Agnes Gierck
Agnes Gierck (born February 28, 1886 as Agnes Höhne in Weimar , † November 12, 1944 in Hamburg ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .
Live and act
Agnes Höhne was the daughter of a butcher from Weimar. She moved with her parents to Hamburg, where she grew up in financially precarious circumstances. She attended elementary school and then worked as a domestic servant, later as a tiller. After marrying the stone carrier and worker Carl Gierck in 1909, she took on his family name. The couple had the daughter Wilma (* 1909) and the sons Herbert (* 1912) and Erwin (* 1914). The house in which the family lived in the Fritz-Schumacher-Siedlung is at Wattkorn 8 in Hamburg-Langenhorn .
The Gierck couple participated in the work of the KPD since 1929 . Agnes Gierck was involved in a five-person working group that was preparing for a future underground. She also distributed magazines and leaflets that were directed against the National Socialists and warned of a possible war. As the cashier for Red Aid Germany , she managed their donations. According to a complaint, Gierck was arrested on October 1, 1934, on "suspicion of preparing for high treason". In addition to high treason, the Hamburg Higher Regional Court accused her of sedition. In addition, she paid membership fees to the KPD and the Red Aid, supported the Red Aid as a cashier and distributed banned newspapers, according to the prosecution.
Her husband and son Herbert received a year and six months' imprisonment, and their son-in-law Willi Goes received a year and three months in prison. Agnes Gierck served her own two-year prison sentence in Lübeck women's prison. After that, she continued to work underground. In 1942 she got cancer. She died two years later in the Alsterdorf hospital .
Honors
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In the mid-1970s, students suggested naming a student dormitory at 36 Kiwittsmoor after Agnes Gierck. The board of trustees of the Hamburger Studentenwerk did not follow this suggestion.
Since 1976, the graves of Agnes and Carl Gierck have been on the field of honor of the Geschwister-Scholl-Stiftung at the Ohlsdorf cemetery , grid square Bn 73, no. 128 (left of the path, penultimate block: eighth row, fifth stone).
In 1996, the Fuhlsbüttel local committee decided to rename the Peter-Mühlens-Weg into Agnes-Gierck-Weg . Since Peter Mühlens had made human experiments during the Nazi era, a group of local residents advocated this name change. The GAL and the SPD voted on November 19, 1996 for the proposal, the CDU against. The change of the street signs took place on February 28, 1997. The then local office manager Wolfgang Engelmann presented Gierck's achievements insufficiently when he said in a speech that Gierck was not a resistance fighter "in the classical sense". District MP Renate Herzog was of the opinion that Gierck was a "simple woman" who was "arrested and tortured for minor reasons".
The role of Agnes Gierck was only reassessed later: in 2009, fifth graders from the Heidberg high school - guided by their religion teacher Elke Hertel - dealt with the life of Agnes Gierck. With their work they won the Hamburg State Prize, the third federal prize of the Federal President's history competition, the Bertini Prize and an award from Democratic Action . The new district office manager Wolfgang Kopitzsch supports the concern of a reassessment. In January 2010, Gierck added an exhibition in Hamburg's town hall to the list of people who were persecuted as resistance fighters from 1933 to 1945.
literature
- Elke Hertel: Gierck, Agnes . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 104-105 .
Web links
- Agnes Gierck at Frauenbiografien hamburg .de
Individual evidence
- ^ Cushion stone Carl and Agnes Gierck at genealogy.net
- ↑ Antje-Monika Ahrens: Agnes Gierck - Resistance and Struggle for Recognition, ver.di -Ararbeitskreis AntiRassismus Hamburg 2019, p. 10
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gierck, Agnes |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Höhne, Agnes (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German resistance fighter against National Socialism |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 28, 1886 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Weimar |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 12, 1944 |
| Place of death | Hamburg |