Anton Hummler

Anton Hummler (born February 12, 1908 in St. Gallen ; † September 25, 1944 in the Brandenburg prison ) was a resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Anton Hummler grew up as the oldest child of a group of ten siblings. He initially earned his living as a farm worker and moved to Stuttgart in 1927 , where he became a machine worker and later a machine setter at Bosch . The global economic crisis led to several years of unemployment before Hummler returned to Bosch. In 1929 Hummler became a member of the workers' sports club "Rote Sportler", and in 1930 he also became a member of the Fighting League against Fascism and the KPD . He read Hitler's book Mein Kampf and concluded that a war was imminent if the author came to power.

Anton Hummler and his wife Frieda had two daughters and a son. The family lived in the late 1930s at Moltkestrasse 43/1 (now: Bebelstrasse) in Stuttgart. In the neighborhood of the lithographer Max Wagner lived, with the Hummler probably even before the seizure of power of the Nazis had been known. Even after the corresponding ban, Hummler listened to foreign broadcasters using Wagner's radio. Little by little, a group of around 30 people came together who listened to Wagner's “ enemy channels” and spread their news. Political discussions and the dissemination of information took place mainly outdoors, disguised as Sunday walks in the group.

In October 1942, Hummler was transferred to the Trillke works in Hildesheim , where he gathered anti-fascist colleagues around him. The group supported, among other things, Russian female forced laborers in the Trillke works. In 1943, the wages of the local workers were made dependent on the forced laborers working hard. At the same time, the shift allowances were canceled.

From 1937 onwards, contact with Heinz Bogdan , whom Anton Hummler had known since a sporting event in Stuttgart in 1932, had already intensified. Bogdan led a resistance group in Berlin . He proposed a merger of the sports colleagues. In June 1943 Anton Hummler visited Bogdan in Berlin together with Max Wagner and Emil Erath. He was looking for a way to meet the Jewish dentist Dr. Smuggle Walter Glaser into Switzerland . Erath, a Gestapo spy who had been smuggled in , claimed to be able to help. Glaser then traveled to Stuttgart with a false passport in August 1943 and was temporarily housed with Max Wagner before continuing with Erath. He was arrested and transferred to Berlin. Glaser committed suicide in October 1943 in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin. This remained unknown to the Stuttgart group. At the end of September 1943, all of the members Erath had met were arrested in Stuttgart, Berlin and Hildesheim. Among other things, they were accused of trying to form a communist group. The Gestapo did not succeed in finding out the names of other people involved, especially since Hummler's wife, when she was allowed to pick up his blood-smeared clothes from prison after the interrogation, discovered a note in a sock on which Hummler had written warning "Erath is the traitor". Frieda Hummler threw notes with this message into the mailboxes of friends at night. After the war she learned that members of the resistance group had actually been warned in this way.

On August 4, 1944, the trial was opened before the People's Court in Potsdam . The accused were sentenced to death and lifelong loss of honor for preparing for high treason and favoring the enemy. Appeals for clemency were rejected. In Brandenburg prison, Anton Hummler and Max Wagner learned on September 25, 1944 that their execution was to take place on the same day.

On September 24, 2007, Stolpersteine ​​were laid in front of the houses of the executed in Stuttgart's Bebelstrasse 43/1 and 29/2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Kress, Anton Hummler and Max Wagner - two workers resist , 2007 on www.stolpersteine-stuttgart.de