Alfons Pannek

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Alfons Pannek (born March 30, 1907 in Hamburg , † February 20, 1995 in Lübeck ) was a German communist and interbrigadist who, after his arrest in 1939 and severe abuse by Gestapo employees, agreed to collaborate with the Secret State Police. During World War II he delivered in his role as an undercover agent and agent provocateur of the many members of the resistance from the Gestapo. In the Hamburg Gestapo trial in 1949 he was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment, but was released from prison in 1951.

Life

Political activity until 1939

Pannek, who by his own account originally wanted to be a missionary , was a bricklayer by profession. At the age of 17 he joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany in 1924 . In 1930 he became a member of the KPD and was a party functionary before 1933 . After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he was imprisoned, but was able to emigrate to Czechoslovakia in 1933 . In 1937 he fought with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Spanish Republic against the Falangist militias under General Francisco Franco . After the international brigades were disbanded, he returned to Prague in the summer of 1938 , where he continued his political activities among the emigrants. After the occupation and occupation of the Czech Republic by the National Socialist German Reich , he was arrested in Prague in March 1939 and transferred to the Hamburg Gestapo.

Collaboration with the Gestapo

Memorial plaque on the old gatehouse of the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp and Gestapo prison

Start of work for the Gestapo

After Pannek had been badly mistreated and tortured during his interrogation in the Hamburg town hall and his imprisonment in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, Detective Inspector Fritz Knuth from Gestapo Department II A, Department "Communism and Marxism", succeeded in turning Pannek around, getting him to collaborate and acting as an undercover agent with the registration number 120/40 G 2459.

In her description from 1971, Gertrud Meyer assumed that by manipulating the skin incisions on the wrists of Nazi opponents from the resistance he wanted to give the resistance the impression that he had attempted suicide as a "tortured anti-fascist" while in Gestapo detention . More recent studies such as by Jörg Friedrich (2007), or Franziska Bruder and Heike Kleffner in the biography of Barbara Reimann (2000), on the other hand, come to the conclusion that Pannek had actually attempted suicide and then spent several months in the Langenhorn hospital and to this Point in time when the Gestapo spy was recruited.

For tactical reasons, Pannek was transferred from the Fuhlsbüttel police prison to the remand prison. During his pre-trial detention, he was placed among members of the KPD's North Section who had been caught in Denmark . In doing so, he learned from them the whereabouts of Karl Nieter and other communists and delivered this information to the Gestapo. In July 1941 he was sentenced to six years in prison by the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court for further camouflage . He began this detention in the Oslebshausen prison near Bremen , but the criminal inspector and SS-Obersturmführer Fritz Knuth from the Hamburg Gestapo control center obtained an early release on the grounds that Pannek's involvement in the Spanish Civil War had been given amnesty . He issued Pannek a certificate for this. Subsequently, Pannek received the V number 193/44 G - 24/150, and he acted under various code names such as Willi Hagemann and Hans Müller as V-man of the Gestapo. He also used the names of well-known anti-fascists .

Facade of the town house that housed the Gestapo headquarters until the bombing in April 1943, as seen in 2011
Memorial plaque for the Gestapo victims in the entrance of the Stadthausbrücke 8 building

To camouflage himself, the Gestapo set up an “anti-fascist” lending library for Pannek , which was stocked with literature confiscated from Nazi opponents who had been arrested. Another means of addressing and spying on people in a targeted manner was the distribution of a reading folder that SS-Sturmführer and Criminal Secretary Henry Helms obtained with the help of Josef Kreuzer , head of the Hamburg State Police , Pannek's brother Georg. This was achieved through a targeted criminal complaint against the previous operator and his wife. The couple were acquitted, but Pannek's brother Georg was appointed in trust as the operator. Alfons Pannek, who had already helped with the delivery of reading folders, was able to use it, just like his brother, to seek out Nazi opponents. According to Knuth's plan, she should initially only spy on Pannek, report on planned actions and name other people.

Pannek's network of spies was soon structured like a "family business", in which not only his brother, but also his sister Lucie Rehbein, his underage niece, his divorced wife and her acquaintance Helene Müller, alias Lisa Franck, were involved as secretary and typist .

Since Pannek spoke the Czech language, Gestapo commissioner Fritz Knuth had him issued a Czech ID towards the end of 1942, with the help of which Pannek could join the Czech club Svornost under an alias . With the help of other informants, he was elected librarian so that he could attend board meetings. In the summer of 1944 the association, which had set itself the task of helping Czech compatriots and those who were forcibly displaced, was dissolved by the Gestapo. Two members of Svornost , who also belonged to the resistance group Kampf dem Faschismus (KdF) , were arrested at Pannek's instigation in September 1944, put on the liquidation list and murdered in April 1945 during the final phase crimes in Neuengamme concentration camp .

