Marinus van der Lubbe
1909-1934

Dutch worker and militant activist connected to the GIC(H) and the LAO

Historically known as the one to set fire to the German parliamentary building, the Reichstag, on the 27'th of February 1933  -  an incident used by the Nazi's to crush down on all the old workers organizations and to make their final take over of all governmental power. 

Dragged through a public show trial, in which he was the ridiculed victim not only of the Nazis, but also of the Stalinists, Marinus van der Lubbe insisted to be the sole responsible for the burning of the Reichstag. 

Death sentence and executed on the 10'th of January 1934.

Marinus van der Lubbe was born on the 13'th of January 1909 in Leiden, Holland.

As his parents got divorced and his mother died at his age of 12, he moved to live at the home of his elder half-sister in Oegstgeest. Having finished primary school in 1924 he started learning to become a bricklayer. Physically he was very strong and intellectually he was not behind. He developed friendships among his elder colleagues and got involved in the workers organizations. Beside his work he studied at evening school.

In 1925 Marinus joined the youth organization of the Communist Party of Holland, 'De Zaaier'.

About this time he had a severe accident of work  -  getting cement powder in the eyes causing a permanent damage on his sight  -  and got the status as unsuitable for work on invalidity pension.

In 1927 Marinus moved to Leiden.

In the period 1926-28 Marinus was active in the CPH and became a well known agitator and activist among the unemployed. Among other things he was one of the primus motors for the establishment of the so called 'Lenin-House' in Leiden.

Through these years Marinus became still more oppositional within the CPH. In April 1931 he broke with the CP and joined different small Council Communist organizations. Through his friend Piet van Albada he developed loose contacts to the Groups of International Communists of Holland, the GIC(H), in Leiden and Amsterdam.

In 1931 and 1932 there were a lot of workers' strikes and campaigns of unemployed in Holland. During these Marinus was very active and because of his very militant and activist attitudes he soon came into conflicts with the authorities. In 1931-32 Marinus was involved in several direct actions confronting the police and smashing windows at local welfare- and unemployment-offices. In some of these actions he was caught and sentenced to prison, in the first instance for a week and later for a longer period.

In this period Marinus made several trips abroad with the intention of getting to the Soviet Union. In April 1931 he went to Berlin in order to get a visa from the Soviet Embassy, but without the support from the Dutch CP he couldn't afford the expences and had to return. On the way back to Holland he got arrested for selling postcards without permission in Westfalen and spent 10 days in German prison. Then in september 1931 he made another attempt of reaching his goal directly, but was stopped at the border between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union.

Back in Holland Marinus continued his activist paticipation in the struggles of the unemployed. And so in ealy 1932 he again got into conflict with the authorities and got arrested. While waiting for the trial Marinus then started his third attempt of going to the Soviet Union. This time he got to Poland, but had to return because of arrest for attempting to cross the border to the USSR without visa. Back in Holland he then had to spend 3 month in jail for his previous conflicts with the law.

In October 1932 Marinus van der Lubbe broke with the GIC(Holland) and joined the Linkse Arbeiders Oppositie (LAO), which was more activist and had groups in Rotterdam and Leiden.

At the end of January 1933 Hitler became Reichs-Chancellor in Germany. Marinus got very upset about this and decided that something had to be done against the growing power of the Nazis. In February he thus went to Berlin in order to join the militant workers there and   -  according to his own plans  -  to help to arrange a general workers response. In Marinus's opinion Germany was the center of socialist struggle in Europe and what was necessary was a proletarian revolution.

On February the 18th Marinus van der Lubbe arrived at Berlin. The following days he went around the city looking for signs of workers' struggle. As he was used to from Holland he visited various unemployment officies and agitated for starting demonstrations. But the general mood of the Berlin workers did not seem to be prepared for radical actions.

After a week Marinus came to the conclusion that something more dramatic had to be done. On February the 25th he bought matches and some inflammable coal. And in the following days he started or attempted to start fires at different places  -  first a unemployment office, then the Town Hall and after that the imperial Palace. 

On the eve of the 27'th of February 1933 Marinus van der Lubbe was caught on the spot setting the German Reichstag on fire. The central part of the Parliamentary Building burned down and the event was promptly used by the Nazies to crush down on all the workers organizations and accelerate the establishment of the new regime of the 'Third Reich'.

The Nazies tried to use the event to confront the Stalinist KPD and the Komintern, which they accused of organizing the burning of the Reichstag. The Stalinists on their part claimed that van der Lubbe was working for the Nazies and that the whole event was a provokation of theirs in order to gain power and crush the workers organizations.

In the following trial Marinus consequently insisted to have set the Reichstag on fire solely by himself and without any help of others. His intention was to give a signal to the German workers to raise themselves in open struggle and fight for the overthrow of capitalism.

The trial concluded that Marinus must have had some help from others, but could not establish any solid proof for this. The accused Stalinists from the KPD and the Komintern were cleared.

Following a special Nazi-legislation   -  the 'van der Lubbe-Lex', which retrospectively made such crimes against important public buildings a matter of capital punishment if part of a conspiracy against the State  -  Marinus van der Lubbe was sentenced to death. 

On the 10th of January 1934 Marinus van der Lubbe was executed in Leipzig.

Related texts:

Anton Pannekoek: Individual acts - 1933
Anton Pannekoek: Destruction As A Mean Of Struggle - 1933
Paul Mattick: Marinus van der Lubbe - Proletarier oder Provokateur ?  -  1934
Philippe Bourrinet: Dutch Council Communism and Van der Lubbe -  2003