Ferdinand Jung

Ferdinand Jung (24 January 1905 – 2 December 1973) was a German Communist activist who resisted the Nazi government in the 1930s and spent a good deal of time in prisons and concentration camps. In later life he found himself in the political mainstream in his country's second one-party dictatorship and became a senior politician.

Life

Early years Jung was born early in 1905 into a working-class family in Waltershausen, a small manufacturing town in south-central Germany which since 1815 had built up a reputation as a centre for doll and toy making. He attended school locally till 1919 and then found work in Walternshausen in one of the town's doll factories. He took work in a factory producing rubber articles, which was another niche industry that had settled in the town. A period of unemployment followed from 1922 till 1924, after which he worked in the rubber industry, in the potash industry with Wintershall AG in nearby Merkers and on the railways, based in Walternshausen. There was a further period of unemployment between 1929 and 1933.

In July 1933 he moved to Erfurt, where the (illegal) regional party leadership had appointed him as an itinerant instructor. His work in this capacity concentrated initially on Suhl, Zella-Mehlis, Schmalkalden and Meiningen. Later his party work also took in Eisenach, Mühlhausen and the Erfurt conglomeration. On 10 February 1934 the Gestapo arrested him. Half a year later, in June 1934, he was convicted of high treason in Jena, and given a three-year prison term. Between 1958 and 1967 he was also listed as a district councillor in Suhl. However, in September 1963 he was badly injured in a motor accident, as a result of which, in May 1964, he resigned his party post.

Between 1964 and 1969 Ferdinand Jung headed up the "Commission for Research of the local Workers' Movement" for the party leadership in Suhl, and he was also Chairman of the "Commission for the Care of Deserving Elderly Party Members".