Rudolf Welskopf

August Rudolf Welskopf (born August 26, 1902 in Borstel ; † January 17, 1979 in East Berlin ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Welskopf grew up with six siblings in a small tenant and greengrocer family in the Altes Land . Because of the social hardship of his family, he had to work as a herding boy for farmers in the area as a ten-year-old. After elementary school he worked for some time as a farmhand, in 1917 he began training as a carpenter. After the journeyman's examination, he went on a journey from 1921 to 1924 and was also active in a union during this time. In 1925 he became a member of the SPD and married Alma Olga Bestehorn in Buxtehude , with whom he had two children. In 1929 he built a house for himself and his family. As a result of the global economic crisis , he was out of work for a long time, could no longer service the loan for the house, the house was foreclosed and the family was temporarily homeless.

In 1930 Welskopf left the SPD "because it was too lax in resisting the Nazis" and joined the KPD , as the KPD took a far more consistent stand against the impoverishment of large sections of the population and the increasing fascization of society. In February 1933 Welskopf was taken into " protective custody " for two months in the Stade court prison .

The KPD resistance group in Buxtehude, headed by Welskopf, was smashed after the Gestapo succeeded in intercepting a courier who was tortured into betraying the name of Welskopf and his comrades. The Berlin Court of Appeal met in Stade in March 1935 in the “Buxtehude treason trial” against Welskopf and others . Rudolf Welskopf was sentenced to five years in prison as a "ringleader". After his conviction, Welskopf was taken to the Celle prison, from where he was assigned to a work detachment in the moor near Zeven. In August 1936 he and two other prisoners managed to escape briefly. Because mutiny Welskopf was sentenced to ten additional months in prison. After the end of his formal imprisonment, he was deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In 1943 he was employed as a craftsman in the Berlin-Lichterfelde subcamp, which was located near the barracks of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler .

On July 27, 1944, he managed to escape from this subcamp with the help of Liselotte Henrich , who was known as a writer in later years and whom he married in 1946 after divorcing his first wife. After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , he was briefly head of the police station and district manager in Berlin-Charlottenburg ; later he worked in the building materials trade of the Soviet occupation zone. In 1950/51 he was employed in the GDR Ministry for Heavy Industry building up a salvage company for scrap and other recyclable materials. From 1951 to 1962 he was head of administration at the Reichsbahn -Bau-Union .

Dispute over plaque

The memorial plaque on the building of the Buxtehude City Archives.

On the occasion of Rudolf Welskopf's 100th birthday on August 26, 2002, the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime Association of Anti-Fascists (VVN-BdA) proposed putting up a memorial plaque in Buxtehude. The Buxtehude city administration then asked the Birthler authorities to rule out a possible stasis on Welskopf. On September 7, 2004, the inquiry revealed that Rudolf Welskopf had been under surveillance by the State Security (presumably due to the numerous international contacts of his wife Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, who had worked as a professor of ancient history) still engaged against the GDR ”. Nevertheless, there was a dispute in the Buxtehude city council between the supporters of the SPD and Greens on the one hand and the FDP and CDU on the other, including the independent mayor Jürgen Badur, who ran for the mayoral election at the suggestion of the CDU. The CDU rejected the plaque on the grounds that Welskopf was neither a democrat nor a resistance fighter in the true sense of the word. Instead, she asked for a plaque to be erected for all victims of the resistance. After the culture committee had met repeatedly without any results, a left-wing Antifa group meanwhile put up a temporary plaque. After the FDP had agreed to the memorial plaque and the CDU had been overruled, the official memorial plaque was attached on November 9, 2005 to the building of the city archive at Stavenort 5, the address at which Welskopf last lived in Buxtehude in 1934. The inscription reads: Rudolf Welskopf (1902–1979) lived in Stavenort 5 in 1934. He and his group resisted the National Socialist regime from 1933–1934 and had to endure 5 years in prison and 4 years in concentration camp.

literature

• Uwe Ruprecht: The Inka von Buxtehude, Hamburger Abendblatt August 8, 2001
• Dagmar Müller-Stats: Welskopf, August Rudolf , in: Life courses between Elbe and Weser, A biographical lexicon , Vol. 1, ed. v. Brage bei der Wieden u. Jan Lokers, Stade 2002.
• Buxtehuder Tageblatt , March 12, 2005.
• Buxtehuder Tageblatt , June 13, 2005.

Web links

• http://www.stade.vvn-bda.de/welskopf.htm
• http://www.welskopf-henrich.de/biografie_arw.htm
• http://ruprecht.art.blog/2018/03/09/wege-des-widerstands

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt of April 7, 2005: A resistance fighter?
2. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt from April 16, 2005: Dispute over the Welskopf table
3. ^ Hamburger Abendblatt dated November 5, 2005: Memorial plaque for Rudolf Welskopf