Marinus van der Lubbe

Lore & Background

Marinus van der Lubbe was born in Leiden, Netherlands, on 13 January 1909. His parents divorced, and after his mother died when he was 12, he lived with his half-sister's family in Oegstgeest. He worked as a bricklayer and was nicknamed Dempsey after boxer Jack Dempsey due to his great strength. In 1925, at age 16, he joined the Communist Party of the Netherlands and its youth section. A work injury in 1926, when lime got in his eyes, nearly blinded him and left him unemployed with a weekly pension of 7.44 guilders. After conflicts with his sister, he moved to Leiden in 1927, learned some German, and founded the Lenin House for political meetings. He later left the CPN and approached the Group of International Communists, becoming associated with anarcho-syndicalist groups. In 1933, he fled to Germany to work for his political ideals; he had a criminal record for several attempted arsons.

Reader's Guide

Van der Lubbe's significance lies in his role in the Reichstag fire, which the Nazis used as a pretext to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree and consolidate power. At his trial, the prosecution argued he acted on behalf of a wider communist conspiracy, while left-wing anti-Nazis claimed the fire was a false flag attack by the Nazis. He was convicted and guillotined on 10 January 1934, three days before his 25th birthday. After World War II, his brother sought to reverse the verdict; in 1967, the sentence was changed from death to eight years in prison, and in 1980 a West German court reversed the verdict entirely, but that was overturned in 1983. In January 2008, the German government granted van der Lubbe a posthumous pardon. Historians remain divided on whether he acted alone or was part of a larger conspiracy, though Ian Kershaw noted in 1998 that nearly all contemporary historians believe van der Lubbe set the fire. In 2023, his remains were exhumed for toxicological analysis, which found no evidence of drugs, though decomposition made a definitive conclusion impossible.

Did You Know?

• Van der Lubbe was nicknamed Dempsey after boxer Jack Dempsey because of his great strength.
• He was guillotined on 10 January 1934, three days before his 25th birthday.
• The Lex van der Lubbe law, enacted on 28 February 1933, retroactively introduced the death penalty for arson of public buildings and other crimes, and was applied to van der Lubbe's case, though it was not named after hi
• Contrary to some rumors, no exhumation or toxicology report on van der Lubbe's remains has been reported in reliable historical sources.