Wolfgang Natonek was born in Leipzig on 3 October 1919; his father was Hans Natonek, the editor and writer. Wolfgang Natonek completed his schooling at an academic secondary school emphasising natural sciences and modern languages in 1938. By then, persecution and discrimination had already driven his father, who was of Jewish background, out of Nazi Germany. Hans Natonek moved to Czechoslovakia in 1934, from there he fled to France in 1939, ultimately escaping to the United States (1941). After the denaturalisation of Hans Natonek and the seizure of his assets, the family he had left behind in Leipzig – his wife, their son Wolfgang and a daughter – were declared “stateless” and lived in strained circumstances.

Nevertheless, Wolfgang Natonek was permitted to take up the study of veterinary medicine at the University of Leipzig. The political situation was such that he only lasted two semesters there, though. In 1940, he was conscripted to serve in an artillery unit but was then declared “unworthy to serve” and discharged in 1941. Natonek was working as an unskilled labourer in a Leipzig automobile repair company when “the liberation”, his term for end of the war, arrived. True to his antifascist ethos, he had conspired with other workers in Leipzig to hide three escaped Russian POW towards the war. At no small risk to their own lives, the group kept the escapees safe until the city was liberated. Natonek re-enrolled at the University of Leipzig at the earliest opportunity, in February 1946, this time as a student of German and English studies and journalism.

With background like his, staying out of political life was not an option for Natonek. He joined the centrist-liberal LDPD in Leipzig on 15 September 1945 (before the LDPD was forced to become a satellite party of the SED). He even founded an LDPD association at his university. In February of 1947, he was elected chairman of the student council by a majority of Leipzig students. Natonek’s commitment to do justice to the anti-fascist resistance was apparent when he called for the University of Leipzig to publicly honour Hans and Sophie Scholl on the fifth anniversary of their execution. Students at the university in Munich, the Scholl siblings and other had formed the “White Rose” resistance group along with other likeminded students and professors. The Scholls were executed on 22 February 1943 by order of the Nazi’s People’s Court, for having distributed anti-war leaflets.

Speaking in Eisenach in 1947 at the second LDPD party congress, Natonek explained his motives for entering politics as follows: “Returning to the universities after six years of war, we thought that the time had finally come when we would be able to devote ourselves to our scholarly work. None of us intended to get involved in politics at the university, much less join a political party. However, we can see that there is a need for us engage in partisan politics in order to avoid domination by another party. We know what is at stake.” This was a barely disguised declaration of war against the SED, which Natonek – at least after being re-elected as student council chairman in December of 1947 – was frequently heard to describe as the “idol of the reactionary student body”. Natonek’s clashes with the reactionaries were in no way restricted to scholarly contexts. In fact, they were more likely to erupt in connection with the student council’s right to be involved in the university’s admission process and in the award of scholarships: the SED wanted political attitude and social background, rather than ability, to be the chief criteria for these decisions. Natonek is on record as having quipped that whilst it would have been the “non-Aryan” grandmother who prevented someone’s admission in 1937, it was the “non-proletarian” grandmother who did so in 1947.

The next year, Leipzig’s Communists brought the occupying Soviet authorities into their scheme to prevent Natonek’s election to another term as student council chairman. The Soviet secret police arrested Natonek in the night of 11/12 November 1948 and took him to their detention facility in Dresden. The written order for his arrest still exists: the grounds specified in it are that Natonek was a member of an illegal organisation and engaged in activities opposed to the measures of the Soviet military administration. At least ten other students were also arrested in Leipzig that night.

Investigations revealed that the charges were unfounded, but this did not prevent the student leader, a brilliant speaker whose popularity extended well beyond his hometown, from being found guilty of “aiding and abetting espionage” and sentenced to 25 years of forced labour. Natonek began what would be an eight-year ordeal of penal servitude at the Bautzen prison, which was then still under Soviet administration. The miscarriage of justice was not taken up for review in 1950, when the Volkpolizei took over the administration of criminal justice. Instead, Natonek continued to endure the wretched existence of a political prisoner, first in Bautzen and later in Torgau.

Natonek was finally “amnestied” in 1956. He then left the GDR, lingering only for a brief stay in Leipzig. Natonek, then 36 years old, found the strength to start at a university for a third time. He earned a degree in German studies and education from the University of Göttingen and went on to work as a teacher for almost three decades, ultimately serving as head of the history department at a state institute for teacher training (Staatliches Studienseminar) in Göttingen. The University of Leipzig awarded him an honorary professorship in 1992.

Wolfgang Natonek died in Göttingen on 21 January 1994.