Rudolf Breitscheid
1874-1944
- Member of the Reichstag from 1920
- Prussian Interior Minister from 1918 to 1919
Breitscheid left the SPD to join the newly founded USPD during the war, in 1917. He was the editor of the party’s weekly publication “The Socialist” from 1918 to its closure in 1922. As representative of the USPD, he took on the office of Interior Minister in the first Prussian cabinet of the revolution from 1918 to 1919. In 1922, together with many other USPD members, he joined the SPD. Breitscheid was one of the SPD’s most important foreign policy spokesmen. In this role, he actively supported Stresemann’s Locarno policy. Stresemann appointed him to the League of Nations delegation in 1926. After the Nazis seized power, Breitscheid fled into exile, maintaining contact with the resistance. He was arrested in France in 1940 and died in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944.
Wikipedia entry (German)