Rudolf Olden
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Rudolf Olden (January 14, 1885 in
Stettin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin language, Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Po ...
– September 18, 1940)FAZ - Der Mann, der Hitler früh durchschaute.
/ref> was a German
lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...
and journalist. In the Weimar period he was a well-known voice in the political debate, a vocal opponent of the Nazis, a fierce advocate of human rights"The History Of Liberty In Germany"
1946, preface by Gilbert Murray.
and one of the first to alert the world to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis in 1934. He is the author of ''Hitler der Eroberer. Entlarvung einer Legende'' ("Hitler the Conqueror, Debunking of a Myth") which is considered part of the German exile literature. The book was promptly banned by the
Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
. Shortly after its publication by Querido in Amsterdam, Olden's citizenship was revoked and he emigrated, together with his wife, first to the United Kingdom and then, in 1940, to the United States. On September 18 both died in the U-boat attack on the SS ''City of Benares'' in the Atlantic.


World War I and the Interbellum

Rudolf Olden was born in Stettin (now
Szczecin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major s ...
) as the son of the author Johann Oppenheim, (who changed his name to Hans Olden in 1891) and the actress Rosa Stein. Rudolf was the younger brother of the author Balder Olden. After completing his education, he chose a military career and joined the ''Leib-Dragoner-Regiment Nr. 24'' (a cavalry regiment) in
Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...
. During World War I, he was first stationed in Belgium but was transferred to the Eastern Front in 1915. Olden survived the war as a first lieutenant. The war left a lasting impression and, once it had ended, Olden left the army and started as editor of the pacifistic periodical ''Der Friede'' ("Peace") in Vienna and ''Der Neue Tag''. In 1920 he married the psychoanalyst Marie-Christine Fournier (the daughter of the Viennese historian Professor
August Fournier August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and the fifth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. Its zodiac sign is Leo and was originally named ''Sextilis'' in Latin because it was the 6th month in ...
) and was soon absorbed into the circles of journalists and writers. After ''Der Neue Tag'' became insolvent, he founded a magazine (''Er und Sie'', "He and She"), dedicated to ''Lebenskultur und Erotik'', which was soon at the center of a heated debate about public morals and common decency. In 1926 Olden was asked by Theodor Wolff, publisher of the liberal '' Berliner Tageblatt'' newspaper, to come to Berlin, where he soon caused some uproar with his editorials. Olden soon became Editor in Chief and also wrote for other publications, such as ''Die Menschenrechte'' ("Human Rights"), ''Das Tage-Buch'' ("The Diary") and '' Die Weltbühne'' ("The Global Stage"). In the same year, Olden was admitted as a lawyer and for a number of years practiced law. In 1931 he was chosen to be a member of the managing board of the ''Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte'' ("German league for Human Rights") and in the same year he defended Carl von Ossietzky, who was prosecuted for insulting the Reichswehr, because he published an article by Kurt Tucholsky which included the phrase "
soldiers are murderers "Soldiers are murderers" (german: link=no, Soldaten sind Mörder) is a quote from an opinion piece written in 1931 by Kurt Tucholsky and published under his pseudonym Ignaz Wrobel in the weekly German magazine ''Die Weltbühne''. Starting with a ...
". Olden's defense was successful and Von Ossietzky was acquitted. In 1933 Olden addressed the ''Schutzbund deutscher Schriftsteller'' ("protective union of German authors") and invited them to the congress ''Das Freie Wort'' ("the free word") in the Kroll Opera House two days later. One thousand five hundred artists, authors, scientists and politicians accepted the invitation to protest against the increasing pressure on artistic, journalistic and academic freedoms. It was the last congress organized by the liberal,
social democratic Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote soci ...
and
communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
parties until 1945.


