Hermann Axen

Hermann Axen (6 March 1916 – 15 February 1992) was a German political activist who became involved in political resistance during the twelve Nazi years, most of which he spent in state detention.

Hermann Axen undertook a course at the Marxist Workers' Academy ("Marxistische Arbeiterschule" / "MASch") in Leipzig during 1932/33 after which he took on a leadership role in the youth section in the party's Leipzig subdistrict ("Unterbezirk Leipzig").

As a seventeen year old, in Nazi Germany he served, in the words of one admiring source, as an illegal resistance worker, a "party instructor" and a party contact ("Verbindungsmann") in Saxony.

He was affected by his brother's murder by the Gestapo which took place, following torture, at the main police station in Dresden on 23 September 1933.

Rolf's body was promptly handed over to his parents following the killing.

The coming to power of the Nazis at the start of 1933 had been followed by a rapid transition to one-party dictatorship which meant that any political activity outside the Nazi Party, and in particular political activity on behalf of the banned Communist Party, became illegal.

Rolf Axen, until his killing, was leader of the underground Communist group in East Saxony.

Between March and November 1934 he undertook and completed a commercial apprenticeship with Hoffner, Moses & Co., a fur trading company.

By June 1934 he was also responsible for agitation and propaganda ("Agitprop") for the local leadership for Leipzig-West of the underground Young Communists, identified among comrades by the code names "Max" and, subsequently, "Friedrich".

In September 1934 he joined the Young Communists' Leipzig region leadership team ("Bezirksleitung").

The group had by this point been effectively destroyed through arrests, and Axen now teamed up with a fellow young communist called Heinz Mißlitz to try and rebuild it.

Hermann Axen was arrested, along with fourteen comrades, on 3 November 1934.

He now presented himself as a Polish citizen and a disciple of the "Mosaic religious community".

His papers were sufficiently convincing for the arrest to prompt an intervention by the Polish consulate in Leipzig.

On 20 June 1935 he faced the district high court in Dresden.

The charge was the usual one of "preparing to commit high treason" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat").

He was convicted and sentenced to a three-year jail term which he served in the old penitentiary at Zwickau.

He had already served seven months of his sentence while in pre-trial investigatory detention, and he was accordingly released in November 1937.

Possibly on account of having presented himself to the authorities as a Polish citizen three years earlier, but possibly simply on account of his Communist activism and his Jewish family provenance, by this time he had been stripped of any residual German citizenship rights, and his release was made conditional on his immediately leaving the country.

Now stateless, and with the agreement of the party, he at once headed for Vienna, following a route which involved travelling via Poland.

By this time, however, it was no secret that the German leader, backed on this point by widespread popular support in Germany and, more importantly, Austria, saw the independent Austrian state as an anomaly: with "Anschluss" looming ever larger on the horizon, in January 1938 Hermann Axen fled to Paris which since 1933, had served informally as one of two headquarter locations for the German Communist Party in exile.

From April 1938 he was taking on "Red Aid" jobs for the (German) Young Communists.

He also undertook translation jobs for "German Freedom Radio 29.8" ("Deutsche Freiheitssender 29,8").

From a Paris perspective the Second World War broke out in September 1939, when the German army invaded Poland and the French and British governments reacted by declaring war on Germany, but on the streets of Paris little changed till May 1940 when the Germans rapidly over-ran northern France.

For the next couple of years, till 1940, he took casual work, employed in a support capacity in a range of businesses, while at the same time undertaking courier jobs for members of the illegal German Communist Party leadership.

After the war he became a national politician in the Soviet occupation zone, relaunched in 1949 as the German Democratic Republic / East Germany.

According to a personal "curriculum vitae" compiled by Axen in 1949 and later found in his "party file", his parents were killed by the Nazis after 1939/40 in "the ghetto" or concentration camp near Lviv/Lemberg.

He served as a relatively high-profile member of the powerful Politburo of the Central Committee between 1970 and 1989.

In November 1989 he visited Moscow for eye surgery.

While he was away the entire Politburo of which he was a member, resigned in 8 November 1989, and he too was excluded from it.

On his return in January 1990 he was arrested, suspected of corruption and abuse of public office.

This dramatic reversal of fortune came during a period of rapid political change.

At the time of his death the arrest warrant had been rescinded and the case against him remained unproven, the necessary investigations having been delayed or suspended in response to his declining health.

Hermann Axen was born in Leipzig.

His father worked as a sales representative.

His schooling took him to the "Realgymnasium" which in the eyes of British historian David Childs made him a "grammar school boy".

His family background was evidently an intellectual one: a source mentions his father's large private library.

The family adhered to the liberal branch of Judaism and he became a Bar Mitzvah.

A year later he horrified his parents by renouncing religion.

Two years after that (and less than a year before the Nazi take-over), influenced by his brother Rudolf, he joined the Young Communists.