Rudolf Breitscheid Memorial, Weimar, TH
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DerAcubens
N 51° 01.045 E 011° 14.987
32U E 657798 N 5654170
Rudolf Breitscheid, (2nd November, 1874 – 24th August, 1944) was a leading member of the Social Democratic Party and a delegate to the Reichstag during the era of the Weimar Republic in Germany.
Waymark Code: WM9BH9
Location: Thüringen, Germany
Date Posted: 07/27/2010
Views: 23
Breitscheid, the son of a bookshop manager, was born in Cologne. He studied at a Gymnasium (an academically-oriented secondary school) in Cologne. From 1894 to 1898 he studied Economics at the Universities of Munich and Marburg; in 1898 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation entitled "Land Policy in the Australian Colonies." From 1898 to 1905, he worked as an editor and correspondent for newspapers with a middle-class, Liberal outlook.
Between 1903 and 1908, Breitscheid was a member of the Union of Liberal Freethinkers. In 1908, he numbered among the founding members of the left-liberal Democratic Union (DV) and, until the Reichstag elections of 1912, served as its chair.
After the DV founded in the 1912 elections, Breitscheid joined the SPD, switching five years later to the more leftist splinter faction, the USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party). During the years of the First World War, he was the SPD faction's spokesman for foreign policy, as well as member of the German delegation to the League of Nations. After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, Breitscheid emigrated to France. There, efforts were undertaken by the Refugee Committee, under Varian Fry, to get him out of Vichy France, along with Rudolf Hilferding. These efforts were not successful, and in 1941, approximately a year into the German occupation of France, he was arrested by the Gestapo and interned in the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp.
The precise details of Breitscheid's last years are known only sketchily, as the sole information available stems from Nazi sources. According to the Völkischer Beobachter (the official Nazi Party organ), Breitscheid, along with Communist Party leader Ernst Thälmann, perished during an Allied air raid on August 28, 1944. Varian Fry, among others, believed that Breitscheid was murdered by the Gestapo on the orders of Hitler or another senior Nazi Party official. He is buried in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in the borough of Lichtenberg in Berlin.
Today, a plaza in the centre of Berlin is named after Breitscheid, while in Oberhof, Kaiserslautern, Potsdam, Leverkusen, Weimar, and Dresden, as well other parts of eastern Germany, there are streets bearing his name.
Buchenwald
At the coordinates listed above there is a memorial stone, more precisely a wall made of red bricks, approx. 3 x 5 meters.
The wall stands close to the main street a little bit off the beaten track of the main parking area to the mainstream routes through the hole memorial area of Buchenwald.
In accordance with the written information on that stone, Breitscheid lost his life at that place. Like it's written above, it is not actually a fact, how he lost his life. On the web-precence of the concentration camp Buchenwald is's written, he lost his life during an Allied air raid.
memorial text (german language)
Rudolf Breitscheid kam am 24. August 1944 an dieser Stelle ums Leben. Er war Mitglied des Parteivorstands der SPD und Mitglied des Reichstages.
1941 von dieser Vichy-Regierung an die Gestapo ausgeliefert, kam Rudolf Breitscheid in das KZ Sachsenhausen und im September 1943 in das KZ Buchenwald.
Rudolf Breitscheid trat aktiv für die Schaffung der Einheitsfront der Arbeiterklasse und der antifaschistischen Volksfront in Deutschland ein.
memorial text (translated into english language)
Rudolf Breitscheid died 24th August at this point. He was a member of the party executive of SPD and member of the Reichstag.
Delivered in 1941 from this Vichy government to the Gestapo, Rudolf Breitscheid came to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen and in September, 1943 to the concentration camp Buchenwald.
Rudolf Breitscheid argued actively for the creation of the united front of the working class and the anti-fascist popular front into Germany.
Note
The website for this waymark listed below points to the official website of the concentration camp Buchenwald. Also on that page there are further memorials listed.
Date of Dedication: 01/01/1953
Property Permission: Public
Access instructions: Close to the Buchenwald Memorial there's a huge parking area.
Website for Waymark: [Web Link]
Location of waymark:
Blutstrasse
Weimar-Buchenwald, Thuringia Germany
99427
Commemoration: The place he lost his life.
Access times: Not listed
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Visit Instructions:
Include a photo containing, at minimum, the monument and your GPSr. We'd prefer a photo containing YOU at the monument, but we understand that some people are camera-shy.
Also include a bit about your visit here.