Marinus van der Lubbe
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Mugshot of van der Lubbe |
Marinus van der Lubbe (
January 13,
1909 â€"
January 10,
1934) was a
Dutch council communist accused of and executed for setting fire to the
German Reichstag building on
February 27,
1933, an event known as the
Reichstag fire.
Van der Lubbe was born in
Oegstgeest in
South Holland. His parents were divorced and he was forced to live with his half-sister's family after his mother died when he was 12 years old. In his youth, van der Lubbe worked as a bricklayer. He was nicknamed
Dempsey after the boxer
Jack Dempsey, because of his great strength. At his work, van der Lubbe came in contact with the
labour movement; in
1925, he joined the
Dutch Communist Party (CPH).
In
1926, he was injured at work, getting cement in his eyes, which left him in the hospital for a few months and almost blinded him. The injury forced him to quit his work, so he was unemployed with a pension of only 7.44
guilders a week. Not being able to live off of this, he was forced to take occasional jobs. After a few conficts with his sister, van der Lubbe moved to
Leiden in
1927. There he learned to speak some
German and founded the
Lenin house, where he organized political meetings. He had a history of taking responsibility for things he had not done. While working for the Tielmann factory a
strike broke out. Van der Lubbe claimed to the management to be one of the ringleaders and offered to accept any punishment as long as no one else was victimised, even though he was clearly too inexperienced to have been seriously involved.
During the trial he seemed to be concerned only with establishing his own sole responsibility and was almost hostile to any attempts to get him off. Van der Lubbe planned to emigrate to the
Soviet Union, but lacked the funds to do so. He was active among the unemployed workers' movement until, in 1931, he fell into disagreement with the CPH and instead approached the IKG (
Internationalist Communist Group). In order to become active in the local opposition against
Nazism, he went to Germany in 1933.
Arrested, tried and sentenced to death for the
Reichstag fire, van der Lubbe was
guillotined (the traditional means of execution in Germany at the time) in
Leipzig on
January 10,
1934, three days before his 25th birthday. He was buried in an unmarked grave on the Südfriedhof (South Cemetery) in Leipzig.
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Biography Marinus van der Lubbe on libcom.org history
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Dutch Council Communism and van der Lubbe Burning the Reichstag - The question of "exemplary acts" - the political repercussions of his act on his comrades
