Altona Blood Sunday

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Memorial plaque to the “Altona Confession” and the events of Bloody Sunday
Memorial plaque at the district court of Altona for the executed
VVN “guerrilla memorial” , seen in the summer of 2012 on the Große Bergstrasse

As Altona Bloody Sunday July 17, 1932 is referred to, where it at a yard march of SA by the time the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein belonging city Altona (1937 by -law Greater Hamburg to Hamburg incorporated) were violent clashes in 18 people were shot dead. This incident was used by the Reich government under Franz von Papen and by Reich President Hindenburg as a pretext to depose the incumbent Prussian government in the " Prussian strike " on July 20, 1932 by means of an emergency decree .

leader

On June 16, 1932, the Papen government lifted the SS and SA ban issued by Heinrich Brüning in April 1932 in order to show its appreciation to the National Socialists for the tolerance of their minority cabinet. Considerable arguments were therefore to be expected in the election campaign for the Reichstag elections on July 31 in Germany. Within a month there were 99 dead and 1,125 injured in Germany in clashes, mainly between National Socialists and Communists . There had also been clashes in Schleswig-Holstein , to which Altona belonged. In the first days of July, for example, two Social Democrats and two Communists were killed by the National Socialists. On July 17th, Altona Police President Otto Eggerstedt (SPD) allowed a large march of 7,000 uniformed SA people gathered from all over Schleswig-Holstein through the winding old town of Altona. was valid and was known under the local name "Little Moscow". The communists viewed this march through the workers' residential areas as a provocation. Despite this threatening situation, Eggerstedt and his deputy were not in Altona on the day of the demonstration. Your superior, the Schleswig District President, was also not represented by a senior police officer on site.

procedure

The site of the occurrence, today overbuilt, for orientation is the Great Freedom and the Jewish Cemetery or the main church of St. Trinity .

On July 17, 1932, the participants gathered from 12.30 p.m. in the area between the Altona train station and the Altona town hall . At around 3 p.m., the march with 7000 participants started moving towards Ottensen and Bahrenfeld. At around 4.30 p.m. the parade reached the old town of Altona, crossed Große Bergstraße and turned on Große Johannisstraße in the direction of Schauenburgerstraße (today Schomburgstraße ) into the densely built-up workers' quarter .

At the intersection at which from the east the Große Marienstraße and from the west the Schauenburgerstraße joined the Große Johannisstraße - at about 53 ° 33 '  N , 9 ° 57'  E Coordinates: 53 ° 33 '  N , 9 ° 57'  E , today Walter-Möller-Park - shortly before 5 p.m. there was a clash between a crowd of people standing at the roadside and SA men from the 1st and 2nd Altona storm . The SA men made a sortie on Große Johannisstrasse in the direction of Münzmarkt and beat up opponents who had previously thrown objects on the train.

The police forces deployed did not succeed in separating the camps even after being reinforced by police officers from nearby Hamburg. The highest-ranking police officers, including the civilian Altona police president and SPD member of the Schleswig-Holstein provincial parliament , Otto Eggerstedt, were also absent. Otto Eggerstedt had taken leave for that day.

When the marchers returned and wanted to line up, shots were fired, which fatally hit the two SA men Heinrich Koch and Peter Büddig. According to their statements, the police leadership assumed that they and the marching column would be deliberately taken under fire from roofs and windows. Thereupon she urged the SA march towards the train station and requested reinforcements from the Hamburg police. This arrived between 5.30 p.m. and 6 p.m. in the area Kleine Freiheit, Große Bergstraße and Schauenburger Straße. According to her own statements, she drove people off the street, called for the windows to be closed and shot alleged attackers and "roof gunners". SA and SS men were no longer in the area at this point. From 5.40 p.m., the Altona police carried out house searches in the vicinity of Johannisstrasse / Schauenburger Strasse and arrested around 90 people. At 6.45 p.m. there were further shootings, at around 7 p.m., according to the police report, "the calm was restored". During these events 16 people from the resident population were killed by police bullets.

consequences

Initially, shots were probably fired by both the SA and the Communists. Historians predominantly assumed that the fatal shots at the two SA men were fired by communists. According to later investigations, the deaths of the other 16 people were caused by bullets from police rifles . Thanks to the Resistance fighter Léon Schirmann , who re-evaluated the files of the Altona Blood Sunday in 1992, we now know that the deadly bullets came from police pistols. There was never any evidence that local residents protested shot.

The events in Altona were used three days later, on July 20, 1932, by Chancellor Papen as a pretext for the “ Prussian strike ”, in which the resigned but still executive Prussian minority government was ousted and the democratic constitution of the Free State of Prussia was suspended.

The Protestant pastors of Altona (which at that time belonged to the Schleswig-Holstein regional church) reacted to Bloody Sunday with a word and a confession of Altona pastors in the need and confusion of public life . This declaration, conceived primarily by Hans Christian Asmussen , was read out from the pulpit on January 11, 1933 and published. The Altona Confession is an important harbinger of the later and more famous Barmen Theological Declaration .

Stele at the place of execution in the courtyard of the Altona District Court (2018)
Memorial plaque for August Lütgens, Walter Möller, Karl Wolff and Bruno Tesch at the place of their execution behind the district court of Altona

The investigations after the events were carried out by the police and judiciary solely against suspected communists and produced few results. After the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the conformist Justice opened the so-called Bloody Sunday processes . The rule of law was abolished; the negotiations were conducted on the basis of the unilateral investigation and with partly falsified evidence, expert reports and witness statements.

