Wolfgang Ruge

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolfgang Ruge (born November 1, 1917 in Berlin ; † December 26, 2006 in Potsdam ) was a German Marxist historian who worked in the GDR .

Life

Wolfgang Ruge is a great-grandnephew of Arnold Ruge and grew up in a communist family home. He was first a “young pioneer” and later a member of the communist youth association . After the Nazi seizure of power , he and his family fled to the Soviet Union in 1933 . First his father Erwin Ruge was deported to National Socialist Germany in the spring of 1938 , then his older brother Walter Ruge was arrested after the German declaration of war in 1941 and sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp.

After graduating from high school, Ruge first studied at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMS) and continued to study history in Moscow . There he was stunned to see how the ranks of old communists and emigrants thinned out under the terror of the mid-1930s. After the German attack on the Soviet Union , he (with his second wife) was deported to Kazakhstan because of his German origins , separated from her a year later and sent to a Gulag prison camp in the Northern Urals as a forced laborer . There he was used for hard work such as felling wood under conditions of complete arbitrariness and allotment of food in accordance with the norms.

Three years after the end of the war, Ruge's hopes of leaving the camp as a free citizen and returning to his wife in the steppe were dashed. His sentence was changed to "Eternal Exile". By decree, he was no longer allowed to leave the storage location. However, Ruge was able to complete a distance learning course in history in Sverdlovsk in 1948, circumventing the banishment regime . In the North Urals-prison camp Sosva permanent Ruge a frugal life third with his wife.

It was not until 1956 that Ruge managed to emigrate to the GDR together with his wife and their two-year-old son Eugen . He was offered a position at the Institute for History at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Ruge became one of the most famous historians of the GDR specializing in the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism . Ruge became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and remained a member of the SED / PDS even after 1990 . In 1959 Ruge received his doctorate in Berlin on the occupation of the Ruhr area in 1923 . Ruge later received a professorship in history, and in 1983 he retired.

Ruge became a national prize winner and received the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena .

Wolfgang Ruge's son is the author and director Eugen Ruge . He supported his father, who had grown old in the meantime, with the publication of the second edition of his autobiographical report in Rowohlt-Verlag (2012): Gelobtes Land. My years in Stalin's Soviet Union . Wolfgang Ruge did not publish about it during the GDR era, but made notes that he was able to use later.

In Eugen Ruge's award-winning novel In Times of Waning Light , the historian Kurt Umnitzer bears Wolfgang Ruge's traits.

Works (selection)

  • The position of the Soviet Union against the occupation of the Ruhr area. On the history of German-Soviet relations from January to September 1923. Academy, Berlin 1962 (dissertation).
  • Stresemann . A picture of life. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1965.
  • Germany from 1917 to 1933 (from the Great October Socialist Revolution to the end of the Weimar Republic). Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1967 (habilitation thesis).
  • Weimar. Republic on time. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1969.
  • Hindenburg . Portrait of a militarist. German Science Publishers, Berlin 1974.
  • Matthias Erzberger . A political biography. Union, Berlin 1976.
  • Revolution days. November 1918. ( Illustrated historical booklets : Booklet 14), Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1978, DNB 790050935 .
  • November Revolution . The popular uprising against German imperialism and militarism 1918/19. Dietz, Berlin 1978. Marxist sheets, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-880 12-530-9
  • The end of Weimar. Monopoly capital and Hitler . Dietz, Berlin 1983 (in the FRG: Hitler. Weimar Republic and seizure of power. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1983).
  • Stalinism - a dead end in the labyrinth of history. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1991.
  • Berlin - Moscow - Sosswa. Stations of an emigration. Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 2003, ISBN 3-89144-345-5 .
  • Who was Heinrich Brüning ? Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 2003, ISBN 3-89144-344-7 .
  • Wolfgang Ruge for beginners and advanced users. Edited by Friedrich M. Balzer. Pahl-Rugenstein Nachf., Bonn 2003, ISBN 3-89144-339-0 .
  • Arnold Ruge , 1802 to 1880. Fragments of a life picture. Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-89144-359-5 .
  • Lenin : Stalin's predecessor. A political biography. Edited by Eugen Ruge and Wladislaw Hedeler . Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-88221-541-0 .
  • Promised Land. My years in Stalin's Soviet Union. Edited by Eugen Ruge. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2012, ISBN 978-3-498-05791-6 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugen Ruge: Follower - Fourteen sentences about a fictional grandson . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2016, ISBN 978-3-498-05805-0 , pp. 249 .
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Ruge: Promised Land. My years in Stalin's Soviet Union. Rowohlt Verl., Reinbek 2012, pp. 83–84.
  3. ↑ http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensions/2004-2-044
  4. ^ Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German communists: biographical manual 1918 to 1945 . K. Dietz, 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , pp. 90 ( google.de [accessed December 20, 2019]).
  5. ^ A b Wolfgang Ruge: Lenin. Predecessor of Stalin. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2010, p. 8.
  6. ↑ Frank Quilitzsch: Banished for ever. Shocking reading: Wolfgang Ruge's traumatic experiences in Stalin's camps. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung, July 7, 2012.
  7. ↑ http://www.stiftung-aufteilung.de/wer-war-wer-in-der-ddr-%2363%3B-1424.html?ID=2941 Retrieved March 20, 2012
  8. ^ The position of the Soviet Union against the occupation of the Ruhr area in 1923 and the German-Soviet relations during the period of passive resistance. German Science Publishers, Berlin 1962.
  9. ↑ Frank Quilitzsch: Banished for ever. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung, July 7, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Ruge, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Marxist historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 2006
Place of death Potsdam