Theodor Haubach

Theodor Haubach (born September 15, 1896 in Frankfurt am Main , † January 23, 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German journalist , politician ( SPD ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Stumbling block for Theodor Haubach in Hartwicusstraße on the Uhlenhorst .

Stolperstein, Falterweg 11, in Berlin-Westend

Haubach was born as the son of the coffee wholesaler Emil August Justus Haubach (1854–1896) and Emilie Hirschfelder (d. 1939), who came from a Jewish family. Theodor Haubach spent his childhood and youth in Darmstadt , where he completed his secondary school diploma in 1914 with Carlo Mierendorff and Wilhelm Köhler (entrepreneurs) at the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium . Haubach, who belonged to the Wandervogel movement , then volunteered and was a participant in the First World War until 1918 . He served as a soldier on the Western Front and took part in battles near Ypres , the Argonne , Champagne and Verdun . During the war, Haubach was wounded eight times or became seriously ill. Haubach processed part of his war experiences in lyric and prose texts, which were published between 1915 and 1918 in Die Dachstube , a Darmstadt journal of literary expressionism . Haubach also published fictional texts and political considerations after the war, in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant in the reserve , which were published in various newspapers and magazines. He was also involved in Darmstadt's cultural policy and took part in the establishment of the Darmstadt Secession . To Haubachs immediate post-war activities, the employees in part workers and soldiers of Butzbach .

From 1919 to 1923 he studied philology , philosophy , social sciences and economics in Heidelberg , Munich , Frankfurt am Main and again in Heidelberg . Among his most important teachers were Alfred Weber and Karl Jaspers , with whom he completed his studies with a doctorate .

Since 1920 Haubach, like his friend Carlo Mierendorff, was a member of the SPD and actively worked with the Young Socialists . From 1924 to 1929 Haubach worked as an editor for the daily newspaper Hamburger Echo , then from November 1929 to March 1930 as a press officer in the Reich Ministry of the Interior and from May 1930 to July 1932 as press chief for the Berlin police chief. Since 1924 Haubach was a leading member of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , an association that campaigned for Weimar democracy and actively fought against the Nazi regime, which was pressing towards power.

On October 3, 1924 he founded the Club of October 3 with Gustav Dahrendorf , Egon Bandmann and Alfred Vagts (all SPD) as well as Hans Robinsohn , Ernst Strassmann and Heinrich Landahl (all DDP ) , the aim of which was to fight the enemies of the Weimar Republic , which on the other hand was also supposed to provide mutual support for political initiatives.

From 1927 Haubach belonged to the Hamburg parliament for the SPD ; he resigned in November 1929 in order to concentrate fully on his new post in Berlin.

In 1930 Haubach was a member of the advisory board of the Abraham Lincoln Foundation , a German branch of the Rockefeller Foundation .

From February 1933, Haubach, like many SPD members, was persecuted by the Nazi regime . In 1933/34, together with Karl Heinrich, he built an underground social democratic organization consisting essentially of Reichsbanner members and numbering more than 1000 members. After his first arrest in 1934, he was imprisoned in the Esterwegen concentration camp . After his release from prison in 1936 he got a job in the paper factory of a friend from university Viktor Bausch (entrepreneur) and later got in touch with the Kreisau district . In September 1939 he was temporarily arrested as part of the special war campaign . After the unsuccessful assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Haubach was arrested again and sentenced to death by the People's Court . Seriously ill, Theodor Haubach was hanged on January 23, 1945 together with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke in Plötzensee .

Before his arrest, Theodor Haubach got to know the singer Anneliese Schellhase , who was closely linked to him in an intimate love affair until his end. She tried in vain, even through a personal conversation with Roland Freisler , to save him from execution.

Honors

• Haubachstrasse in Berlin-Charlottenburg is named after him
• The briefing room in the Federal Government's Press and Information Office in Berlin-Mitte bears his name.
• The Theodor Haubach Oberschule in Berlin-Tempelhof bears his name.
• On March 5, 2013, a stumbling block was laid in front of his former home in Berlin-Westend .
• In Darmstadt there is a Haubachweg; A memorial plaque is attached to the house at Stauffenbergstrasse 65a.
• In Frankfurt am Main (Riederwald) there is a Theodor-Haubach-Weg.
• In Hamburg-Altona-Nord the Haubachstraße and the Theodor-Haubach-Schule are named after him
• In Hamburg-Uhlenhorst a stumbling stone was laid for him.
• In Hamburg, on June 8, 2012, stumbling blocks were laid in front of the town hall for the murdered members of the Hamburg parliament, including another for Theodor Haubach.
• In Bielefeld , Kassel , Lüneburg , Neustadt an der Weinstrasse , Pfungstadt , and Wiesbaden there is a Theodor-Haubach-Strasse.
• There is a Doktor-Theodor-Haubach-Straße in Pinneberg .
• In Leverkusen , the Theodor-Haubach-street was named after him.

Works

• Jaques Prince. Linoleum cuts by L. Breitwieser. I. Würth designed the binding. Darmstadt, in the attic, 1918.

literature

• Richard Albrecht : The militant social democrat. Carlo Mierendorff 1897 to 1943 . Dietz, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-8012-1128-2
• Richard Albrecht: War of Symbols in Germany, 1932. A historical-biographical sketch (MuK; 44). Research focus on mass media and communication at the University of Siegen, 1986.
• Richard Albrecht: The sensitive social democrat. Theodor Haubach (1896-1945) . In: Working group of formerly persecuted social democrats: AVS information service . SPD party executive board, Berlin, vol. 16 (1995) issue 3, pp. 3-4 [and] (1995) issue 4, pp. 4-5
• Walter Hammer (Ed.): Theodor Haubach to the memory. Improved and supplemented second edition. Frankfurt a. M., European Publishing House 1955.
• Emil Henk:  Haubach, Theodor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , p. 68 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Frank Müller: Members of the Citizenship. Victim of totalitarian persecution. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Published by the citizens of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Hamburg 1995, DNB 944894100 .
• Peter Zimmermann: Theodor Haubach (1896-1945). A political biography . Dölling & Galitz, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-935549-87-3
• Biographical Lexicon of Socialism Volume I Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf. GMBH Hanover pp. 115–117

Web links

Commons : Theodor Haubach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Theodor Haubach in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Theodor Haubach in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Short biography at the Kreisau-Initiative Berlin e. V.
• Haubach, Theodor. In: Stadtlexikon Darmstadt
• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On childhood and youth up to 1914 see Zimmermann: Haubach, political biography , pp. 23–32.
2. ↑ Zimmermann: Haubach, political biography , pp. 33–37.
3. ↑ On the literary work of the young Haubach see Zimmermann: Haubach, political biography , pp. 37–54.
4. ↑ Zimmermann: Haubach, political biography , pp. 56–61.
5. ↑ Zimmermann: Haubach, political biography , p. 56.
6. ↑ Zimmermann: Haubach, political biography , p. 57 f.
7. ↑ Christof Brauers, The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953, Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 2007, pages 68f.
8. ^ Wilhelm Heinz Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1867-1933 , online as a biography of Theodor Haubach . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
9. ^ Theodor Haubach. In: Kreisau Initiative .
10. ↑ Stumbling blocks for murdered MdHB final inscriptions City Hall Hamburg (PDF file; 15 kB)
11. ↑ Leverkusen street directory [1]