Alfred Kaufmann

Alfred Kaufmann (born December 20, 1868 in Kälbertshausen , † January 14, 1946 in Heilbronn ) was a German Protestant pastor and orientalist as well as a leading figure in the Kaufmann-Will circle , a group with resistance to National Socialism in Giessen .

Life

Alfred Kaufmann worked as a pastor, teacher and school principal of the German School in Alexandria , where he taught Rudolf Hess from 1896 . From 1933 he used it to advertise his lectures in many parts of Germany; from 1930 to 1938 he corresponded with his former student Hess. Kaufmann was a member of the student associations Argentina Strasbourg, Hallenser Wingolf , Giessen Wingolf and Wingolf zu Vienna.

The merchant, who has lived in Gießen since 1929, and a supporter of the German National People's Party , came under increasing scrutiny by the Nazi rulers from 1937 due to his lecture tours. Finally, the clubs that invited Kaufmann to give lectures were put under surveillance and in 1938 he was forbidden to travel to the Orientalist Congress in Brussels. Through contacts in European and Arab countries, Kaufmann heard so-called " enemy broadcasters " for independent information even before the war began . Together with other people affected by repression, including the painter Heinrich Will and the pastor Ernst Steiner , he met for informal discussions in his apartment in Giessen. This group, known today as the Kaufmann-Will-Kreis, was closely related to the Giessen Wingolf , a Christian student union to which Kaufmann and Steiner also belonged. The wife of the Federal archivist of Wingolf, Dagmar Imgart , was a staunch supporter of the Nazi regime and forced herself to act as an agent provocateur , which led to the arrest of his participants on February 6 and 7, 1942. After a show trial on 20./21. In July 1942 Alfred Kaufmann was sentenced to death together with Heinrich Will by the 2nd Senate of the People's Court , chaired by Robert Hartmann . The penalty was eventually to lifelong prison converted and he was in the penitentiary Butzbach transferred from which he was released on April 1, 1945 US troops. He died a broken man in 1946 at the age of 77 as a result of imprisonment.

literature

• Kurt Heyne: Resistance in Gießen and the surrounding area 1933-45 , messages from the Upper Hessian History Association Gießen, New Series 71 (1986), Gießen 1986 (on the Kaufmann-Will-Kreis p. 216 ff)
• Jörg-Peter Jatho: The Gießener Friday wreath, documents on the failure of a historical legend - at the same time an example for the disposal of National Socialism , Fulda 1995 ISBN 3-9801740-6-9
• ders .: "Titan" and subject. Notes on Dr. Alfred Kaufmann and Heinrich Will. A reply to "Heinrich Brinkmann: The Heinrich Will case or dealing with sources." 13 editions. Giessen, 1997-1999.
• Christian G. Schüttler: Festschrift for the 50th re-establishment of the Gießen Wingolf , Gießen 1998
• Jörg Friedrich : The fire - Germany in the bombing war 1940-1945 , Munich 2002 (to Kaufmann p. 452 f) ISBN 3-548-60432-3 .
• Hedwig Brüchert-Schunk: Examples of bourgeois resistance in Hesse: The Heinrich Roos Circle of Friends in Wiesbaden and the Kaufmann-Will Circle in Giessen . In: Renate Knigge-Tesche Axel Ulrich (Hrsg.): Persecution and resistance in Hesse 1933-1945 . Frankfurt / M. 1996 ISBN 978-3821817354 , pp. 508-524.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jörg-Peter Jatho: The Giessener Goethe-Bund: an inventory of the public literature business in the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. Research group for traces, 2004, p. 234.