Arvid Harnack
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arvid Harnack (born 24 May 1901 in Darmstadt; died 22 December 1942 in Berlin, executed) was a German jurist, economist, and resistance fighter in Nazi Germany.
Contents |
[edit] Early years
Harnack was the literary history professor Otto Harnack's son, and also theologian Adolf von Harnack's nephew. From 1919 to 1923, he studied law in Jena (at the Friedrich Schiller University), Graz, and Hamburg and became a Doctor of Law in 1924. From 1926 to 1928, he studied economics in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, where in 1926 he married the literary historian Mildred Fish. In 1929-1930 he became a Doctor of Philosophy in Gießen, producing as his thesis Die vormarxistische Arbeiterbewegung in den Vereinigten Staaten ("The Pre-Marxist Workers' Movement in the United States"). Along with the Gießen economist Friedrich Lenz (1885-1968), he founded the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft zum Studium der sowjetischen Planwirtschaft ("Scientific Working Community for the Study of the Soviet Planned Economy"), or ARPLAN. At the height of the Great Depression, the capitalist system had clearly broken down, and the Soviet model seemed an interesting alternative. Harnack's hope, apparently, was that Germany could serve as a spiritual and economic bridge between East and West. In 1932, Harnack, as First Secretary of ARPLAN, organized a study trip to the Soviet Union. Many leading scientists went along.
[edit] Resistance activities
In 1933, after Hitler's rise to power made it necessary to dissolve ARPLAN, Harnack was given a post as a scientific expert in the Reich Economic Ministry. The same year, he also finished his legal qualifications in Jena, successfully completing the junior law examination.
Together with his wife Mildred, the writer Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta, Harnack brought together a discussion circle which debated political perspectives on the time after the National Socialists' expected downfall or overthrow.
By 1935, Harnack was active as a lecturer on foreign policy at the University of Berlin.
In 1936, Harnack secretly got in touch with the Soviet Embassy, and his American wife with the US Embassy, to warn them about the threat of war that Germany posed.
To hide his purpose, Harnack became a member of the NSDAP in 1937. In 1939 came his first contact with the group about Harro Schulze-Boysen, and in 1940 with the Communists Hilde Rake and Hans Coppi. From these meetings arose what the Gestapo would call the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) resistance group.
In 1940-1941, the group was in wireless contact with Soviet agents, and was thereby trying to thwart the forthcoming German aggression upon the Soviet Union. Harnack and others even sent the Soviets information about the forthcoming Operation Barbarossa. In 1941, Harnack published the resistance magazine Die innere Front ("The Inner Front"). At about the same time, he received information from Rudolf von Scheliha about the Final Solution.
[edit] Trial and death
In July 1942, the Decryption Department of the Oberkommando des Heeres managed to decode the group's radio messages, and the Gestapo pounced. On 7 September, Arvid and Mildred Harnack were arrested. Arvid Harnack was sentenced to death on 19 December after a four-day trial before the Reichskriegsgericht ("Reich Military Tribunal"), and was put to death three days later at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. His wife was given six years in prison, although Hitler shortly afterwards cancelled the sentence and ordered a new trial, which unfortunately also ended with a death sentence.
[edit] External links
- Works by and about Arvid Harnack in the German National Library catalogue
- Brief biography
[edit] Source
- Linked German article
