Rudolf Jäger (trade unionist)

Rudolf Jäger (born May 20, 1907 in Halle (Saale) ; † November 18, 1974 in Basdorf ) was a German trade unionist , politician and diplomat . He was chairman of the energy industrial union in the FDGB and a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR .

Life

Jäger, son of a working-class family, attended elementary school and completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer . He then worked in this profession as well as a transport and miner. Jäger had been unionized since 1922 . In 1926 Jäger joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and in 1927 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). From 1928 he acted as organ director of the Halle-Merseburg district management of the KJVD. From summer 1929 to May 1931 he was a member of the Central Committee of the KJVD. In 1930/31 Jäger was Gauleiter of the illegal Red Young Front in the Halle- Merseburg district . In February 1931 he began to organize the communist members of the German Building Trade Union and then became chairman of the unified construction industry in the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO). From November 1931 he was the organ leader of the district committee of the RGO Halle-Merseburg.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Jäger took part in the communist resistance . In February 1933 he took over the leadership of the illegal district committee of the RGO. Jäger was arrested on August 8, 1933 and then imprisoned in the Lichtenburg and Esterwegen Camp II concentration camps. After his release in April 1934, he continued his illegal work and in 1934 became a candidate for the Central Committee of the KJVD. Jäger was arrested again in January 1935 and was held in Lichtenburg and Buchenwald concentration camps until 1938 . Between 1939 and 1941 he worked as a bricklayer and tiler , then he was drafted into the Wehrmacht . From May to August 1945, Jäger was a Soviet prisoner of war .

In 1945 Jäger rejoined the KPD. In 1945/46 he acted as first chairman of the FDGB local committee in Halle (Saale) and from September 1945 as chairman of the FDGB provincial association of Saxony-Anhalt. In 1946 he became a member of the SED . From 1946 to 1955 he was a member of the executive FDGB federal executive committee, from 1952 to 1955 he was also a member of its executive committee. Jäger was also secretary of the FDGB federal board. Until 1947 he was responsible for the formation of the organizational structure of the FDGB. From 1949 to 1955 Jäger acted as chairman of the central board of IG Energie. From 1950 to 1954 Jäger was also a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR.

From 1955 to 1957 he was counselor at the GDR embassy in Prague . From 1958 to 1961 he worked as head of the management department of the VEB steel and rolling mill "Wilhelm Florin" Hennigsdorf , from June 1961 to 1962 he was secretary of the local SED company party organizations. In 1962 Jäger retired and became head of the working group of merited veterans on the federal board of the FDGB.

Awards

• Medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
• Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze (1970) and in silver (1973)
• Fritz Heckert Medal

literature

• Martin Broszat et al. (Ed.): SBZ manual: State administrations, parties, social organizations and their executives in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany 1945–1949 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55261-9 , p. 938.
• Andreas Schmidt: "... ride with you or be thrown off". The compulsory unification of KPD and SPD in the province of Saxony / in the state of Saxony-Anhalt 1945–1949 (= research on the latest history , volume 2). LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7066-9 , p. 135.
• Andreas Herbst : Hunter, Rudolf. In: Dieter Dowe , Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990). Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-240-6 .
• Hunter, Rudolf. In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , p. 409.