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Rudolf Herrnstadt

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Rudolf Herrnstadt
Herrnstadt – a 1952 sketch
Born(1903-03-18)18 March 1903
Gleiwitz, Province of Silesia, German Empire (Gliwice, Poland)
Died28 August 1966(1966-08-28) (aged 63)
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, East Germany
OccupationJournalist

Rudolf Herrnstadt (18 March 1903 – 28 August 1966) was a German journalist and communist politician. After abandoning his law studies in 1922, Herrnstadt became a convinced communist. Despite his bourgeois origins, he was accepted into the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1931 and worked for the Soviet military intelligence service Glawnoje Raswedywatelnoje Uprawlenije (GRU, "Main Administration for Intelligence"). As a foreign correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt, he worked in Prague (1930), Warsaw (1931 to 1936) and Moscow (1933). He emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1939, days before the Invasion of Poland, where he was active in the fight against the Nazi state as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Neue Zeit in the National Committee for a Free Germany from 1944 during the German-Soviet War.

After the end of World War II, Herrnstadt returned to Berlin in 1945. He was editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung, initially in the Soviet occupation zone and from 1949 in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and played a key role in founding the Berliner Verlag publishers and the left-wing newspaper Neues Deutschland, the central organ of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). From 1950 to 1953 he was a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED and a candidate for the Politburo of the SED.

In the early 1950s, Herrnstadt campaigned for democratization within the SED, but lost the power struggle against the General Secretary of the Central Committee,Walter Ulbricht. After the uprising of 17 June 1953, where Herrnstadt had shown understanding for the protests in articles in Neues Deutschland, he and other opponents of Ulbricht lost their seat on the Central Committee for "forming anti-party factions." In the same year, he also lost his position as editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland. In 1954, he was expelled from the SED and was not rehabilitated until the end of his life.

Life[edit]

Rudolf Herrnstadt came from a Jewish family in the Upper Silesian city of Gleiwitz (now Gliwice, Poland His mother Maria-Clara came from a merchant family that had become wealthy after 1870.[1] His father Dr Ludwig Herrnstadt worked as a lawyer and notary in Gleiwitz, and - despite his legal work for various large companies - had been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 1894[2] and was a social democratic city councilor in Gleiwitz.[3], In a CV written for the Soviet military intelligence service around 1930, Rudolf Herrnstadt wrote that his father earned around 1,200 Reichsmarks a month, while the monthly salary of an Upper Silesian industrial worker fluctuated between 80 and 150 marks. He therefore describes his father as a "member of the Jewish sector of the upper bourgeoisie".[1] He had a brother Ernst Herrnstadt, born in 1906.[3]

Education[edit]

Herrnstadt attended the Catholic grammar school in Gleiwitz from 1912 to 1921 and began studying law in 1921, initially at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and then at the Ruprecht Karl University in Heidelberg from March 1922. In October 1922, Rudolf Herrnstadt informed his parents that he did not want to continue his studies but wanted to work as a writer in the future. His father then ordered that his underage son had to work in the Upper Silesian pulp mills.[3] Herrnstadt worked there until autumn 1924 as a payroll clerk, cashier, warehouse manager and finally as secretary to the management.[4]

Against his parents' wishes, Herrnstadt returned to Berlin in November 1924.[3] He earned his living from support payments from his parents and as an editor for the Drei-Masken publishing house, while at the same time working as a freelance writer. In May 1928 he applied to the left-wing Berliner Tageblatt and was initially employed as an unpaid assistant editor, and from autumn 1928 as a typesetter (known as a technical editor).[3][4] He was one of the journalists promoted by Theodor Wolff. Howver, in November 1929, Herrnstadt was sacked by the Rudolf Mosse publishing company for writing a sensationalist story about 240,000 workers in the Ruhr region who had been locked out of work.[5] Businesses using the paper for advertising threatened to withdraw their advertising budget, but Wolff brought Herrnstadt back to work in the editors office.[3] Within the publishing house, Herrnstadt was known as a communist and was considered to be a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) due to particular opinions he held.[6]

At the newspaper, Herrnstadt met the aspiring German editor Ilse Stöbe[7], eight years his junior and became good friends with her.[8] The couple eventually became engaged.[9] Herrnstadt believed that the political ideology of capitalism with its inherent structural problems in the 1920's would be replaced by socialism, or indeed communism.[6] From the beginning, Stöbe shared the same political ideology as Herrnstadt. There was an expectation that both of them would join the KPD.[10][11] However, a study by the German historian Elke Scherstjanoi found that the couple were told by a KPD official in the Karl Liebknecht house, that they were more useful to the communist party, working outside the KPD.[12][a] On 5 June 1930, Herrnstadt became the correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Prague.[13] While there he repeatedly tried to join the communist party.[14] His persistance brought him to the notice of Soviet military intelligence, who recruited him as an Red Army GRU agent[14] and gave him the codename "Arbin".[15]



and soon succeeded as a foreign correspondent in Prague (1929), Warsaw (from 1931 to 1936) and Moscow (three months in the summer of 1933). According to a report by German political author and historian Wolfgang Leonhard, his "upper-class past" was evident, among other things, from the fact that while he was still working in the Soviet Union as chief editor of the newspaper of the "National Committee for a Free Germany", he attracted attention by addressing his subordinates using the formal "You".[16]

He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1929, fleeing the country in 1933, when the arrival of Adolf Hitler at the seat of power made Herrnstadt a target, both as an unrepentant communist activist and as a Jew.