Denunciation of members of the Bästlein-Jakob-Abshagen group who went into hiding

Pannek, who had initially worked as a spy for the criminal inspector Fritz Knuth, was placed under the command of the Gestapo secretary Henry Helms after his death in the bombing of the town hall on the night of April 23rd to 24th, 1943, as his employee, informant and "right" Hand “he acted. Pannek was instrumental in the recapture of members of the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen group in hiding who had been given custody leave after the bombing of Operation Gomorrah . This is also evident from a statement made by Gestapo employee Hildegard Lembke, who worked as a clerk in Department IV 1 A:

“In 1941 I saw the then prisoner Alfons Pannek for the first time, who… was sitting in Fuhlsbüttel and was used there as an informant. He was released in the first half of the year [1941] and used as a spy for Inspector Knuth ... [1943] Pannek was taken over by Helms, who took over the Bästlein affair. The whole department was suddenly deployed under helms. The group of those arrested comprised about 85 people. "

When some members of the Bästlein group who had gone into hiding were arrested at the end of 1943, the Gestapo attempted to obtain confessions using " intensified interrogations " and brutal torture methods. Under false pretenses, the tortured were then confronted with a “concerned comrade” in handcuffs. He was supposed to get the prisoners to make further confessions by persuading them that the Gestapo knew everything anyway and that they were only harming themselves. Pannek often took on the role of concerned fellow inmate.

After also Magda Thürey that the bästlein-jacob-abshagen group belonged and in -Eimsbüttel Hamburg soap business Raccoon operation, the end of October had been arrested in 1943, was found for the Gestapo another way, opponents of the system using agents provocateurs among Panneks involvement track. Helms forced Magda Thürey to sign that the business, which had previously been a meeting point for resistance, should be continued by Anneliese Pölze during her “stay in the sanatorium”. Anneliese Pölze, an informant of the Gestapo, looked through the customer files for rationed soap products with the help of Pannek, learned many names of anti-fascists and, with Pannek's support, arranged meetings that took place in the soap shop. Gestapo secretary Helms sometimes listened behind a curtain and was able to track down other members of the Bästlein group who had gone into hiding. Pannek, who had pretended to be an “active illegal”, betrayed Gustav Bruhn , who had gone into hiding in mid-December 1943 and wanted to move to Hanover. Pannek made his inconspicuous arrest by accompanying him to the train station. On January 4, 1944, he extradited Hans Hornberger and Walter Bohne , with whom Hornberger had arranged to meet the following day.

Intrusion into other resistance groups

Still under the criminal inspector Fritz Knuth, Pannek succeeded in 1942/43 in penetrating other Hamburg resistance groups, including the Etter-Rose-Hampel group , a group of young people that Knuth cynically called the "group of those with no criminal record" after being denounced by Pannek “Designated. When Max Kristeller , a member of the group, was arrested, even Pannek, whom no one had taken for a spy, was warned about the Gestapo. Twelve members of the group were tried and executed by the People's Court or, like Erika Etter, who feared the exposure of a Gestapo undercover agent, were murdered in the final phase of crimes in Neuengamme concentration camp .

By September 1944 at the latest, Pannek had been assigned to members of the resistance group Kampf dem Faschismus (KdF) , which he infiltrated and persecuted until April 1945. The members of the KdF group also included Rudolf Ladewig and his friend Elisabeth Rosenkranz, who had got to know Pannek as the operator of the “anti-fascist” lending library mentioned and considered them trustworthy. After she had given him a manuscript critical of the system to read, Elisabeth Rosenkranz, Rudolf Ladewig, his son and daughter were arrested on March 22, 1945 at Pannek's instigation and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. During the final phase crimes in Neuengamme concentration camp, they were murdered with four other members of the KdF group and another 63 people from the Hamburg resistance between April 21 and 23, 1945.

A total of 23 people from the Hamburg resistance are known by name who were betrayed by Pannek to the Gestapo, of which 15 did not survive. According to Herbert Diercks' estimate, Pannek contributed to several hundred arrests.

End of war and sentencing in 1949

When the last Gestapo members and the informers left the headquarters at Sievekingplatz on April 18, 1945, Kriminalrat Hinze ordered them to join the werewolf organizations . He advised Pannek to put himself at the disposal of the English secret service after the surrender because of his knowledge.

After the end of the war, Pannek tried to escape to South America, but was caught twice, the first time on June 1, 1945 together with his wife and sister on the French-Spanish border, whereupon he was imprisoned until January 18, 1946. In 1946 he tried to flee again, but was arrested on July 25, 1946 at the Franco-Italian border.

