Alban Hess

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Alban Heß (born January 2, 1891 in Sangerhausen ; † April 26, 1970 ) was a German bookseller and opponent of National Socialism .

Life

Alban Hess was the son of the master bookbinder Richard Hess from Sangerhausen. He attended middle school and business school in his hometown. After the outbreak of World War I he was called up for military service and took part in the campaign against France. At the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the English. When he returned to Sangerhausen, he founded the Alban-Heß-Bücherstube in Göpenstrasse in 1922, from which the Sankt-Michael- Bucherstube, housed in another building, emerged , which has since been closed. As a member of the Confessing Church , he rejected the increasingly popular National Socialism in Germany at an early stage . He did not sell any NSDAP literature in his bookstore, including Adolf Hitler's bestseller Mein Kampf .

He was arrested in 1941 because of his activities critical of the regime and, after seven months of pre-trial detention, had to go to prisons in Erfurt and Ichtershausen for two years. In March 1944 he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp . There he experienced the liberation in April 1945. He returned weakened to his hometown, where he opened the Saint Michael bookstore .

Alban Heß became a co-founder of the CDU local branch and city councilor in Sangerhausen. In 1949 he withdrew from local politics. With the authorities of the GDR he came into conflict several times after he criticized the system of the block parties and u. a. had publicly called for an election boycott. He was stripped of his pension for those persecuted by the Nazi regime.

Honors

In Sangerhausen, the previous Leninstrasse was renamed Alban-Heß-Strasse in 2000. Furthermore, a stumbling block was laid for him in 2015 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Genealogical data at the Heimat- und Geschichtsverein Goldene Aue eV ( Memento from April 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Sangerhausen Buchhandlung closes after 65 years on mz-web.de
personal data
SURNAME Hess, Alban
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bookseller and opponent of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Sangerhausen
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1970