Marinus van der Lubbe



Reichtag on fire

Marinus van der Lubbe was born on the 13'th of January 1909 in Oegstgeest, Holland.

As his parents got divorced and his mother died at his age of 12, he moved to live at the home of his elder half-sister. Having finished primary school in 1924 he started learning to become a bricklayer. Physically he was very strong and intellectually he was not behind. He developed friendships among his elder colleagues and got involved in the workers organizations. Beside his work he studied at evening schools.

In 1925 van der Lubbe moved to Leiden and joined the youth organization of the Communist Party of Holland, 'De Zaaier'.

About this time he had a severe accident of work - getting cement powder in the eyes causing a permanent damage on his sight - and got the status as unsuitable for work on a very low invalidity pension.

In the period 1926-28 Marinus went closer to the CPH and became a well known agitator and activist among the unemployed. Among other things he was one of the primus motors for the establishment of the so called 'Lenin-House' in Leiden.

Because of his very militant and activist attitudes he soon came into conflicts with the authorities. In 1930 he smashed the windows of the local welfare-office and had to stay 2 weeks in prison. In 1931 he made further direct action against an unemployment-office - followed by a sentences of 1 week in prison.

In 1931 van der Lubbe then made his first trip abroad with the intention of getting to the Soviet Union. Because of lack of money he couldn't get further than Berlin. On the way back to Holland he got arrested in Westfalen and spent 10 days in German prison.

Back in Holland he became oppositional within the CPH, which he now considered of no use for the workers in their fights. In stead he followed the militant anarchist 'Spartacus ..... Through Piet von Albada he also developed contacts to the Groups of International Communists of Holland, the GIC(H). At the end of the year he made a new attempt to go to the Soviet Union, but without succes.

In 1932 van der Lubbe again got into direct conflict with the authorities during campaigns of unemployed and strike actions of workersy. As an escape he started his third attempt of going abroad. This time he got to Poland, but had to return because of legal troubles of his entering the country. Back in Holland he had to spend 3 month in jail for his previous conflicts with the law.

In the beginning of 1933 van der Lubbe got very upset about the Nazi's growing power in Germany and decided to do something about it. He thus went to Berlin in order to join the militant workers there and - according to his own plans - to help to arrange a general workers response to the Nazies. What was necessary according to van der Lubbe was a proletarian revolution.

The exact events following his travel to Germany are unclear and will properly newer be fully cleared up.

But:

On the eve of the 27'th of January 1933 Marinus van der Lubbe was caught on the spot setting the German Reichtag on fire ( It was already on fire by SA men so Lubbe´s being there was paradoxally a gift from the heavens...). The Parliamentary Building burned down and the event was promptly used by the Nazies to crush down on all the workers organizations and accelerate the establishment of the new regime of the 'Third Reich'.

The Nazies tried to use the event to confront the Stalinist KPD and the Komintern, which they accused of organizing the burning of the Reichtag. The Stalinists on their part claimed that van der Lubbe was working for the Nazies and that the whole event was a provokation of thiers in order to gain power.

In the following trial Marinus van der Lubbe consequently insisted to have set the Reichtag on fire solely by himself and without the help of others. And indeed the trial could not establish any other conclussion. The accused Stalinists from the KPD and the Komintern were cleared.

Following a special Nazi-legislation - the 'van der Lubbe-Lex', which retrospectively made such crimes against important public buildings a matter of capital punishment, Marinus van der Lubbe was sentenced to death.

On the 10th of January 1934 Marinus van der Lubbe was executed in Leibzig

http://kurasje.tripod.com/lex/l01000.htm



Other pics:

http://www.zlb.de/projekte/kulturbox...and/bilder.htm

[ 20. July 2003, 05:21 AM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

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[ 23. July 2003, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: Popski ]

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Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja!.. Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Monty Python's Killing Joke

Thanks Kai

Very usefull information that still is debated about in Holland and Germany.
Did he do it??

Pop

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Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja!.. Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Monty Python's Killing Joke

Popski

By what I read it seems he was at the Reichstag setting fires but he never could have set the whole place on fire-he didn´t have the materials to it.

Instead SA men entering from Göring´s apartment through a tunnel started the fire. Actually it seems like a very big co-incidence that they all were there at the same time but somehow though I think certain parties were aware of Lubbe´s movements...

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Yes Kai

The Nazi's used any excuse to get political gain. Still odd for a Dutch communist to be in the mids of the evil empire.

Pop

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Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja!.. Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Monty Python's Killing Joke

Abel Ashes: The Burning of The Reichstag: What We Know Today

In 1990 50,000 pages of original German court, government, and Gestapo documents pertaining to the Reichstag fire that had been hidden away for decades in Moscow and East Berlin, were finally made available for review. Historian Alexander Bahar and physicist and psychologist Wilfried Kugel spent years meticulously reviewing the documents before publishing their 864 page analysis of the burning of the Reichstag, Der Reichstagbrand - Wie Geschichte gemacht wird.

From their detailed analysis of all of the available documentation Bahar and Kugel constructed the following sequence of events taking place on the night of February 27th 1933: “On February 27, 1933, at about 8:00 p.m. a commando group of at least 3, and at most 10 SA men led by Hans Georg Gewehr entered the basement of the palace of the Reichstag President. The group took the incendiary substances deposited there, and used the subterranean passageway to go from the Reichstag President’s palace to the Reichstag building, where they prepared the assembly hall in particular with a self-igniting liquid they probably mixed in the hall. After a certain latency period, the liquid set off the fire in the assembly hall. The group made their getaway through the subterranean passageway and the basement of the Reichstag President’s palace (and possibly also through the adjacent basement leading to the machinery and government employees’ building) to the public street ‘Reichstagsufer.’ Göring entered the burning Reichstag building at 9:21 p.m. at the latest, presumably in order to provide a cover for the commando group’s retreat.

Bahar and Kugel also discovered that many of the SA involved in the Reichstag fire and the framing of van der Lubbe were murdered by fellow Nazis, along with lesser accomplices during the so-called “Röhm putsch” of June 30, 1934, thus insuring their silence.

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So it was just serendipity for the Nazis that he was there? I always thought that he was a plant; not unlike the "radio" operators at Gleiwitz.

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David

"It is history that teaches us to hope"
Robert E. Lee

We"ll probably never know. Who put in his mind to go the Reichtag anyway and possibly started setting some fires while at the same moment the SA were doing the same? ( I mean what a "Coincidence" unless it was their "daily job"?) He was obviously trapped and executed so he would never talk. The perfect scapegoat.

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