Robert Havemann (; 11 March 1910 – 9 April 1982) was an East German

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe ...

and

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th ...

Life and career

He studied chemistry in

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

and

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

from 1929 to 1933, and then later received a doctorate in physical chemistry from the

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science ( German: ''Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften'') was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over b ...

. Havemann joined the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

(KPD) in 1932 and was one of the founders of the resistance group,

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

. It was in connection with this group that he was arrested by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one or ...

in 1943. He received a

death sentence Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

, but his execution was continually postponed because of the intervention of former colleagues, who insisted that Havemann was as important due to his work on chemical weapons and that he was still needed to explain the research. His execution was postponed so many times, he was able to survive until the Brandenburg-Görden Prison was liberated by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

.Bernd Florath. "Die Europäische Union," essay in

Johannes Tuchel Johannes Tuchel (born 20 December 1957) is a German political scientist. He is currently head of the German Resistance Memorial Centre (''"Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand"'') museum and chief executive of the foundation responsible for it. L ...

, ''Der vergessene Widerstand — zu Realgeschichte und Wahrnehmung des Kampfes gegen die NS-Diktatur'', pp. 114-139. (2001) Wallstein Verlag. Claudia Keller
"Späte Ehre für die selbstlosen Retter"
("Late Honor for the selfless Lifesaver") ''Der Taggespiel'' (6 July 2005) Retrieved 16 March 2010 After the war, he became head of administration in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin, but in 1948 he was dismissed from this position due to political pressure from the American authorities in

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under m ...

. He continued his scientific work in the institute until he got barred from his laboratory in January 1950. He then became a professor of physical chemistry at the

Humboldt University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (german: link=no, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public university, public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established ...

. He became a member of the

Volkskammer __NOTOC__ The Volkskammer (, ''People's Chamber'') was the unicameral legislature of the German Democratic Republic (colloquially known as East Germany). The Volkskammer was initially the lower house of a bicameral legislature. The upper house ...

in 1950 and won one of the

GDR East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

's national prizes in 1959. In 1963 he lectured on 'Scientific Aspects of Philosophical Problems' (published as 'Dialectic without Dogmatism—Natural Sciences against Communistic Ideology') and was expelled from the ruling Socialist Unity Party and dismissed from the University—officially because he gave an interview to a newspaper from West Germany. His son Florian Havemann (born 12 January 1952 in

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 u ...

) fled to

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

in 1971. Havemann was a victim of the

Stasi The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maintaining state author ...

's psychological warfare program. He continued his work as a socialist critic and was put under

house arrest In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or, in modern times, electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to their residence. Travel is usually restricted, if ...

in 1976, at his home in the village of Grünheide. This continued until his death in 1982, after a long time suffering from lung disease. In 1989 he was politically rehabilitated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. In 2005, Havemann was awarded the title

Righteous among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to s ...

by the Israeli

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

memorial,

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

."Israel honours memory of anti-Nazi 'European Union'"
Reuters (20 June 2006) Retrieved 17 March 2010

References

External links

Official website of the award winning film ''The Burning Wall''
*Hartmut Jäckel

("The dissident who came out from the cold") ''Die Welt'' (10 March 2010). Retrieved 18 March 2010

– his activity to save Jews' lives during the

, at

website {{DEFAULTSORT:Havemann, Robert 1910 births 1982 deaths Scientists from Munich People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Communist Party of Germany politicians Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians Members of the Provisional Volkskammer Members of the 1st Volkskammer Members of the 2nd Volkskammer Members of the 3rd Volkskammer Cultural Association of the GDR members 20th-century German chemists Colloid chemists Red Orchestra (espionage) Communists in the German Resistance East German dissidents Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin German Righteous Among the Nations Recipients of the National Prize of East Germany Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver Max Planck Institute directors