Alfred Leikam

Alfred Leikam (born September 1, 1915 in Korb (Württemberg) ; † February 8, 1992 in Schwäbisch Hall ) was a notary , mayor , politician and a German Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Alfred Leikam attended secondary school in Waiblingen , which he graduated in 1932, and then began training as a Württemberg district notary . Three weeks after his birth, his father died in Flanders in the First World War . In his childhood, Leikam fell ill with rickets and was slightly disabled as a result. In 1930, at the age of 15, he became head of the YMCA in Korb. Through his new pastor Helmut Goes (since 1934) he got to know the writings of Karl Barth , who insisted that the church should be independent from society. This made Leikam an opponent of National Socialism . He joined the Confessing Church , an opposition movement of Protestant Christians against being brought into line with National Socialism. He attended their rallies and distributed leaflets.

Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 initially did not have any serious cuts in his life until he clashed with the Korber Hitler Youth (HJ) in 1934 because he did not play along with the HJ at a celebration in a symbolic act of the union of the Christian Association of Young People (YMCA). After a brief interlude in the Hitler Youth, he was officially excluded in 1936 because he did not want to sing along with a passage in one of their songs. Shortly after his mother died in 1937, he had a violent verbal argument with the mayor at the Korber town hall that was to change his life. He was sentenced in 1938 and transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp until he was released in 1943 with the support of Fritz Grünzweig . His stepfather had meanwhile sold all his belongings. When Leikam came home, he said, disappointed with the behavior of the basket:

“I noticed they all felt guilty. But outwardly no one has acknowledged me, just a few old friends. Most of the baskets were basically still on the opposite side. They did not show that they had any doubts about this regime: it only came at the end of the war. "

In the same month he moved to Waiblingen , where he found a job as a commercial clerk. After the war he held many offices (see below).

The incident in the Korber gym

After the forced church elections in June 1933, which led to a split in the Evangelical Church, the Evangelical Youth was officially incorporated into the Hitler Youth in 1934 . This decision was solemnly carried out in the Korber gym. On one side stood the green-clad CVJMers and on the other the brown boys of the Hitler Youth.

“There was a rally in Korb, in the gym (...). And in a quasi symbolic act, the YMCA members were supposed to join the group of the Hitler Youth. But two members, a farmhand and I, left and stopped. "

This “small” incident moved a great many young people for a long time afterwards.

The short time in the Hitler Youth

With the justification of the Pauline commandment of obedience to the authorities ( Rom 13  EU ), since the Hitler Youth was a kind of state youth, Alfred Leikam joined the Hitler Youth shortly after the incident in the Korber gym . Due to his non-conforming behavior , however, he was quickly excluded again. At the celebrations on the occasion of the integration of the Saarland into the German Reich in 1935, the Hitler Youth belted out the song Vorwärts, vorwärts . Alfred Leikam refused to join in on one part of the song (see below), and there was a violent argument with the Korber Hitler Youth leaders. His reasoning was as follows:

“This content is strictly against the Christian faith. Such a flag has nothing to do with God and death and eternity, that is pagan idolatry. "

Thereupon the Rottenführer of the Followers 12/180 informed him in writing on January 2, 1936:

“I passed on the arguments that I and my comrade (..) had with you to my superiors. From there your immediate expulsion from the Hitler Youth was ordered. "

Under threat of a minimum sentence of 6 months in prison, Leikam had to return all HJ articles by January 31, 1936, was never allowed to call himself a Hitler Youth and was supposed to change the color of his brown clothing. On January 7, 1936, he requested a copy of the exclusion order and a written certificate in the pre-formulated words from the subordinate leader of the HJ II / 180 in Fellbach :

“Alfred Leikam, Korb, b. September 1st, 1915 was excluded from the Hitler Youth with effect from January 1st, 1936 because he refused to sing about the song: 'Forward, forward ...', citing the Christian faith: 'Our flag leads us into eternity, our flag is more than death '. "

He enclosed a free envelope, but the application was denied.

The quarrel in the town hall

The town hall in Korb

On November 10, 1937, Leikam came to the town hall in Korb on a business matter, but then got into a passionate, two-hour discussion with the mayor. a. Sentences fell like:

“For him, a fatherland comes long after the Church, the state is only there for him to protect him from attacks. He only recognized the state, but never the party. The party is cowardly and insidious, it does not lead the fight against the church under the guise of the state. Etc."

When the official came into the room to put a swastika flag in the room for a wedding ceremony , Leikam said:

“As long as this flag was with him, he would not be married and he would not allow his children to join the Hitler Youth. He will also never let his children attend religious classes in school. "

The mayor's hint that he had taken the oath of service as a notary trainee was acknowledged with the words:

“It doesn't matter to him, he's been waiting a long time to be fetched. When he took his oath of service, he did not know how the party would one day deal with the church question. Today he would refuse to take such an oath. "

As a result, Leikam was arrested, charged, and sentenced.

