Rudolf Leeb (party official)

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Rudolf Leeb (born May 7, 1902 , † October 2, 1993 ) was a German political functionary ( SPD ). From 1927 to 1933 and from 1950 to 1968 he was the treasurer of the SPD party executive and from 1933 to 1940 the treasurer of the exiled SPD.

Life and activity

In 1917 Leeb joined the office of the SPD party executive in Berlin as an employee. When Leeb came of age in 1920, he also joined the party as a member. From 1925 he was employed as an accountant in the party coffers and administered the funds of the party executive as head of the finance department. He also worked in the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and in the trade unions.

Shortly after the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Leeb emigrated. Before that, however, he managed to save large parts of the party's assets from being accessed by the new rulers by moving them abroad.

During his emigration, Leeb became a full-time secretary in the Sopade office in Prague , the headquarters of the SPD leadership in exile. He kept this post when SOPADE moved its headquarters to Paris in 1938 . After the beginning of the Second World War , Leeb was temporarily interned in France in 1940 as a member of a hostile state, but was released before the German occupation of the country and was able to flee to Portugal . From there he traveled with his family to the United States on the Portuguese steamer Nyassa in 1941 .

At the beginning of 1940, the National Socialist police forces, who mistakenly suspected him to be in Great Britain, put Leeb on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, would locate subsequent special commands with special priority from the occupying forces and should be arrested.

In 1950 Leeb returned to Germany, where he again served as a cashier in the service of the SPD party executive in Hanover and Bonn . In 1968, according to other sources in 1970, he retired.

Leeb's estate, which includes personal documents and letters from emigration, is now kept by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung .

family

Leeb was married to Hildegard, nee Grundei (1907-1958). Both had a son, Lothar (* 1929)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Leeb on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
personal data
SURNAME Leeb, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political functionary (SPD)
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1902
DATE OF DEATH 2nd October 1993