Arthur Franke (5 August 1909 in Berlin – 23 October 1992 in Rüdersdorf) was a leading political policeman in East Germany; he became a military officer when the country's army was established in 1956.

[1][2] Arthur Franke was born into a working-class family, and on leaving school was apprenticed as a cabinet maker from 1923 till 1927, then working at the trade between 1927 and 1930.

As the Soviet army approached and national defeat loomed, plans were implemented to start emptying the Sachsenhausen concentration camp of its surviving internees, and in April 1945 Arthur Franke was one of a group of prisoners who set off on a Death march, during the course of which he managed to escape from his guards.

In 1946 Arthur Franke joined the SED, becoming a member of the new party's district leadership team in the Tiergarten (Zoo) quarter of Berlin.

[2] Franke's predecessor in this position, whose early retirement in 1959 came officially on health grounds, was Willy Sägebrecht whom he had already got to know on the Sachsenhausen Death march.

He was released from military service on 31 January 1975, and in June 1975 he succeeded Helmut Wolff as President of the Sport and Technology Society Diving Club, an office he held till 1987.