In the trial before the Hamburg Regional Court from May to June 1949 against twelve officials and employees of the Hamburg Gestapo control center, including Henry Helms, Pannek had to answer for crimes against humanity under KRG 10 . Pannek relied on the fact that "he met the requirements of a supra-legal state of emergency or the state of coercion ." However, this claim was rejected on the grounds that "the whole way of carrying out the task assigned to him and de (m) by the accused Apparatus created for this purpose ”,“ so much intellectual structure and interested cooperation ”showed“ that they make it seem impossible that Alfons Pannek was under the pressure of a predicament ”.

In the grounds of the judgment, Pannek was described as a man of "considerable lack of character". His actions had "extremely serious consequences for the injured. A total of 23 people were detained for long periods and subjected to cruel acts of persecution ”. Pannek is in need of support, soft and reacts emotionally, but "surpasses the average mentally and intellectually". Because of his above-average intelligence, he had no problems “to see what was inadmissible in the act or to act on this insight”. His behavior was "an expression of his moral inferiority". His mistreatment by the Gestapo was not a mitigating circumstance either, since it was in connection with "his work as a communist functionary at home and abroad" and he knew "what consequences this struggle could have for him".

Revision and reversal of the judgment

At the judgment in the Hamburg Gestapo trial on June 2, 1949, Pannek received the highest imprisonment sentence of twelve years in prison, his superior Helms nine years, his brother Georg one year. Pannek put as Helms against the judgment revision one. While an appeal in the Helms case was rejected, the Supreme Court of the British Zone overturned the first instance judgment against Pannek on September 5, 1950 and referred the case back to the Hamburg jury court . Before the new main hearing, the applicability of Control Council Act No. 10 , which was the legal basis for convictions for war crimes , crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, was repealed in the Federal Republic with effect from September 1, 1951 . Pannek, who was found guilty under KRG 10, could no longer be convicted under this law. The Large Criminal Chamber 5 of the Hamburg Regional Court therefore decided on October 30, 1951 to discontinue the proceedings because of an obstacle to the procedure under Section 206a .

In conclusion, the Hamburg Regional Court came to the conclusion that Pannek “did not violate German criminal laws, but only reported criminal acts and helped to recapture escaped prisoners”. The immediate appeal by the public prosecutor's office was rejected by the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court.

Pannek was released early from prison because of this decision. Nothing emerges from the literature about Pannek's later life.

Pannek's superior Helms, who was prematurely released from prison on November 11, 1953, retired from civil servant status with a high severance payment and later ran a flower wholesaler and gardener in his birthplace, Halstenbek .

Literary reception

  • In Bodo Uhse's novel Die Patrioten , which also deals with the Hamburg resistance in 1943/44, the spy "Ali" Pannek is copied.
  • Willi Bredel describes Unter Türmen und Masten in his collection of short stories published in 1960 . History of Hamburg in stories the informer Pannek and his brother in the chapter The messenger from the reading circle .

literature

  • Franziska Bruder, Heike Kleffner (ed.): The memory must not die. Barbara Reimann - A biography from eight decades in Germany . Unrast Verlag , Münster 2000, ISBN 3-89771-802-2
  • Herbert Diercks : Documentation town house. The Hamburg Police under National Socialism , Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial , Hamburg 2012, p. 47
  • Jörg Friedrich : The cold amnesty. Nazi perpetrators in the Federal Republic . Extended new edition, List Taschenbuch, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-548-60748-1 , pp. 160–162
  • Ursel Hochmuth: Nobody and nothing is forgotten. Biograms and letters from Hamburg resistance fighters 1933–1945. A grove of honor documentation in text and images . Published by VVN-BdA, VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-89965-121-9
  • Ursel Hochmuth and Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance 1933-1945. Library of Resistance, Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1969
  • Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg. Reports and documents 1933-1945. Library of Resistance, Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1971
  • Ursula Puls : The Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe: Report on the anti-fascist resistance struggle in Hamburg and on the waterfront during the Second World War , Dietz Berlin 1959
  • Ulrike Sparr (Ed.): Stumbling blocks in Hamburg-Winterhude. Biographical search for traces. State Center for Civic Education Hamburg , 2008, ISBN 978-3-929728-16-3 . In it: Contribution by Maike Bruchmann to Annemarie and Rudolf Karl Ladewig, pp. 133–138
  • Willi Bredel, Wolfgang Gehrcke (epilogue): Under towers and masts. History of Hamburg in stories . New edition by Weltkreis-Verlag, Cologne, 1987. ISBN 978-3-88142-254-3 , pp. 398-401

