Walther Arndt

Walther Arndt (8 January 1891 in Landeshut, Silesia, now Kamienna Góra, Poland – 26 June 1944 in Brandenburg) was a German zoologist and physician.

[1] He worked as an assistant at the Zoological Museum in Berlin under Willy Kükenthal and became primary curator in 1925 of the sponge, worm, moss animal, cnidarian, and echinoderm collections, while also being an ordentlicher Professor in 1931.

[3] On a trip home in September 1943, Arndt met an old schoolfriend Hanneliese Mehlhausen and told her about how the Nazi regime would fall the same way Mussolini's party fared in Italy.

Arndt was arrested on 14 January 1944 and called to the People's Court on 11 May 1944 and Judge Roland Freisler sentenced him to death on the same day.

[3] Arndt was the author of nearly 250 scientific publications on systematics, anatomy, the distribution of sponges, helminthology, oceanic fauna, museology, animal toxins, et al.[1] With August Brauer, Fritz Römer and Fritz Schaudinn, he was an editor of Fauna arctica: Eine Zusammenstellung der arktischen Tierformen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Spitzbergen-Gebietes auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Deutschen Expedition in das Nördliche Eismeer im Jahre 1898.

Walther Arndt
Memorial plaque, Walther Arndt, Invalidenstraße 43, Berlin-Mitte