Rudolf Olden (January 14, 1885 in Stettin – September 18, 1940) was a German lawyer and journalist. In the Weimar period he was a well-known voice in the political debate, a vocal opponent of the Nazis, a fierce advocate of human rights and one of the first to alert the world to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis in 1934. He is the author of Hitler der Eroberer. Entlarvung einer Legende ("Hitler the Conqueror, Debunking of a Myth") which is considered part of the German exile literature. The book was promptly banned by the Nazis. Shortly after its publication by Querido in Amsterdam, Olden's citizenship was revoked and he emigrated, together with his wife, first to the United Kingdom and then, in 1940, to the United States. On September 18 both died in the U-boat attack on the SS City of Benares in the Atlantic.
World War I and the Interbellum
Rudolf Olden was born in Stettin (now Szczecin) as the son of the author Johann Oppenheim, (who changed his name to Hans Olden in 1891) and the actress Rosa Stein. Rudolf was the younger brother of the author Balder Olden. After completing his education, he chose a military career and joined the Leib-Dragoner-Regiment Nr. 24 (a cavalry regiment) in Darmstadt. During World War I, he was first stationed in Belgium but was transferred to the Eastern Front in 1915. Olden survived the war as a first lieutenant.
The war left a lasting impression and, once it had ended, Olden left the army and started as editor of the pacifistic periodical Der Friede ("Peace") in Vienna and Der Neue Tag. In 1920 he married the psychoanalyst Marie-Christine Fournier (the daughter of the Viennese historian Professor August Fournier) and was soon absorbed into the circles of journalists and writers. After Der Neue Tag became insolvent, he founded a magazine (Er und Sie, "He and She"), dedicated to Lebenskultur und Erotik, which was soon at the center of a heated debate about public morals and common decency.
In 1926 Olden was asked by Theodor Wolff, publisher of the liberal Berliner Tageblatt newspaper, to come to Berlin, where he soon caused some uproar with his editorials. Olden soon became Editor in Chief and also wrote for other publications, such as Die Menschenrechte ("Human Rights"), Das Tage-Buch ("The Diary") and Die Weltbühne ("The Global Stage").
In the same year, Olden was admitted as a lawyer and for a number of years practiced law. In 1931 he was chosen to be a member of the managing board of the Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte ("German league for Human Rights") and in the same year he defended Carl von Ossietzky, who was prosecuted for insulting the Reichswehr, because he published an article by Kurt Tucholsky which included the phrase "soldiers are murderers". Olden's defense was successful and Von Ossietzky was acquitted.
In 1933 Olden addressed the Schutzbund deutscher Schriftsteller ("protective union of German authors") and invited them to the congress Das Freie Wort ("the free word") in the Kroll Opera House two days later. One thousand five hundred artists, authors, scientists and politicians accepted the invitation to protest against the increasing pressure on artistic, journalistic and academic freedoms. It was the last congress organized by the liberal, social democratic and communist parties until 1945.
In exile from the Third Reich
After the Reichstag fire, Olden was warned by friends and was barely able to escape arrest. He managed to escape the SS - who were searching for him in the high courts, whereas on that day he was in the lower courts - by hiding with friends for a night. The following day, he travelled to the mountains and crossed the Czech border on wooden skis. The following day, his personal secretary and by that time lover, Ika Halpern, daughter of George Halpern a prominent Zionist of British descent, joined him in Prague where he published the essay version of Hitler der Eroberer anonymously. From Prague they traveled to Paris, where he published the noted Schwarzbuch über die Lage der Juden in Deutschland, the "Black Book on the Situation of the Jews in Germany", in which he warned about the atrocities already commonplace in Germany. He also acted as editor in chief for Das Reich, a newspaper in Saarbrücken, and opposed the reintegration of the Saarland into Nazi Germany.