In exile from the Third Reich

After the
Reichstag fire The Reichstag fire (german: Reichstagsbrand, ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of ...
, Olden was warned by friends and was barely able to escape arrest. He managed to escape the SS - who were searching for him in the high courts, whereas on that day he was in the lower courts - by hiding with friends for a night. The following day, he travelled to the mountains and crossed the Czech border on wooden skis. The following day, his personal secretary and by that time lover, Ika Halpern, daughter of George Halpern a prominent Zionist of British descent, joined him in Prague where he published the essay version of ''Hitler der Eroberer'' anonymously. From Prague they traveled to Paris, where he published the noted ''Schwarzbuch über die Lage der Juden in Deutschland'', the "Black Book on the Situation of the Jews in Germany", in which he warned about the atrocities already commonplace in Germany. He also acted as editor in chief for ''Das Reich'', a newspaper in
Saarbrücken Saarbrücken (; french: link=no, Sarrebruck ; Rhine Franconian: ''Saarbrigge'' ; lb, Saarbrécken ; lat, Saravipons, lit=The Bridge(s) across the Saar river) is the capital and largest city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken is S ...
, and opposed the reintegration of the Saarland into Nazi Germany. In this period, Olden could only publish in a few exile magazines, such as ''Das neue Tage-Buch'', ''Pariser Tageblatt'' and '' Die Sammlung''. Because of these articles he was invited by the diplomat Gilbert Murray to lecture on German history and politics in Oxford and London, an invitation he gladly accepted. He and Ika were invited to stay with the Murrays and set up home in a little house on their grounds called the Rosary Cottage. In 1934 he became the ''de facto'' secretary of the German P.E.N. chapter in exile and, even though he was never formally elected or appointed, he performed his duties very diligently, providing visas and contacts and seeing to the material needs of fugitive authors, such as Thomas Mann. In 1935 an extended version of the essay he wrote in Prague was published as a book by Querido in Amsterdam. In 1936 the book was published in English as ''Hitler the Pawn''. In 1936 his German citizenship was revoked while Olden continued his work as secretary of the P.E.N. in London and lobbied the Nobel Committee on behalf of Carl von Ossietzky, whom the Nazis had incarcerated. In 1939, at the outbreak of war, Olden was interned and fell ill. In this period he accepted an invitation to lecture at the New School of Social Research in New York City. Earlier the couple had sent their daughter Mary Elizabeth on a child transport to Canada. On boarding the SS ''City of Benares'', his passport was stamped with the ominous words "No Return". On 18 September 1940, while part of a convoy, the ''City of Benares'' was torpedoed by the German submarine ''U-48''. As a result, 258 people died, including all but 19 of 100 British children being evacuated to Canada. Rudolf Olden died, with Ika Halpern whom he had married in London, at the age of 55, she was 35. A witness recalled she had resisted persuasion from fellow passenger-victim, Colonel James Baldwin-Webb, to board a lifeboat, in order to remain with her unwell husband. In the end, her friend, Professor John Percival Day (he survived) managed to persuade her to enter the lifeboat (Boat No. 6), but she died when the boat was being lowered and it tipped, sending her plunging into the sea. Nazi German propaganda later claimed Olden and Baldwin-Webb were sailing on a mission to persuade the then-neutral United States to enter the war. A memorial to him was erected at
Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...
, on the east wall of the Chapel passage.


Bibliography

* ''
Stresemann Stresemann is a German family name which may refer to: * Christina Stresemann (born 1957), German judge; daughter of Wolfgang Stresemann * Erwin Stresemann (1889 – 1972), German ornithologist * Gustav Stresemann (1878 – 1929), German politicia ...
. Eine Biographie''. Rowohlt, Berlin 1929 * ''Propheten in deutscher Krise. Das Wunderbare oder Die Verzauberten. Eine Sammlung.'' published by Rudolf Olden. Rowohlt, Berlin 1932. * ''Schwarzbuch über die Lage der Juden in Deutschland'', Paris 1934. * ''Briefe aus den Jahren 1935-1936'' (Rudolf Olden, Peter Olden) published by Charmian Brinson * ''Hindenburg oder der Geist der preussischen Armee'', Paris 1935. Reprinted by Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1982, . * ''Hitler der Eroberer. Entlarvung einer Legende'', Amsterdam 1935. Reprinted by Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 1984, .


Posthumous publications

* ''The history of liberty in Germany''.
Gollancz Gollancz may refer to: * Gollancz (surname), a Polish-Jewish surname * Victor Gollancz Ltd, a former British publishing house, now used as an imprint by the Orion Publishing Group See also * Gołańcz Gołańcz (german: Gollantsch) is a town ...
, London 1946. * ''In tiefem Dunkel liegt Deutschland. Von Hitler vertrieben, ein Jahr deutsche Emigration''. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 1994, . * ''So viele Bücher, so viele Verbote. Ausstellung “Der deutsche PEN-Club im Exil 1933-1948”''. Buchhändler-Vereinigung, Frankfurt/M. 1981, .


References


Sources

* ''Hitler der Eroberer'', preface by Werner Berthold, Fisher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, January 1984, in the series ''verboten und verbrannt/Exil'', * ''Ingo Müller: Rudolf Olden (1885-1940). Journalist und Anwalt der Republik.'' In: Redaktion „Kritische Justiz“ (Hrsg.), ''Streitbare Juristen. Eine andere Tradition'', 1988 Baden-Baden p. 180. * ''The History of Liberty in Germany'', preface by Gilbert Murray, Victor Gollancz Ltd London, 1946, available online a
archive.org
*


Further reading

* ''Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: Ausstellungskatalog Rudolf Olden: Journalist gegen Hitler - Anwalt der Republik'', Frankfurt 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Olden, Rudolf German biographers Male biographers Lawyers from Szczecin German male journalists 20th-century German journalists 20th-century German lawyers Exiles from Nazi Germany 1885 births 1940 deaths German civilians killed in World War II People interned in the Isle of Man during World War II German male writers Writers from Szczecin