Wilhelm Guddorf
Wilhelm Guddorf (pseudonym Paul Brown, born February 20, 1902 in Melle, Belgium, † May 13, 1943 in Berlin- Plotzensee ), a journalist by profession, was a resistance fighter in the Third Reich. He is among the " Red Orchestra " attributed.
Life
Guddorf came from a bourgeois Catholic family of scholars. His father had provided a professorship at the University of Ghent, and for his son a priest 's career. Instead, Wilhelm studied at the Universities of Leiden, Paris and Münster language and historical sciences. Later he mastered almost all European languages , sometimes in dialects and early forms, as well as Hebrew and Arabic. In 1936 he learned in Luckau, inspired by his cellmate Philip Schaeffer, Persian, Chinese and Japanese.
In 1922 he joined the Communist Party. Since its participation in the Ruhr struggle in 1923, he lived under the name of Paul Brown. With this pseudonym he also signed the articles that he wrote first for the Communist Party newspaper freedom in Dusseldorf and 1926-1933 for the Red Flag and several other newspapers of his party.
From 1933 he spread using his pseudonym illegal writings against the Nazi regime and was a member of the KPD district headquarters in Berlin -Brandenburg. In April 1934 he was arrested and imprisoned after being sentenced to a prison term up to 1939 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
After his release, he found his former fellow editors Martin Weise, Walter Husemann and John Sieg contacts with the Red Orchestra. He edited with John win the periodical illegal newspaper The interior front, which was written for the opponents of Hitler different worldviews posts. Guddorf mediated the contact and the exchange of experiences with the leaders of the KPD - resistance cell in Hamburg, Franz Jacob and Bernhard Bästlein. Together with Arvid Harnack, he wrote the major study The economic foundations of Nazi Germany.
From 1940 he worked as a bookseller. Through him was his colleague Eva - Maria Buch contact to the group.
On 15 October 1942 Guddorf was arrested again and sentenced to death by the Reich Court on 3 February 1943. The execution took place in prison Plotzensee on 13 May 1943.
Honors
- In Lichtenberg district of Berlin, a street was named after Guddorf 1972.
- In the Berlin district of Köpenick wore from 1971 to 1991 the school Rahnsdorfer the name Wilhelm Guddorf High School. After the end of the SED Dictatorship teachers, parents and students chose the new name at the primary school Püttbergen.