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruder, Kleffner : Memory may not die , 2000, p. 57 with reference to the trial files
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Herbert Diercks: Documentation town house. The Hamburg Police under National Socialism , Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 2012, p. 47
  3. ↑ Brother and Kleffner: Memory must not die , 2000, pp. 56–57.
  4. ↑ Jörg Friedrich: Die kalte Amnestie , Berlin 2007, pp. 161 and 162
  5. ↑ a b Bruder, Kleffner: Memory may not die , 2000, p. 57
  6. ↑ Friedrich: Die kalte Amnestie , 2007, p. 161
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Ursel Hochmuth: Nobody and nothing is forgotten , 2005, p. 44
  8. ↑ a b c d e Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg , 1971, p. 84
  9. ↑ Jörg Friedrich: Die kalte Amnestie , Berlin 2007, pp. 161–162
  10. ↑ Franziska Bruder, Heike Kleffner (ed.): Memory may not die , 2000, p. 57
  11. ↑ a b Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg , 1971, p. 85
  12. ↑ Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg , 1971, p. 85 with reference to the AIN archive (Amicale Internationale de KZ Neuengamme)
  13. ↑ Brother, Kleffner (ed.): Memory may not die , 2000, pp. 70–71
  14. ↑ a b Hochmuth, Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg Resistance 1933-1945 , Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 453
  15. ↑ Brother, Kleffner (ed.): Memory may not die , 2000, pp. 73–74
  16. ^ Herbert Diercks: memorial book Kola-Fu. For the victims from the concentration camp, Gestapo prison and Fuhlsbüttel subcamp. Hamburg 1987, pp. 53-54
  17. ↑ Quotation from the indictment on 14 Js 259/47 with Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg , 1971, p. 88
  18. ^ Gertrud Meyer: Nacht über Hamburg , 1971, p. 90, as well as p. 334, photo of the confession of the Gestapo secretary Käte Dohrn from March 8, 1947, in which she spoke about the interrogation of Kurt Schill , Hans Hornberger and the Bruhn couple reported on February 13, 1944
  19. ^ A b Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg , 1971, p. 91
  20. ^ Hochmuth, Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg Resistance , 1980, pp. 374–375, there date December 16, 1943
  21. ↑ Ursel Hochmuth: Nobody and nothing is forgotten , Hamburg 2005, p. 47, there date December 13, 1943
  22. ^ Hochmuth, Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg Resistance , 1980, p. 430
  23. ^ Herbert Diercks: memorial book Kola-Fu. For the victims from the concentration camp, Gestapo prison and Fuhlsbüttel subcamp. Hamburg 1987, p. 55, Herbert Diercks: Documentation Stadthaus. The Hamburg Police in National Socialism, Hamburg 2012, p. 48 and Hochmuth, Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance , 1980, p. 439–440
  24. ^ Hochmuth, Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg Resistance , 1980, p. 460
  25. ^ Hochmuth, Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg Resistance , 1980, p. 463, with reference to the indictment against members of the Gestapo department IV 1a, 14 Js 259/47
  26. ↑ Ulrike Sparr (Ed.): Stolpersteine ​​in Hamburg-Winterhude , Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-929728-16-3 , p. 137
  27. ^ Herbert Diercks: Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu , Hamburg 1987, pp. 53-55
  28. ^ Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg , 1971, pp. 101-102
  29. ↑ a b c Quotes from the grounds for the judgment in Friedrich: Die kalte Amnestie , 2007, p. 162
  30. ↑ a b Quotations from the grounds for the judgment in Friedrich: Die kalte Amnestie , 2007, p. 161
  31. ↑ Date according to Gertrud Meyer: Nacht über Hamburg , 1971, pp. 116 and 131
  32. ^ Friedrich: The cold amnesty , 2007, p. 162
  33. ↑ Brother, Kleffner: Memory may not die , 2000, p. 179
  34. ↑ Brother, Kleffner (ed.): The memory must not die. Barbara Reimann - A biography from eight decades in Germany , Münster 2000, p. 223.
  35. ↑ a b Bruder, Kleffner (ed.): Memory may not die , 2000, pp. 223–224
  36. ^ Quote from Herbert Diercks: Documentation City House. The Hamburg Police under National Socialism , Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 2012, p. 47
  37. ↑ Brother, Kleffner (ed.): Memory may not die , 2000, pp. 183-184
  38. ↑ Gertrud Meyer: Nacht über Hamburg , 1971, p. 118, as well as Bruder, Kleffner (ed.): Memory may not die , 2000, p. 183
  39. ↑ Hochmuth, Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg Resistance 1933-1945 , 1969, p. 382
personal data
SURNAME Pannek, Alfons
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist, interbrigadist and later Gestapo spy
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 1995
Place of death Lübeck