Abroad[edit]

Herrnstadt came to work for Soviet intelligence in the 1930s and spent most of the decade in Warsaw. With the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in 1939, Herrnstadt fled to the Soviet Union and came to reside in Moscow, where he applied and was accepted into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[17] Despite criticism from some members of the German exile community for his "anti-revolutionary" views, Herrnstadt was among the members of the National Committee for a Free Germany. He returned to Germany as a member of the Sobottka Group, which laid the groundwork for the Soviet Military Administration in Germany in Mecklenburg.[18]

Against Walter Ulbricht[edit]

Walter Ulbricht (left) with Herrnstadt, 1951

After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 Walter Ulbricht was summoned for a visit to Moscow with the new Soviet leadership, where he was criticized for his introduction of collective farms and a slower course towards socialist construction. Herrnstadt was among the domestic critics of Ulbricht's line of the SED as a leading politician with candidate member status in the SED's Politburo and chief editor of the Neues Deutschland; a key ally during this time was Wilhelm Zaisser, who criticized Ulbricht from his position as the country's Minister of State Security and a leading party ideologist. However, Herrnstadt's dissension against the course of the Ulbricht faction was also criticized by Soviet adviser Vladimir Semyonov, who answered Herrnstadt's attack by replying that "in two weeks you may no longer have a state."[19]

Ulbricht-led East Germany had pursued a course of reform since March 1953. After the 1953 East German Uprising, which initially weakened Ulbricht's position in the SED and the Soviet Union, Zaisser issued a Politburo motion to replace Ulbricht with Herrnstadt as SED First Secretary. However, the situation reversed after Nikita Khrushchev consolidated power over the Soviet government in Moscow and purged Ulbricht's opponent Lavrentiy Beria.[20] Herrnstadt was removed from his position in the SED's Politbüro the same year. He was also removed from the Neues Deutschland at around the same time at the Ulbricht's request, according to the autobiography of fellow communist Markus Wolf.[21]

Herrnstadt died on 28 August 1966.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Herrnstadt joined the KPD in 1 July 1931 with membership number 521173 under the code name Friedrich Brockmann.[6]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ a b Liebmann 2008, p. 42.
  2. ^ Liebmann 2008, p. 22.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 23.
  4. ^ a b Liebmann 2008, p. 43.
  5. ^ Liebmann 2008, p. 46.
  6. ^ a b c Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 24.
  7. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 24-25.
  8. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 27.
  9. ^ Coppi, Danyel & Tuchel 1994, pp. 262–264.
  10. ^ Adams 2009, p. 2009.
  11. ^ Müller-Enbergs 1991a, p. 31.
  12. ^ Scherstjanoi 2013, p. 14.
  13. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 25.
  14. ^ a b Scherstjanoi 2014, p. 148.
  15. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 29.
  16. ^ Leonhard 1955, p. 292.
  17. ^ Grieder, Peter. The East German Leadership, 1946-73: Conflict and Crisis. ISBN 0-7190-5498-2, ISBN 978-0-7190-5498-3. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. P. 54.
  18. ^ "Namensliste der drei KPD-Einsatzgruppen vom 27. April 1945" Archived 2014-12-15 at the Wayback Machine German Federal Archives. BArch NY 4036/517. Retrieved November 22, 2011 (in German)
  19. ^ Maier, Charles S. Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-691-00746-2, ISBN 978-0-691-00746-5. P. 17.
    In 14 Tagen werden Sie vielleicht schon keinen Staat mehr haben."
  20. ^ Taylor, Fred (2006). The Berlin Wall : a world divided, 1961-1989 (1st U.S. ed.). New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-078613-7. OCLC 76481596.
  21. ^ Wolf, Markus & Anne McElvoy. The Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster. ISBN 1-891620-12-6, ISBN 978-1-891620-12-6. New York: PublicAffairs, 1999. P. 69.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Adams, Jefferson (1 September 2009). Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6320-0.
  • Coppi, Hans Coppi; Danyel, Jürgen; Tuchel, Johannes (1994). Die Rote Kapelle im Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus [The Red Orchestra in Resistance to National Socialism]. Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand. ISBN 978-3-89468-110-4.
  • Coppi, Hans; Kebir, Sabine (2013). Ilse Stöbe : wieder im Amt : eine Widerstandskämpferin in der Wilhelmstrasse : eine Veröffentlichung der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung [Ilse Stöbe: back in office: a resistance fighter in the Wilhelmstrasse: a publication of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation] (in German). Hamburg: VSA. ISBN 978-3-89965-569-8.
  • Leonhard, Wolfgang (1955). Front cover image for Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder (in German). Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. OCLC 3368296.
  • Liebmann, Irina (2008). Wäre es schön? Es wäre schön! mein Vater Rudolf Herrnstadt (in German). Berlin: Berlin Verlag. ISBN 978-3827005892. OCLC 213434556.
  • Müller-Enbergs, Helmut (1991a). Der Fall Rudolf Herrnstadt: Tauwetterpolitik vor dem 17. Juni [The case of Rudolf Herrnstadt: Thaw policy before 17 June] (in German). Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86153-003-9.
  • Scherstjanoi, Elke (2014). "Verräterin oder Patriotin? Ein Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte" [Traitor or patriot? An opinion of the Institute of Contemporary History]. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (in German). 62 (1). Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg (Deutschland): 139–156. doi:10.1515/vfzg-2014-0006. S2CID 199575964.
  • Scherstjanoi, Elke (27 August 2013). "Ilse Stöbe (1911 - 1942) im Widerstand gegen das "Dritte Reich"" (PDF). Institut für Zeitgeschichte. Munich: Leibniz Institute of Contemporary History. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
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