Rudolf Jung (16 April 1882 – 11 December 1945) was a Nazi theoretician and the head of the German Bohemian Nazi movement from 1926 to 1933 before he immigrated to Germany. He joined the Nazi Party, was made an Honorary Gauleiter and became an SS-Gruppenführer. After the end of World War II, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Czechoslovak government but committed suicide before he could be brought to trial.
Biography
Early life and education Jung was born the son of a railway official in Plasy, Bohemia when it was part of Austria-Hungary, and attended the German-language Volksschule and Oberrealschule between 1888 and 1900 in Iglau (today, Jihlava). He studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, graduating with a degree in engineering in 1905. While a student, he joined the Burschenschaft Markomannia, a student association, and he was the student body chairman in 1903–1904. He passed his state engineering examination in July 1905. Beginning in October of that year, he performed military service as a one-year volunteer with the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the rank of Seekadett, and was assigned to the protected cruiser SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth. Returning to civilian life, Jung entered government service in October 1906 with the Imperial Royal Austrian State Railways as a mechanical engineer, later becoming an inspector and workshop manager in Vienna and Reichenberg (today, Liberec). In 1907, he joined the völkisch Reich League of German Railway Workers and became a member of the leadership from 15 June 1908.
Political activities in Austria-Hungary and Czechoslovakia
On 1 July 1909, Jung joined the pan-German German Workers' Party (DAP) and became an ardent party agitator. Jung was fired from his railway job in 1910 because of his political activism but the party put him on its payroll and he devoted himself to theoretical work. Along with Dr. Walter Riehl, Jung drafted a revised party program at Iglau in 1913 "which contained a more detailed comparison of international Marxism and national socialism to highlight their ideological differences and a more pointed attack on capitalism, democracy, alien peoples, and Jews. Here, anti-Semitism ranked behind anti-Slavism, anti-clericalism and anti-capitalism". The Iglau program would serve as the basis from which Jung's later political theories, and those of the forthcoming Nazi movement in Germany, would evolve. During this period Jung coined the slogan "Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz" (common good comes before self-interest). This would become a central tenet of Nazi ideology. During the First World War, he advocated that Germans seize Lebensraum in the east. In June 1913, Jung was elected as a DAP delegate to the Moravian Landtag (state parliament) and at the time was its youngest member. He also served as a city councilor in Iglau. In 1915, city authorities banned him from public speaking for allegedly arousing working class discontent over food shortages. At a meeting in Vienna in early May 1918, the DAP was renamed the Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (DNSAP) and Jung became member number 85. He was also the chief author of the new DNSAP program, which advocated for Austrian union with the German Reich. The program predated the German Nazi Party's 25-point Program by almost two years. Soon however, the DNSAP had split in two as a result of the establishment of the nation of Czechoslovakia, its Bohemian and Austrian branches forced to reconstitute themselves as separate independent parties. On 16 November 1919, Jung left the Austrian branch and became a member of the DNSAP of Czechoslovakia. Jung became Second Chairman of the Party under First Chairman Hans Knirsch, and also served as the Deputy Chairman of the Moravian-Silesian Region. He became the publisher of the German-language Party newspaper Neuen Zeit (New Time) in Troppau (today, Opava), as well as the co-editor of the monthly magazine Volk und Gemeinder (People and Community). In 1919, Jung completed his theoretical work Der Nationale Sozialismus: Seine Grundlagen, Sein Werdegang, und Seine Ziele (National Socialism: its Foundations, its Development, and its Goals). In his introduction, he expressed the hope that his book would play the same role for National Socialism that Das Kapital had for Marxist international socialism.
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