Go back

Arno Wend

References

• Schmeitzner, Mike: Doppelt verfolgt. Das widerständige Leben des Arno Wend (2009)

Born in 1906 in Zittau, the lawyer and notary clerk worked at the employment office in Dresden until 1933. He became active in the SPD and the Young Socialists very early in his career. Persecuted by the Nazis, he returned to his home town of Dresden after the war, where he was one of the leaders of the SPD in Saxony. After the forced merger of the SPD and KPD in 1946, Wend was a member of the SED Regional Executive and Director of the Personnel Policy Division of the national secretariat. In September, however, he was stripped of all party posts and in November 1947 was expelled from the party altogether. As a member of the illegal West Berlin SPD, he organized actions of resistance against the East German regime with the support of the East Bureau of SPD.

In the autumn of 1948, he was arrested by the Soviet Ministry for State Security in Dresden and was brought into the central detention center in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. In April 1950, a military tribunal sentenced him to 25 years in labour camps for "illegal group work" and "anti-Soviet propaganda." Subsequently, he was deported to Vorkuta, a Soviet prison camp north of the Arctic Circle. After the negotiated release of all war and civilian prisoners from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, he was permitted to return to Dresden in December 1955. He moved to West Germany, where he was active in the Hessian Ministry of the Interior. Arno Wend died in 1980.