Rudolf Arnold

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Rudolf Friedrich Arnold (born December 20, 1896 in Eisenach ; † July 15, 1950 ibid) was a German Communist party functionary , Thuringian member of the state parliament , victim of the Nazi justice system , prisoner in Nohra and Buchenwald concentration camps and mayor .

Life

Arnold came from a family of craftsmen . His father was a butcher . After attending elementary school, he learned the profession of lathe operator and toolmaker in the Eisenach engine works . At the age of 15 he became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth . During the First World War he was called up as a marine to Kiel . During the November Revolution of 1918 he joined the Spartacus League . In Memel he was a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council. After he returned to Eisenach, he joined the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) in 1920 , a council- democratic left-wing split from the KPD. It was not until 1927 that he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany . After a period of unemployment , he became a full-time employee in the Thuringian KPD district management, whose literature he was in charge of. His party made him a candidate in the elections to the Thuringian state parliament , as its deputy he was elected in 1932.

After the transfer of power to the NSDAP and immediately after the Reichstag fire , he was arrested on February 28, 1933 like all ten Thuringian KPD members of the state parliament. Then he and his colleague Fritz Gäbler were transferred to the Nohra concentration camp, the first concentration camp of the German Reich . From there on March 18, in a letter to the state parliament office, he declared his resignation from the KPD, assured him that he no longer wanted to work for the party, and asked for his dismissal. Contrary to the truth, however, the Nazi press spread the news that he had renounced his state parliament mandate, which the latter denied in a letter . The date of his release from the Nohra concentration camp is not yet known. The higher regional court in Jena sentenced him in a trial on May 19, 1933 to two years in prison . After his imprisonment he worked again as a toolmaker in Eisenach from 1935 to 1944. He was arrested again on August 10, 1944 as part of the " Operation Grid " and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

After the liberation from the Nazi dictatorship , Arnold held the office of mayor of the city of Ruhla from June 1945 to August 1949 . In September 1949, the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior appointed him head of the main department of the state, district and municipal administrations in Weimar . At the same time he was a member of the district council of Eisenach and its district council chairman.

literature

  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
  • Falk Burkhardt, Udo Wohlfeld: the network. The concentration camps in Thuringia 1933–1937. A documentation on the Nohra, Bad Sulza and Buchenwald camps, and the contribution National Conservative Forces and the Bad Sulza Concentration Camp. Stahlhelm - Bund der Frontsoldaten. = "wanted 2", Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-935275-01-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Wanted 2" Falk Burkhardt, Udo Wohlfeld: das netz. The concentration camps in Thuringia 1933-1937. A documentation on the Nohra, Bad Sulza and Buchenwald camps , and the contribution National Conservative Forces and the Bad Sulza Concentration Camp. Stahlhelm - Bund der Frontsoldaten , Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-935275-01-3 , p. 64ff.