Conviction before the Stuttgart special court

Two months after the dispute in the town hall , Leikam was arrested by the Gestapo during a course lecture and his civil service was terminated on the same day. He was charged with “non-conformist behavior” and “distributing opposition leaflets and circulars”. On July 1, 1938, the trial took place in front of the Stuttgart special court in the Korber town hall. The indictment stated u. a .:

"He stated that he had just taken the point of view that the state, as the order of God, was subject to the rule of Christ and that the state wielded its sword only as an agent of Christ."

Alfred Leikam was sentenced to ten months probation and was henceforth a “ protective prisoner ” who could be imprisoned for an indefinite period at any time without any legal basis. During the trial, some friends of the Confessing Church in the neighboring rectory are said to have sung so loud that they could be heard in the town hall. Leikam was initially held in the Welzheim police prison until a month or two later it could be checked whether he could be released. Leikam remained true to his faith and confessed in writing:

"I will observe the laws of the state, insofar as they do not contradict the Christian faith as it can be seen in the Creed and in the Ten Commandments ."

In November 1938 he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The imprisonment in the concentration camp

Prisoners in Buchenwald concentration camp

The Confessing Church wisely included the courageous young Christian in its list of intercessions just four days after the sham trial until 1943 . B. Pastor Martin Niemöller , who was also held in a concentration camp.

In 1938 Leikam was sent to the Welzheim protective custody camp in Württemberg for six months , until he was convicted again for his Christian and humanitarian sentiments and transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp . Once there, he was assigned to one of the toughest work details. Due to his friendship with some political prisoners who worked in the internal administration of the camp, however, in late summer 1939 he came to work as a prisoner clerk in the office of the infirmary, the "secret" headquarters of the Buchenwald resistance against the SS . The SS had forbidden the use of medical specialists among the prisoners, apart from the SS "doctors", who experimented with human life rather than curing it, only lay people worked as carers. At the beginning of 1942, Leikam came to a newly built human test station for typhus vaccinations, in which around 158 prisoners were killed by artificially produced typhus or lethal injection. During this excruciating and painful time for him, Leikam saved the life of at least one Jewish prisoner by having him moved. In 1943 he was transferred again as soon as possible under threat of death from an SS “doctor”.

On November 9, 1943, Leikam was released from custody, presumably due to an intervention by Regional Bishop Theophil Wurm .

Life in the post-war period

After the end of the Second World War, he became mayor of Korb in 1945 and chairman of a chamber for denazification . From 1948 he worked as a notary administrator in Esslingen , later as a notary in Waiblingen and Schwäbisch Hall . From 1952 to 1957 Leikam was a member of the leadership of the All-German People's Party (GVP), which campaigned for a neutral all of Germany and united numerous prominent Protestant Christians. After its dissolution, he joined the SPD , became district chairman of the Schwäbisch Hall SPD and a member of the district council . He was also a member of the district synod in the regional church of Württemberg and deputy regional chairman of the Protestant men's organization.

Honoring the Righteous Among the Nations

On May 2, 2003, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Center Yad Vashem posthumously awarded Alfred Leikam the title Righteous Among the Nations . The celebrations took place for the first time in the ambassador's residence park. Yoel Lion, Head of Public Relations, presented the medal to ten family members of the honoree. The other guests of honor included Feliks Grzeskowiak , who came with his family especially from Poland, and his friend Fritz Laukenmann . Fritz Laukenmann submitted the application with the testimony of two witnesses, the politically persecuted and concentration camp survivor Feliks Grzeskowiak and the widow of the Dutch Jew and Buchenwald prisoner Max Nebig, who died in 1968 .

The Dutchman was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in February 1941 and was to be transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp . At that time, Alfred Leikam was working in the infirmary and diagnosed Max Nebig with tuberculosis . He ordered a transfer to the isolation ward, which protected the Jews from being transferred to Mauthausen.

In an additional report written by Leikam to Eugen Kogon's book The SS State , it says: “When it became clear that this deportation could no longer be prevented, the prisoner administration decided to let the prisoner 'die' according to the district files means that Nebig got the prisoner number of a prisoner who actually died and that the camp survived with his name. "

Honors

In 1979 Alfred Leikam was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon and in 2003 as Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel . In Schwäbisch Hall, Alfred-Leikam-Strasse and the Alfred-Leikam block-type thermal power station were named after him.

The Alfred Leikam Garden was inaugurated in Korb in October 2016.

literature

• Matthias Köhnlein: Alfred Leikam. Resistance for the sake of faith. (PDF; 2.6 MB) In: Draft. 4/2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bettina Wenke: Interviews with survivors. Persecution and Resistance in Southwest Germany . Stuttgart 1980, p. 123ff.
2. ↑ Newsletter of the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, May 2, 2003 ( Memento of September 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Matthias Köhnlein: The life path of Alfred Leikam in the Nazi era . First state examination for teaching at secondary schools. Scientific homework. PH Freiburg. 2003.