination. From 1953 until his election to the state parliament in 1956, he worked full-time as a consultant for youth law and the federal youth plan in the Hessian Ministry of the Interior .

In addition to his political activities, he was admitted to the bar . After being voted out as mayor in 1977, he worked as a lawyer. In his spare time he rallied .

Retired in 1989, Arndt worked after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification as a "man for all cases, poster sticker, adviser, material and fundraiser" on a voluntary basis for the SPD regional association in Thuringia. He died unexpectedly in May 2004 while cruising the Dnieper near Kiev.

Arndt's grave in the Frankfurt main cemetery

Political party

Arndt joined the SPD in 1945 and belonged to the left wing of the Hessian SPD. From 1948 to 1954 he was chairman of the Socialist Youth and from 1962 to 1975 deputy district chairman of the SPD Hessen-Süd. At the district party conference in Büdingen in April 1967 there was a battle vote between Arndt and Albert Osswald for the district chairmanship, which Osswald clearly won. This vote was a preliminary decision on the question of Zinn's successor as prime minister two years later . In 1975 Arndt succeeded Albert Osswald as district chairman. In 1980 he resigned as district chairman. Arndt was a long-time board member of the SPD Hessen and was elected to the federal board of the SPD in April 1973, to which he belonged until December 1979. In April 1987 he resigned from the state executive in protest against cooperation with the Greens. At Holger Börner's request , he waited until after the state elections in Hesse in 1987 to take this step .

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he helped to build up the Thuringian SPD from 1989 and was an honorary state manager.

MP

From 1952 to 1956 Arndt was a city councilor in Frankfurt am Main. After the death of Walter Kolb, the 29-year-old Arndt moved to the Hessian state parliament on September 25, 1956 . He belonged to this until 1972, from 1961 to 1964 he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. He started in the constituency of Frankfurt-Westliche Vororte and was covered by the SPD state list. In the state elections in Hesse in 1958 , he ran at number twelve on the list, and in 1962 at number two.

From 1979 to 1989 he was a member of the European Parliament , where from 1984 to 1989 he was chairman of the largest political group, the Socialist Group (PES) .

He was a member of the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th Federal Assemblies .

Public offices

After Wilhelm Conrad left , Arndt was appointed Minister of Economics and Transport to the Zinn IV cabinet in 1964. After Georg August Zinn's resignation as Prime Minister, Arndt was one of the candidates for successor within the party, but could not get his way and Albert Osswald became Prime Minister. Even under Albert Osswald, Arndt remained Minister of Economics in the Hessian state government until 1970 . In December 1970, he became Minister of Finance for Hesse in the Osswald II cabinet .

After he was elected Lord Mayor of Frankfurt am Main on December 16, 1971 as the successor to the late Walter Möller , he took up his post on April 6, 1972, which he held until 1977.

As Lord Mayor of Frankfurt, he was also responsible for building policy and was therefore affected by the house-to-house war that citizens' initiatives and students waged to preserve endangered housing in Frankfurt's Westend . He owed the nickname Dynamit- Rudi to his idea, expressed in 1965, not to rebuild the old opera , which was bombed in the air raids on Frankfurt am Main , but to have it blown up . Arndt later stated that he had never seriously proposed the demolition. In 1972 Arndt named the 14th hippopotamus born in Frankfurt Zoo with the name Dynamit .

He accepted the party donations, which were criticized as a donation affair of the Frankfurt SPD by parts of the media and the opposition.

In the local elections on March 20, 1977 , the CDU Hessen achieved a landslide victory. The absolute majority of the Union in Römer received nationwide attention. As a result, Walter Wallmann (CDU) became mayor and Arndt became opposition leader in the city parliament.

literature

  • Roselinde Arndt and others: Rudi Arndt. Politics with dynamite. A political biography. vmn, Verlag M. Naumann, Hanau 2011, ISBN 978-3-940168-45-0 .
  • Gerhard Beier : Labor movement in Hessen. On the history of the Hessian labor movement through one hundred and fifty years (1834–1984). Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-458-14213-4 , p. 361.
  • Albrecht Kirschner: Final report of the working group on the preliminary study “Nazi past of former Hessian state parliament members” of the commission of the Hessian state parliament for the research project “Political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse” . Ed .: Hessischer Landtag . Wiesbaden 2013, p. 23, 45, 50 ( Download [PDF; 479 kB ]).
  • Jochen Lengemann : The Hessen Parliament 1946–1986 . Biographical handbook of the advisory state committee, the state assembly advising the constitution and the Hessian state parliament (1st – 11th electoral period). Ed .: President of the Hessian State Parliament. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-458-14330-0 , p. 199–200 ( hessen.de [PDF; 12.4 MB ]).
  • Jochen Lengemann: MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 56.
  • Sabine Schneider: burdened democrats. Hessian member of the state parliament of the post-war period between National Socialism and liberalization. Ed. Historical Commission for Hesse ISBN 9783942225458 (therein entries on Arndt and 10 other people), Sales Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg 2019 (Series: Publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse 48, 15; & Political and Parliamentary History of the State of Hesse, 47) ( final report to a preliminary report from 2013)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Axel Ulrich: Konrad Arndt. A Wiesbaden trade unionist and social democrat in the fight against fascism. (PDF 844kB) 2001, p. 60 , archived from the original on January 4, 2004 ; accessed on August 23, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Axel Ulrich: Konrad Arndt. A Wiesbaden trade unionist and social democrat in the fight against fascism. (PDF 844kB) 2001, p. 61 , archived from the original on January 4, 2004 ; accessed on August 23, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Pitt von Bebenburg: New beginning with old Nazi. (No longer available online.) In: Frankfurter Rundschau . May 4, 2011, archived from the original on May 10, 2011 ; Retrieved May 24, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Hans-Peter Klausch : Brown legacy. Nazi past Hessian state parliament member 1st – 11th Electoral term (1946–1987) . The Left Group in the Hessian State Parliament, Wiesbaden 2011 ( Download [PDF; 4.2 MB ]).
  5. ↑ Joachim Neander: "Dynamit-Rudi" - a legend turns 70. In: Die Welt . March 1, 1997, accessed August 23, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Died: Rudi Arndt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 2004, p. 202 ( online ).
  7. ^ The finance ministers since 1945 ( memento of January 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Documentation on the post-war period - Mayor until 1971 ( Memento from September 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Manfred Kittel: March through the institutions ?: Politics and culture in Frankfurt after 1968, 2011, ISBN 3486704028 , page 377 ff., Online .
personal data
SURNAME Arndt, Rudi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdL, MdEP
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 2004
Place of death near Kiev , Ukraine