Albrecht Höhler

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Albrecht Höhler

Albrecht Höhler , called Ali (born April 30, 1898 in Mainz , † September 20, 1933 near Frankfurt an der Oder ), was a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Red Front Fighters Association (RFB). He became known for the manslaughter of the Berlin SA leader Horst Wessel .

Life

Birth certificate of Albrecht Höhler.

Höhler was a son of the day laborer Peter Höhler. He learned the carpentry trade and became a member of the KPD in 1924 . After the RFB was banned in 1929, Höhler belonged to an illegal successor organization, the "Sturmabteilung", as deputy head of the "3. Berlin Mitte readiness ”. In the “milieu around Alexanderplatz ” he worked as a pimp “Ali”. Höhler had numerous previous convictions and was considered a " professional criminal ". In 1930 he lived at Mulackstrasse 13 in Berlin-Mitte .

Horst Wessel is killed

On January 14, 1930, the Wessels landlady, Elisabeth Salm, approached a "standby" of Höhler's storm department about a rent dispute. Salm's late husband was a member of the KPD. According to later statements in court, the SA man Horst Wessel, known in the district, was to receive a “proletarian rub-off”. Probably this was politically motivated; The KPD had warned against the "workers murderer" Wessel. Since it was known that Wessel owned a firearm, Höhler took his pistol with him to this company, in which several members of his readiness were involved. Höhler testified later in the trial that he shot when Wessel reached for his bag.

Wessel died on February 23, 1930 as a result of the gunshot wound.

Imprisonment and execution

Höhler first fled to Prague , Czechoslovakia , but then returned to Berlin, where he was arrested.

On September 26, 1930, Höhler was sentenced to six years imprisonment for manslaughter , which he served in Wohlau prison . After the National Socialists came to power, Höhler was transferred to a Gestapo prison in Berlin, allegedly to question him about a retrial. He asked to be transferred back to Wohlau.

On September 20, 1933, Höhler was officially taken over to him by three detectives, including the SA member Willi Schmidt , on the orders of the SA group leader in Berlin, Karl Ernst , at the police prison on Alexanderplatz on the basis of a handover order signed by the Gestapo transferred to another prison. In the vicinity of Potsdamer Platz, several other vehicles bumped into the prisoner transporter. The column of vehicles drove towards Frankfurt on the Oder. The column stopped about 12 km from Frankfurt: Höhler was made to leave the transport and led away from the road to a nearby wooded area by a group of at least eight people. There, the group leader Ernst gave a short speech in which he sentenced Höhler to death as the murderer of von Wessel. Höhler was then shot by several of those present near the Chaussee Berlin-Frankfurt. The body was makeshift buried on the spot. The official report on the incident untruthfully alleged that the transport was intercepted on the street by a group of seven to eight SA men and that the officers were forced to surrender Höhler under threat of violence, who was then abducted to an unknown destination.

According to investigations by the Berlin public prosecutor's office in the 1960s, the group that shot Höhler also included Schmidt and Ernst, his adjutant Walter von Mohrenschildt , SA standard leader Richard Fiedler , Sturmbannführer Willi Markus , group leader August Wilhelm von Prussia , the Gestapo Chief Rudolf Diels (who veiled the facts in his memoir), the detectives Maikowski and Walter Pohlenz and possibly the legal advisor of the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg, Gerd Voss . According to the public prosecutor's office, the fatal shots were probably fired by Ernst and Mohrenschildt. In discussions about the crime, Ernst is said to have referred to an order from Ernst Röhm , who in turn received instructions from Adolf Hitler that the Wessel murderer was to be shot dead.

The investigation of 1933 was quickly abandoned in response to political pressure. Even the official report by the police to the public prosecutor, in which Diels had falsely spread that Höhler had been kidnapped from police custody, the perpetrators were credited with the fact that “the act had been committed for special reasons with regard to Höhler's person”. After the investigation was resumed in the 1960s, the interrogation of Schmidt and Ernst's chauffeur revealed the true course of events. The investigations against the then still living perpetrators Schmidt, Pohlenz, Markus and Fiedler were finally stopped in 1969 because they could only be proven as complicity in murder , which at that time was already statute-barred .

marriage and family

In April 1930, Höhler married Margarete Nickel, known as Grete, who had previously worked as a prostitute for him. Two prison officers acted as witnesses.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Karny: Horst Wessel - killed out of jealousy . In: Wiener Zeitung , January 9, 2010, reprinted in the Austria Forum . Accessed October 20, 2019.
  2. ↑ Heinz Knobloch: The poor Epstein , p. 24.
  3. ^ Daniel Siemens: Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist . Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 , p. 122 f.
  4. ^ Daniel Siemens: Höhler, Albrecht et al. , 2016, online .
  5. ↑ Heinz Knobloch: The poor Epstein , p. 15.
  6. ↑ Andreas Mix: He loved a prostitute . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 9, 2007
  7. ↑ The Nazi Prince . someday
  8. ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin: Name register for the marriage register of the registry office XIIa for the year 1930: marriage register No. 208 (p. 17 and 32 of the digitized material) .
personal data
SURNAME Höhler, Albrecht
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German assassin
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH September 20, 1933
Place of death near Frankfurt on the Oder