Dr. Rudolf Paul (30 July 1893 in

Gera Gera is a city in the German state of Thuringia. With around 93,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Thuringia after Erfurt and Jena as well as the easternmost city of the ''Thüringer Städtekette'', an almost straight string of cit ...

- 28 February 1978) was a German politician. He studied law in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

and

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

and practiced as a lawyer in

. He was a member of the

German Democratic Party The German Democratic Party (, or DDP) was a center-left liberal party in the Weimar Republic. Along with the German People's Party (, or DVP), it represented political liberalism in Germany between 1918 and 1933. It was formed in 1918 from the ...

until its dissolution in 1933. Under the

Nazi 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 ...

Regime, he was banned from his profession. Paul was appointed as mayor of Gera on May 7, 1945 by the American city commander. After the American retreat from

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and lar ...

, the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

military administration appointed him as first Minister-President of the state on July 16, 1945. He became a member of the

Socialist Unity Party of Germany The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ; SED, ), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East German ...

in 1946. On September 1, 1947, he fled into the American occupation zone. Paul features in the fourth part of the novel ''Berlin'' by the anti-Nazi German writer

Theodor Plievier Theodor Otto Richard Plievier (Plivier, until 1933) (12 February 1892, Berlin – 12 March 1955, Avegno, Switzerland) was a German writer and communist, best known for his 1948 anti-war novel . During World War I, he served on the '' SMS Wolf'' ...

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Paul, Rudolf 1893 births 1978 deaths People from Gera People from the Principality of Reuss-Gera German Democratic Party politicians Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians Ministers-President of Thuringia Members of the Landtag of Thuringia Mayors of places in Thuringia 20th-century German lawyers