Johanna Kirchner

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Memorial plaque for Johanna Kirchner on the facade of the Paulskirche in Frankfurt

Johanna "Hanna" Kirchner (born Johanna Stunz , temporarily Johanna Schmidt , born April 24, 1889 in Frankfurt am Main , † June 9, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German local politician and resistance fighter in the Resistance .

Life

Johanna Stunz came from a social democratic family. At the age of 14 she joined the Socialist Workers' Youth and joined the SPD at the age of 18 . She was friends with Lore Wolf in Frankfurt am Main , who followed a similar path in life.

Shortly after the birth of her daughter Lotte, she married the social democrat Karl Kirchner in 1913 . During the First World War , the mother of two daughters was involved in communal welfare and then in building up the workers welfare organization founded in 1919 . From 1925 to 1929 she was married to the elementary school teacher Paul Schmidt (1892–1973) for the second time.

In 1926 she became a full-time functionary of the Frankfurt SPD.

In 1933, the committed anti-fascist had to go into hiding because the Gestapo became aware of her help in the liberation of a Nazi opponent and she was about to be arrested. She fled without her family to Saarbrücken , which was still under French occupation at the time. There she headed the Saar Refugee Committee , wrote plans and reports for the SPD executive in exile and produced and distributed illegal leaflets. She helped out in a restaurant that was run by Marie Juchacz , the founder of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt. After the Saar was annexed to the German Reich in 1935, Johanna Kirchner fled on to Forbach , Metz and finally Paris . From here she also supported the resistance in Germany.

Although Johanna Kirchner belonged to the SPD and her long-time friend Lore Wolf did illegal work for the KPD , they worked closely together in the Saar area when they organized the emigration of many functionaries of the workers' movement from the Reich (see Red Aid Germany ). In this way, in the opinion of Wolfgang Abendroth, they achieved “the unity of the workers' movement in anti-fascist work”.

In 1942 Johanna Kirchner was arrested by the Vichy government and extradited to the Gestapo. It was because of treason to ten years in prison sentenced, but 1944 was their method of People's Court resumed. The sentence was commuted to the death penalty on April 20, 1944 .

On June 9, 1944, Johanna Kirchner was executed in Berlin-Plötzensee .

memory

  • In 1947 a street in the Westhausen settlement in Frankfurt am Main was renamed Johanna-Kirchner-Straße. There is also a Hanna-Kirchner-Strasse in Saarbrücken and Wallenhorst (near Osnabrück) and a Hanna-Kirchner-Weg in Munich. In April 2019, the newly opened Johanna - Kirchner - Weg was named after her in Bremen .
  • In 1962, near the Plötzensee execution site, the Kirchnerpfad was named after her.
  • From 1991 to 1995 the city of Frankfurt am Main awarded the “ Johanna Kirchner Medal ” to people who between 1933 and 1945 resisted and / or helped the persecuted.
  • At the Paulskirche in Frankfurt a plaque commemorates the murdered woman.
  • In Saarbrücken, the senior citizens' center of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (in Trifelsstrasse) is called "Johanna-Kirchner-Haus".
  • Since 2011, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences have been awarding the Johanna Kirchner Prize in the amount of 1000 euros to the author of a thesis on the topics of elderly care, child and youth work, or work with offenders.
  • On July 5, 2012, a stumbling stone was placed in Saarbrücken's Bahnhofstrasse at number 80 in honor of Johanna Kirchner. The artist Gunter Demnig laid the stumbling block .

literature

  • Ulla Plener : Johanna Kirchner. In this. (Ed.): Women from Germany in the French Resistance. A documentation (= labor movement: research, documents, biographies ). Ed. Bodoni, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-929390-80-9 , pp. 59-63.
  • Antje Dertinger , Jan von Trott: And always live in your memory. Johanna Kirchner. A woman in the resistance. Dietz, Berlin, Bonn 1985, ISBN 3-8012-0109-0 .

Web links

Commons : Johanna Kirchner  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt.
  2. ↑ http://www.fes.de/archiv/adsd_neu/inhalt/recherche/wegbereiterinnen/kirchner.htm
  3. ^ Roland Schmitt: Johanna Kirchner. ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: Saarländische Biographien .
  4. ↑ https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/stadtteile/stadtteile-bremen-suedost_artikel,-raus-aus-der-insellage-_arid,1823159.html
  5. ↑ Kirchnerpfad. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert ).
  6. ↑ https://www.awo-saarland.de/index.php?id=166
  7. ↑ AWO Zeitung - Edition 04/2013. Accessed December 11, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Kirchner, Johanna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kirchner, Hanna; Stunz, Johanna; Schmidt, Johanna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee