Arvid Harnack was a German jurist, Marxist economist, Communist, and German resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. Harnack came from an intellectual family and was originally a humanist. He was strongly influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but progressively moved to a Marxist-Socialist outlook after a visit to the Soviet Union and the Nazis' appearance. After starting an undercover discussion group based at the Berlin Abendgymnasium, he met Harro Schulze-Boysen, who ran a similar faction. Like numerous groups in other parts of the world, the undercover political factions led by Harnack and Schulze-Boysen later developed into an espionage network that supplied military and economic intelligence to the Soviet Union. The group was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. He and his American-born wife, Mildred Fish, were executed by the Nazi regime in 1942 and 1943, respectively.
Arvid Harnack as a young man
Die vormarxistische Arbeiterbewegung in den Vereinigten Staaten: eine Darstellung ihrer Geschichte. (The pre-Marxist labour movement in the United States: an account of its history) University of Jena: G. Fischer, 1931
CIC file ref. Mildred Harnack (about 1947)
A Commemorative stamp honouring Mildred Harnack and her husband Arvid that was issued by the Deutsche Post of the GDR in 1964
Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen was a left-wing German publicist and Luftwaffe officer during World War II. As a young man, Schulze-Boysen grew up in prosperous family with two siblings, with an extended family who were aristocrats. After spending his early schooling at the Heinrich-von-Kleist Gymnasium and his summers in Sweden, he part completed a political science course at the University of Freiburg, before moving to Berlin on November 1929, to study law at the Humboldt University of Berlin. At Humboldt he became an anti-Nazi. After a visit to France in 1931, he moved to the political left. When he returned, he became a publicist on Der Gegner, a left-leaning political magazine. In May 1932, he took control of the magazine, but it was closed by the Gestapo in February 1933.
Harro Schulze-Boysen at his work desk
Harro and Libertas The picture was taken in 1935
Harro Schulze-Boysen (right) with Marta Husemann and Günther Weisenborn
Stolpersteine for the Schulze-Boysens in the castle courtyard of Liebenberg Castle [de]