Anton Schmaus (resistance fighter)

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Memorial plaque on Schmausstrasse 2 in Berlin-Koepenick
Stumbling stone at Schmausstrasse 2

Anton Schmaus (born April 19, 1910 in Munich ; died January 16, 1934 in the Berlin-Mitte police hospital ) was a German carpenter and social democrat who fell victim to the Köpenick Blood Week .

Life

As the son of Johann Schmaus and his wife Margarethe (d. July 1943 in Posen ), Anton Schmaus grew up in a social democratic family. After completing his apprenticeship as a carpenter, he attended evening courses at a building school with the aim of becoming an architect. Schmaus was a member of the SPD, the socialist workers' youth and the republic protection organization Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold .

The NSDAP's Sturmabteilung (SA) in Köpenick had intensified the terror against social democrats, communists and Jews since Hitler came to power . On May 2, 1933, the trade unions were banned. On May 9, the newspapers and the Reichsbanner's property were confiscated. Under the pretext that the German National Combat Ring of the DNVP , Hitler's coalition partner, had been infiltrated by communists and social democrats, Hitler , Goebbels and Göring also planned to break the last resistances in the workers' movement. On June 22nd, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick forbade the SPD from any political activity, annulled parliamentary mandates, confiscated the party's assets and imprisoned around 3,000 functionaries.

On June 20, 1933, the SA-Köpenick, headed by Herbert Gehrke (SA-Sturm 1/15), planned attacks on their political opponents. On the morning of June 21, 1933, many apartments in Köpenick were illegally searched, including those of the Schmaus family. Numerous people have been abducted and mistreated. Although he was warned by friends on the way home from the educational institution, Anton did not let that deter him and went home to Alte Dahlwitzer Strasse 2 (today Schmausstrasse 2). In the middle of the night the SA broke into the Schmaus family's apartment again. Anton Schmaus stood in her way and shot the intruders in self-defense. He fatally hit two SA men; a third was injured during the exchange of fire and died shortly afterwards.

Only wearing swimming trunks, Anton Schmaus escaped through the nearby forest to the Hirschgarten S-Bahn station , where he asked for help. Accompanied by a railway officer, he turned himself up at the Köpenick police station 244. The police only managed to push back the approaching SA mob with great difficulty. For his own protection, they brought Anton Schmaus to the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz early in the morning of June 22, 1933 . While still in Koepenick, the transport was stopped by an 80-man SA troop who unsuccessfully demanded that Schmaus be handed over. Members of the Köpenick SA command, headed by Herbert Gehrke, followed the transport towards the city center and found Schmaus in the police headquarters. Despite being guarded by two police officers, Schmaus was seriously injured here by a shot by Gehrke in the back. The police delivered Anton Schmaus to the police hospital in Berlin-Mitte . Anton was paralyzed from the waist down. In mid-January 1934, the SA brought him from the police hospital for an "interrogation". On January 16, 1934, the feast, marked by fresh physical abuse, died in the police hospital.

The Köpenicker SA took the death of its people as an occasion for unchecked violent crackdown on hundreds of its opponents. The National Socialists used the shots and the two dead SA men for propaganda purposes throughout the Reich and for the ban on the SPD on June 22, 1933. On July 25, 1933, Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner committed these as well as other crimes connected with the "seizure of power" , a "grace".

The SA men Walter Apel and Robert Greul, shot by Anton Schmaus, were celebrated as heroes of the "Third Reich" by renaming the streets, Walter-Apel-Straße instead of Alte Dahlwitzer Straße and Robert-Greul-Platz instead of Dahlwitzer-Platz and by a state funeral. Joseph Goebbels attended this funeral.

Anton's father, Johannes Schmaus, was hanged by the SA on June 22, 1933 in his own stable building next to the house in order to simulate a suicide. His mother Katharina Schmaus and 13-year-old sister Margareta abducted SA to the Köpenick district court prison . In the presence of the sister, Katharina Schmaus was severely mistreated there, after which she had to be treated in hospital for months. Some of Johann Schmaus' five children fled abroad temporarily. The family was expropriated by the National Socialists a few months later, on the grounds that the deed of the youngest son Anton meant that the family's assets were to be regarded as "subversive".

