Rudolf Brassat

Rudolf Brassat (born July 31, 1905 in Berlin , † February 26, 1983 in Bad Liebenstein ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism and a politician of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He was expelled from the SED in 1958 as a critic of Walter Ulbricht .

Life

The son of a worker Brassat learned the trade of a locksmith after primary school . In 1919 he became a member of the Free Socialist Youth (FSJ), later of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and in 1924 a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). From 1931 he was the political leader of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO) in Thuringia .

After the National Socialists came to power and communist activities were banned in March 1933, Brassat also supported the party in illegality. He was arrested on June 13, 1933 and on November 20, 1934, together with Karl Olbrysch, he was sentenced to two years in prison by the People's Court , which he served in Berlin-Moabit , in the Lichtenburg concentration camp and in the Luckau prison. After his release in October 1936 to 1943 he worked as an unskilled worker for the Deutsche Fernkabel Gesellschaft in Berlin and was drafted into the German Wehrmacht's 999 Penal Battalion in February 1943 .

In 1945 Brassat became a British prisoner of war . In 1946 he was brought to London and took part in an antifa course. Brassat returned to Germany in 1946 and became a member of the SED.

Brassat was editor at Neues Deutschland until 1947 and then became an instructor for the Central Secretariat of the SED in East Berlin. From 1949 to 1951 he was the first secretary of the SED party organization in the central apparatus of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED . In 1951 Brassat was banned from working as a so-called “Western emigrant”. Until 1952 he was cultural director in the VEB Karl-Marx-Werk in Potsdam-Babelsberg , after that he was director of the VEB IFA-Motorenwerk in Zschopau .

In 1952, Brassat was arrested for “unlawful use of operating funds” and later expelled from the SED. After his release in 1953 he was nevertheless head of department at VEB Bremsenwerk Berlin and in 1956 he was re-admitted to the SED. Because of criticism of the Stalinist leadership style of Walter Ulbricht, Brassat again came into conflict with the party and state leadership and was monitored by the Ministry for State Security (MfS). In 1958 he was again excluded from the SED.

literature

• Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Rudolf Brassat . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Rudolf Brassat In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Ulrich Mählert: How many people fell by the wayside when they relentlessly advanced. The Berlin communist Rudolf Brassat , Berlin 2005.