In the first trial from May 8, 1933 to June 2, 1933, four of the defendants, Bruno Tesch , Walter Möller , Karl Wolff and August Lütgens , who were counted among the Communists, were sentenced to death by the special court established by National Socialist judicial politicians at the Altona district court . The chairman of the special court in this process was Johannes Block . The judgment was carried out on August 1, 1933 in the courtyard of the court, today's Altona District Court , with the hand ax. These were the first "politically wanted" executions in the Third Reich . The other twelve defendants were sentenced to long prison terms, including Emil Wendt to 10 years in prison. After serving his imprisonment, he was taken to the Waldheim penitentiary in Saxony, where he was murdered on October 26, 1944. A total of six trials on Altona Blood Sunday took place up to 1935.

Work-up

Judicial

It was not until 1992, after the Resistance fighter and former physics teacher Léon Schirmann had re-evaluated the case files stored in the court archive in Schleswig, that the Altonaer Blutsonntag was judged again before the Hamburg Regional Court .

Schirmann had found out that there was no shooting from roofs or upper floors, that no communist rifleman was arrested and that no weapons were found during house searches. The police also had no deaths or injuries. There were no snipers among the dead, all 16 were citizens of Altona who were not involved in the demonstrations and died from police bullets.

The court then recognized the falsification of the evidence in the trials at the time and overturned the death sentences against the four alleged perpetrators in November 1992. They were officially rehabilitated as victims of the Nazi regime. The gunmen on the part of the police, however, were just as unidentified as the murderers of the SA men - the first two fatalities. The judgments of the three later trials have not yet been overturned.

In the media

City tour of the Altona Blood Sunday of the Ottensen History Workshop 2018

The events continue to form the background of the book Das Beil von Wandsbek by Arnold Zweig , which was filmed in 1951 at DEFA by Falk Harnack with Erwin Geschonneck in the leading role.

There was a second film adaptation in 1982 as a television drama in the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 2010, the author Robert Brack reviewed the background of the blood Sunday in Altona in his novel Blood Sunday .

In 1987 Maryn Stucken wrote a play about Bruno Tesch.

literature

  • Heinrich Breloer and Horst Königstein: blood money. Materials on a German story. Prometh Verlag, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-922009-46-8 .
  • Wolfgang Kopitzsch : Political acts of violence in Schleswig-Holstein in the final phase of the Weimar Republic. In Erich Hoffmann and Peter Wulf [eds.]: "We are building the empire." The rise and first years of National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1983, ISBN 3-529-02181-4 . (Based, among other things, on Kopitsch's unpublished state examination paper Der Altonaer Blutsonntag , Hamburg 1974.)
  • Helmut Heins among others: Bruno Tesch and companions. Memories of Bloody Sunday in Altona. Hamburg 1983 (VVN series of publications)
  • Léon Schirmann : Bloody Sunday in Altona, July 17, 1932. Poetry and Truth. Results Verlag, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-87916-018-X .
  • Léon Schirmann: Judicial manipulation, Der Altonaer Blutsonntag and the Altonaer or Hamburg justice 1932-1994. Typographica Mitte, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-929390-11-6 .
  • Léon Schirmann: The proceedings of the special court Altona / Kiel 1932–1937 against the suspects de Altonaer Blutsonntags . In: Robert Bohn; Uwe Danker (Ed.): "Standgericht der Inner Front": The Special Court Altona / Kiel 1932–1945 , Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-87916-052-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eyck, Erich: History of the Weimar Republic. Volume Two: From the Locarno Conference to Hitler's takeover. 2nd edition, Erlenbach-Zurich / Stuttgart: Eugen Rentsch Verlag 1956, p. 502.
  2. ↑ Schirmann, Léon: Judizmanipulationsen, p. 13.
  3. ↑ Schirmann, Léon: Justizmanipulationsen, p. 11.
  4. ↑ Breloer, Heinrich; Königstein, Horst: blood money. Materials on a German History , Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-922009-46-8 , p. 22 ff.
  5. ^ Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich, Göttingen 2005, p. 53.
  6. ↑ Reminder of the “Bloody Sunday”: When shots rang out in “Little Moscow” , taz, July 30, 2018
  7. ^ Léon Schirmann : The proceedings of the special court Altona / Kiel 1932-1937 against the suspects of the Altonaer Blutsonntag . In: Robert Bohn , Uwe Danker (eds.), “Standgericht der Inner Front”: the special court Altona / Kiel 1932–1945 , Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-87916-052-X , pp. 139 to 165.
  8. ↑ Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-77837-3 , p. 86.
  9. ^ Robert Bohn: The National Socialist special jurisdiction in Schleswig-Holstein . In Robert Bohn; Uwe Danker (Ed.): “Standgericht der Inner Front”: The Special Court Altona / Kiel 1932–1945 , Hamburg 1998 ISBN 3-87916-052-X , p. 17.
  10. ↑ Heinrich Breloer, Horst Königstein: blood money. Materials on a German story , p. 54.
  11. ↑ Einestages.spiegel.de: The lie about the snipers , accessed on July 15, 2012.
  12. ↑ Cornelia Kerth : Altona Blood Sunday