Rudolf Engel

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Rudolf Engel (r.) And Willi Bredel in 1951

Rudolf Engel (born September 12, 1903 in Berlin ; † October 16, 1993 ibid) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism , agent of the illegal intelligence service of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and cultural politician of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Party Republic (GDR). From 1948 to 1950 he was chairman of the DEFA board and from 1950 to 1955 director of the German Academy of the Arts in the GDR. From 1968 to 1990 he was Secretary General of the Commission for UNESCO Work in the GDR.

Life

After elementary school in Berlin, the working-class son Rudolf Engel worked as a cook , woodworker, chauffeur and actor . His brother is the actor Kurt Engel . In May 1929 he joined the KPD and worked for the Antimilitary Apparat (“AM Apparat”), the KPD's intelligence service , which existed from 1919 to 1937. Engel had the code name Ludwig here .

In June 1932, Engel joined the NSDAP covertly on behalf of the KPD and maintained connections with Joseph Goebbels and Otto Strasser . In January 1934 he was exposed and briefly imprisoned. In February 1934 he temporarily fled to Czechoslovakia .

In 1934 and 1935 Engel worked illegally for the KPD in Saarland and was the editor of an illegal KPD newspaper. In 1935 he went into exile again in the Soviet Union . In Moscow he completed a military-political training at the school of the Communist International , where he assumed his future code name "Ludwig Franconia". From June 1936 to January 1937 he worked as a chauffeur at the Karbolit plant in Orechowo-Sujewo .

In 1937 and 1938 Engel was an officer in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War . He was an information officer in the Chapayev battalion and was wounded in Brunete in June 1937 . From 1938 he looked after former Spanish fighters in France . After the outbreak of war in 1939, he was interned for a short time, then forced to work and lived in a job as a bus driver with his family, founded in France, in Sète , southern France, until 1942 . Before the German troops marched in, the family fled to the Massif Central , where Engel joined the Resistance and became a member of the “Free Germany” movement for the West (CALPO). As chief of staff of a battalion of Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTPF) operating in the Cantal department, he reached the rank of captain .

In 1945 Engel returned to Germany and became head of organization at the central administration for resettlers, of which he was president from November 1946 to April 1948. In 1946, Engel became a member of the SED and in 1948/49 Vice President of the Art and Literature Department of the German Administration for Popular Education . In 1948 Engel became chairman of the DEFA board and in 1950 director of the German Academy of the Arts . From 1955 Engel worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR . From 1963 to 1967 he was Counselor and Cultural Attaché in Prague and from 1968 Secretary General of the Commission for UNESCO Work in the GDR. 1970-1972 he was editor and co-editor of Ernst Busch's Aurora record series on behalf of the German Academy of the Arts . In 1990 Engel became a PDS member. Rudolf Engel died in Berlin in 1993.

Awards

Works

  • Rudolf Engel (Ed.): Erich Weinert tells, reports and pictures from his life . Berlin 1955, DNB  455427909 .
  • Rudolf Engel: The mousetrap on Mont Doré. In: Brigada Internacional is our honorary name, Vol. 2 . Berlin 1974.
  • Rudolf Engel: enemies and friends . German Military Publishing House , Berlin 1984, DNB  850141559 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Engel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DEFA chronicle for 1948 on the DEFA Foundation website
personal data
SURNAME Engel, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist politician (KPD / SED)
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1993
Place of death Berlin