Hermann Nuding (3 July 1902 – 30 May 1966) was a German politician, political party official (KPD) and, after 1945, an opponent ofGerman re-armament.^[1][2][3]

Nuding was born inOberurbach, Baden-Württemberg on 3 July 1902. His father was a factory worker. An early ambition to become a teacher was thwarted by the outbreak ofwar when he was twelve.^[4] After leaving school in 1916 he started an apprenticeship for work in theleather and tannery industry. In 1918 he joined the German Leather workers' Trades Union and theSpartacus League which shortly thereafter became theGerman Communist Party (KPD) In 1919 he joined theYoung Communists and became a founding member of the regional Communist Party group inWürttemberg and chairman of the KPD in his home town, Oberurbach. He joined the Regional leadership of the Württemberg Young Communists in 1920. He toi pursue an active political career in the German communist party, which included an extended period in Moscow during 1927/28 attending theInternational Lenin School.^[1]

In January 1933 theNSDAP (Nazi party)took power and lost no time in embarking on the creation of a one party state in Germany. Hermann Nuding was arrested in February 1933 and remained in "protective custody" till the start of July 1934 when he emigrated initially to Switzerland, subsequently also spending more time in Moscow. In 1935 he participated, using the pseudonym "Claus Degeb" in the party'sBrussels conference and then in 1935/36 worked from his base inZürich with the illegal Communist Party across the German border in Württemberg. During the second part of the 1930s he continued to work for the German Communist Party, based for some of the period in Belgium.^[2]

In 1937 Hermann Nuding andHerbert Wehner were jointly commissioned by theComintern leadership to compose a diatribe entitled "Trotskyism and Fascism". Leon Trotsky had at one time been seen by many as a likely successor ofLenin and was, by the 1930s, exiled from theSoviet Union and being systematically excoriated by theSoviet leadership and its supporters internationally.

Like many exiled German communists, by the timewar broke out in 1939 he was based in France,^[4] and during 1939/1940 he was interned atGurs. On his release he settled down to a life as a small farmer in the south of France using, appropriately, the pseudonym "Jean Bauer". During the early 1940s he worked illegally with both theFrench Resistance and the Soviet sponsoredNational Committee for a Free Germany.^[1]

After the war ended Nuding returned, in October 1945, to his home region in what remained of Germany. The northern part of Württemberg, includingStuttgart was now in theUS occupation zone and formed a part ofWürttemberg-Baden, a state formed by the occupation forces to accommodate the division of south western German between the US military and the French military. Nuding set about rebuilding theCommunist Party inStuttgart and the surrounding region.

In 1946 he became a member of theprovisional regional parliament for Württemberg-Baden and then for itssuccessor assembly, established by theUS Military administration. At this point he represented thenewly formedSED (party) which had been set up in theSoviet occupation zone, although he would soon revert to theCommunist Party when it became apparent that there was no future role for the SED outside that part of Germany controlled by theSoviet military.

By 1949 it was becoming apparent thatWest Germany andEast Germany were developing as separate states, and in August 1949 Nuding was one of the fifteen Communist members of the nationalBundestag, located provisionally inBonn. He remained a member till resigning ostensibly on health grounds on 20 April 1951. Until July 1950 he spoke in the chamber on behalf of the Communist party, but by that time his expulsion from the Communist Party had already been proposed back in September 1949 byWalter Ulbricht, the leader of the newly emerging Soviet backedGerman Democratic Republic.^[4]

At the end of April 1945 thirty German communists, grouped in three teams of ten, arrived in what was becoming theSoviet occupation zone in Germany. The men, led byWalter Ulbricht, had spent thewar years in Moscow: as matters turned, out they had used their years in exile to formulate a clear nation-building program for what would become theGerman Democratic Republic. German communists who had spent the war somewhere other in the Soviet Union did not necessarily share the objectives or strategy of theUlbricht Group and during the later 1940s tensions between the Communist Party's leaders in the Bundestag, based in West Germany, and the men now governingEast Germany, became increasingly apparent. In June 1950, at the Communist Party's sixteenth party conference, Nuding was condemned as the party's leading opportunist^[4][5] and the next month, in July 1950 he was stripped of party functions. It was reported in October 1950 that despite being seriously ill he had rejected an "urgent recommendation" to relocate to theGerman Democratic Republic.^[1] His resignation from the German Bundestag on health grounds in April 1951 came as the result of an instruction received from the Berlin-basedSED (party).^[1]

The underlying differences that led to his resignation were numerous. Issues that triggered his disgrace by the Communist Party included his rejection of the Communist Party's official opposition to theGerman Trades Union Confederation (founded in Munich in 1949) and his further rejection of the party line that in the event of a war between the Soviet Union and her (former) western allies, the German Communists should actively support the Soviet Union. More generally, while there was unanimity between Nuding and the German Communist Party in opposing German rearmament in respect ofWest Germany, Nuding also held that rearmament ofEast Germany was similarly unacceptable: this was at variance with the strategy of the Ulbricht government and their Soviet backers.^[4]

Despite his exclusion from his party posts, Hermann Nuding continued to be listed as a party official till May 1955.^[1] He was excluded from party membership only on 17 August 1956, although even after this he continued to be consulted by party officials on political and trades union matters.^[4]

Hermann Nuding was married twice. His first marriage toPaula Kopp lasted from 1923 till 1947. Paula then, in 1947, marriedHans Rueß, and so is frequently identified in sources as Paula Rueß. Hermann Nuding's second marriage to Helene took place in 1957. Neither marriage gave rise to surviving children.

Hermann Nuding himself spent his final years in poor health as a pensioner inLuginsland (Stuttgart) where he died in December 1966.^[4]

• 1902 births
• 1966 deaths
• German resistance to Nazism
• Exiles from Nazi Germany
• Members of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg
• Communist Party of Germany politicians
• Prisoners and detainees of Germany

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