Life
Arthur Hoffmann's beginnings were very humble. He was from a tiny hamlet in Silesia which contained only six houses. His father was a bricklayer and his mother ran a small agricultural enterprise. An hour-long walk took Hoffmann to a second-rate rural school when he was a boy, where the teacher's favour could be bought with gifts of sausages, something well beyond the Hoffmann family's means. After finishing the eighth year of school, Hoffmann was apprenticed as a carpenter. In 1917, he joined the Deutscher Holzarbeiterverband ("German Woodworkers' Union").
In February 1917, during World War I, Hoffmann was called into the 29er Pionieren in Posen (now Poznań, Poland), where his comrades in arms saw fit to elect him to the Soldiers' Council. In 1919, he met his future wife, Dora Hörig while she was visiting a cousin in Silesia. Shortly thereafter, however, Hoffmann went travelling. He wended his way through Germany, finally arriving at Delitzsch, where Weimar Republic political events were brought home to him very clearly. He actively took part in defending the results of the November Revolution in Germany, and for this, he was given two years and ten months in prison for what the court in Torgau deemed to be a breach of the peace. He was, however, freed after one year and nine months under an amnesty.
Hoffmann finally wed Dora on 19 May 1923. They would have a daughter and three sons.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Hoffmann (resistance Fighter)
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