Wolfgang Natonek

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolfgang Natonek (born October 3, 1919 in Leipzig ; † January 21, 1994 in Göttingen ) was a German student politician ( LDPD ) and in 1947/1948 he was chairman of the student council at the University of Leipzig . Because of his resistance to the emerging dictatorship in the GDR , he was sentenced to several years in prison by the Soviet occupying power.

Life

Natonek was born as the son of the publicist and world stage author Hans Natonek , whose books were placed on the list of harmful and undesirable literature and who had to emigrate from Germany in 1935. Natonek was therefore declared a stateless person , was only able to take the Abitur with difficulty in 1938 and began studying veterinary medicine . After three semesters he was called up, but released in 1940 as “unworthy of defense” and obliged to do forced labor . In Leipzig he was able to help three escaped Soviet prisoners of war to hide until the end of the war.

In 1946 Natonek matriculated at the University of Leipzig for German and English, joined the LDPD , and became chairman of the LDPD university group, which has over 400 members. In early 1947 he was elected chairman of the Leipzig student council with a majority from the LDPD and CDU . He made himself unpopular with the SED because he defended Leipzig University against their political grasp.

At the Saxon LDPD party congress in 1947 he was elected to the state executive with the highest number of votes. In a speech at the Wartburg Festival of the German student body in May 1948, he declared that science must be able to move freely from any political influence, but that the scientist must nevertheless be a politically conscious person. He criticized the SED's enrollment policy by saying that there was a time “when it was not possible for anyone with a non-Aryan grandmother to study. We do not want a time when you cannot study, who does not have a proletarian grandmother ”. Despite several warnings from Soviet authorities and a smear campaign by the SED press, he ran again in the spring of 1948 as chairman of the student council and won the elections by a huge margin.

On November 11, 1948, Natonek and twenty other students were arrested by the Soviet secret police NKVD . In March 1949, a Soviet military tribunal (SMT) sentenced him to 25 years of forced labor for “failing to report” under the criminal law of the Russian Federal Soviet Socialist Republic (RSFSR) . He had to serve his sentence in the Soviet SMT penal institutions, which were located on the same site as the special camp No. 4 Bautzen and special camp No. 10 Torgau (Fort Zinna) until 1948 . In Bautzen he taught the later writer Walter Kempowski in French and gave lectures on German classical music . Even when the prison system was taken over by the East German People's Police in 1950, this unjust judgment was not revised.

After his release in 1956, he left the GDR and began studying philology at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . After completing his studies, he taught as a German and history teacher at the Max Planck Gymnasium there . In 1962 he wrote a documentary about political prisoners in the GDR.

Awards

The Saxon State Minister for Science and Art appointed Natonek as adjunct professor in 1992 "for his great commitment to academic and political freedom" . The newly founded young liberal campaign in the GDR elected him honorary chairman in February 1990. In 1993 he received the Thomas Dehler Prize .

In 1996, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation , which is close to the FDP, opened a Wolfgang Natonek Academy in Kottenheide , Vogtlandkreis , which was closed again on December 31, 2000. Since 1996, the Wolfgang Natonek Prize has been awarded at the University of Leipzig to students with outstanding academic achievements and special commitment to the interests of the university.

Natonekstraße in Leipzig-Gohlis has been named after him and Hans Natonek since 2001 .

Fonts

  • with Kurt Pförtner: But you are in the light. A documentation from Soviet and Soviet Zone custody. 2nd Edition. Schlichtenmayr, Tübingen 1963, DNB 453764665 .
  • Hans Natonek - Wolfgang Natonek. Correspondence 1946–1962. Edited and commented by Steffi Böttger. Lehmstedt, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-937146-65-2 .

literature

  • Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk :  Natonek, Wolfgang . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Jens Blecher, Dieter Schulz (Ed.): Wolfgang Natonek - Freedom and Responsibility. See the other. To be there for the other! Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86583-604-5 .
  • Joachim Klose (Ed.): The powerlessness of the student councils? Wolfgang Natonek and the student councils at the University of Leipzig in 1945 (= Belter dialogues. Impulses on civil courage and resistance. Volume 2). Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Leipzig 2010, ISBN 978-3-86583-542-0 .
  • Waldemar Krönig, Klaus-Dieter Müller: Adaptation, Resistance, Persecution. University and students in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR 1945–1961. In memoriam Wolfgang Natonek (1919–1994). Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1994, ISBN 978-3-8046-8806-3 .
  • Hermann Marx : Liberal Students in the Resistance. Liberal Student Union of Germany, Bonn undated , DNB 454942990 .
  • Christian Münter: 25 years in Bautzen and no advertisement. Notes on Wolfgang Natonek and Arno Esch . In: The morning . 6./7. January 1990.
  • Gerald Wiemers , Jens Blecher: Student Resistance at the University of Leipzig 1945–1955. 2nd Edition. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 1998, ISBN 978-3-930076-50-5 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Natonek, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German student politician (LDPD), dissident in the Soviet Zone and the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1994
Place of death Goettingen