Commemoration

  • On July 31, 1947, his residential street “Alte Dahlwitzer Straße” was renamed “Schmausstraße”.
  • Memorial plaques on the residential building (Schmausstrasse 2) and at Essenplatz 1 remember Anton Schmaus.
  • Johann- and Anton-Schmaus-Oberschule Kiekebuschstraße, Berlin-Köpenick.
  • A stumbling block at Schmausstrasse 2 has been a reminder of his murder since December 2, 2013.
  • Children's and youth center Anton Schmaus in Berlin-Neukölln , Gutschmidtstrasse 37 of the SJD - Die Falken
  • Anton-Schmaus-Straße in Bergkamen

literature

  • Bartholomew Night in Koepenick . In: Brown book on Reichstag fire and Hitler terror . First published under the title Livre Brun sur l'incendie du Reichstag et le terreur hitlerìenne . With a foreword by Lord Marley. Edition Carrefour Paris 1933, p. 329 ff. At the same time, editions in German were published by the Universum library in Basel and translations into the most important languages ​​of the world. (Lord Marley was an influential Labor politician) Text Archive - Internet Archive
  • Judgment of the 4th Large Criminal Chamber in the Plötzke u. a. (Köpenicker Blutwoche) 1933. Berlin Regional Court, Berlin 1950.
  • Kurt Werner, Karl Heinz Biernat: The Köpenicker Blood Week June 1933 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1958. (47 pages)
    • Kurt Werner, Karl Heinz Biernat: The Köpenicker blood week June 1933 with an appendix of the victims . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1960. (103 pages)
  • Johann Schmaus. Anton Schmaus . In: Luise Kraushaar : German resistance fighters 1933–1945, biographies and letters . Volume 2. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 165-167. (Photography p. 167.)
  • Karl Dietrich Bracher (Ed.): The conscience stands up. Life pictures from the German resistance 1933–1945 . Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1984, p. 6.
  • Anton Schmaus . In: Lexicon Resistance in Berlin 1933–1945 . Volume 12. Second supplementary volume [letters K – Z]. Trafo Verlag, Berlin 2005, pp. 81–82.
  • Heinrich-Wilhelm Wörmann: Resistance in Köpenick and Treptow . German Resistance Memorial Center, Berlin 2010, pp. 26 ff., 30 f., 37, 39, 194, 302. (= series of publications on the resistance in Berlin from 1933 to 1945. Volume 9) ISBN 3-926082-03-8 . Digitized version (PDF)
  • Günter Flick: The Köpenick Blood Week. Facts, Legends and Political Justice . In: Zeitschrift des Forschungsverbund SED-Staat 21. (2007), pp. 3–17.
  • Stefan Hördler (Hrsg.): SA-Terror as security of rule: “Köpenicker Blutwoche” and public violence under National Socialism . Metropol, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-133-9 .
  • Gunther Geserick, Klaus Vendura, Ingo Wirth: contemporary witness death. Spectacular forensic medicine cases . 6th edition. Militzke Verlag, 2011. Militzke Verlag, Leipzig 2011. ISBN 978-3-86189-628-9 Digitized in part
  • Christoph Gollasch, Yves Müller: The State Hospital of the Police under National Socialism. A research gap. Workshop report. In: Memorial Circular No. 181 (03/2016), pp. 55–58. Digitized
  • Anita Wünschmann: That's how deep the snow is in Italy. The Nazis' largest terrorist operation began 70 years ago in Köpenick. The story of Anton Schmaus . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 21, 2003
  • Herbert Mayer: A reminder to the Köpenick blood week . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 6, 1998, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 86-88 ( luise-berlin.de ).

Web links

Commons : Anton Schmaus  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich-Wilhelm Wörmann, p. 49.
  2. ^ SA auxiliary police officers, SA troop leaders from "SS-Sturm 37" Walter Apel and Ronert (also) Robert) Gleuel. ( Calendar of the Germans . 1935: Verlag der Deutschen Arbeitsfront, Berlin 1935, p. 30.)
  3. ↑ Julius-Karl von Engelbrechten , Hans Volz : We wander through the National Socialist Berlin. A guide through the memorials of the struggle for the imperial capital . Franz-Eher-Verlag , Munich 1937, pp. 23, 191, 194. Digitized
  4. ^ Wilhelm (also Franz) Klein. (André König (Hrsg.): Köpenick under the swastika: the history of National Socialism in Berlin-Köpenick. Exhibition catalog of the Köpenick Blood Week Memorial June 1933. Mein Verlag, Mahlow 2004, p. 66. ISBN 3-936607-05-2 )
  5. ↑ a b Heinrich-Wilhelm Wörmann, p. 27.
  6. ^ Heinrich-Wilhelm Wörmann, p. 48.
  7. ↑ Schmausstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  8. ↑ Signature 12 S 358 Berlin State Library and signature D II 15 Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial.
personal data
SURNAME Feast, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German carpenter, murder victim of the Köpenick Blood Night (SPD)
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1934
Place of death Police hospital Berlin-Mitte