August Lütgens

August Lütgens (born December 16, 1897 in Lübeck , † August 1, 1933 in Altona / Elbe ) was a victim of the Nazi justice system . He was executed as a participant in the Altona Blood Sunday - in November 1992 the sentence was overturned.

Biographical

August Lütgens, who came from a working-class family - his mother worked as a washerwoman - became a seaman after leaving school (from 1911) ; at the age of 16 he joined the union and a little later the SPD . During the First World War he served in the Imperial Navy ; In 1916/17 a field court sentenced him to imprisonment for reasons not previously known. In 1918 he was one of the sailors who took part in the November Revolution in Wilhelmshaven . Sentenced to 15 years in prison in May 1919 , he managed to escape in 1919 or 1920 and lived for the following years in Petrograd in the Soviet Union . An amnesty enabled him to return to Germany in 1930 or 1931; Here Lütgens, who joined the KPD in exile , became a leading functionary of the Red Front Fighter League in Hamburg .

August Lütgens was married and had two children.

From volunteer to red sailor

After completing elementary school, he was able to fulfill his greatest wish: He was hired as a cabin boy on a barque . Journeys by sailor and later as a sailor on other ships took him to many countries. He also got to know the social problems of seafarers. At the age of 16, he therefore decided to become a member of the seafarers' union and later also joined the SPD. At the beginning of the First World War he volunteered for the Imperial Navy like many young sailors with a social democratic orientation . After a short training period, he joined the liner SMS Westfalen . As early as 1916, at the age of 18, he was sentenced to military imprisonment for the first time by a court martial and, after serving it, was transferred to the 1st Sailor Regiment on the Western Front in Flanders. Almost three years later, in May 1919, August Lütgens - meanwhile a member of the KPD - was sentenced by an extraordinary court martial to 15 years in prison and imprisoned for his active participation in the November Revolution 1918/19 and in the political disputes of the post-war crisis in Germany. This condemnation was intended to set an example in order to counteract an escalation of the political situation in Germany. With the help of comrades, however, he managed to escape from prison after a month; via Denmark he came to Petrograd (today St. Petersburg) in Russia.

Emigrant in the Soviet Union

August Lütgens was granted asylum , was able to work and qualify, and got to know his future wife Lisa. Lisa Fiedler, child of a Hamburg working-class family, had followed the call for skilled workers to help Russia with her parents and four other siblings and initially also landed in Petrograd. Lisa and August married in 1922, their son Franz was born in the same year and daughter Elsa three years later. August Lütgens passed the skipper's exam and went back on board as a seaman.

Bloody Sunday and the special court trial in Altona

From 1930, social tensions in Germany intensified, and unemployment rose to a record high of over 6 million as a result of the global economic crisis. This led to a polarization of political forces. The NSDAP and its branches became more and more popular, and the street terror they emanated against democratic forces increased steadily. In this situation August Lütgens decided to return to Germany in order to fight against the looming Nazi threat. He left his family in Moscow - he was not to see them again. After Hitler's Germany attacked the Soviet Union , Lisa and the children were evacuated; they did not survive the war. The circumstances of her death are currently unclear. August Lütgens drove via Stettin and Lübeck to Altona , at that time still an independent city. At the beginning of the global economic crisis , the Nazis tried to increase their influence in the working-class neighborhoods of Altona. When they were unsuccessful, they also resorted to the means of terror. On Sunday, July 17, 1932, there was a large-scale and long-term provocation. About 7000 National Socialists from all over the country gathered for what they officially called a "punitive expedition" and marched through the streets of the predominantly left-wing and anti-fascist working-class Altona, protected by the police. There was a real atmosphere of civil war, and the riots lasted into the evening. In the end, the police opened fire on demonstrators and the population. The horror balance: 18 dead and almost 80 seriously injured. According to another version of what happened, first two demonstrators were shot, then the demonstration was broken up and afterwards the police stormed the working-class area. Passers-by and residents were arrested at random - no weapons were found on any. “ Bloody Sunday in Altona ” was the headline of the communist Hamburger Volkszeitung on July 18, 1932. August Lütgens and others of his comrades were also victims of the wave of arrests and were brought to justice. On February 22, 1933, three weeks after the Nazis came to power, the 4th Criminal Senate had to close the case against Lütgens and others for lack of evidence; There was no incriminating evidence against the accused - but they were not released. The National Socialists began to prepare trials against anti-fascists throughout the Reich. By decree of Hitler, special courts were set up for this purpose. On June 2, 1933, the Altona Special Court sentenced August Lütgens, Bruno Tesch , Karl Wolff and Walter Möller to death on the basis of forged evidence and manipulated witnesses . In the case of the main defendant August Lütgens, the verdict even said verbatim: "It has not been proven that the defendant Lütgens himself participated in acts of violence against the SA parade on the afternoon of July 17, 1932."

On August 1st, the convicts were beheaded with a hand ax in the courtyard of today's district court in Max-Brauer-Allee . The main defendant August Lütgens was only 35 years old. The youngest - Bruno Tesch - was just 20 years old. Arnold Zweig processed this bloody deed in his novel Das Beil von Wandsbek .

After 60 years: rehabilitation

Memorial plaque at the place of execution behind today's Altona District Court

August Lütgens, Ehrenhain Ohlsdorf

Stumbling Stone Max-Brauer-Allee 89

Since 1945, anti-fascists from Hamburg, relatives of the victims and foreign friends of the murdered have tried to rehabilitate those wrongly convicted. In at least 14 cases, applications for the annulment of the Bloody Sunday judgments were ignored or rejected by the Hamburg prosecutors and judges, the judgments repeatedly confirmed as legal and the “ rule of law ” of the Nazi special courts emphasized. It was only the tireless and meticulous research of the French scientist Léon Schirmann that made the judicial scandal public again, and the Hamburg judiciary was now getting going. After a delay of decades, a retrial was reached. A criminal chamber of the Hamburg Regional Court decided in November 1992 to overturn the terrorist rulings on the grounds of proven judicial manipulation and to acquit the defendants Lütgens, Tesch, Möller and Wolff. The Hamburger Abendblatt headlined on December 29, 1992: "Hamburg court overturned death sentences from 1933 - Nazi victims finally rehabilitated after six decades."

Commemoration

The bodies of the murdered were brought to Berlin in 1933 and burned. It was not until 1935 that the Nazis secretly buried the four urns in a corner of the Marzahn cemetery. In 1947 she was transferred to Hamburg and on the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Ehrenhain for the victims of fascism buried, the pillow stone for August Lütgens is in the fourth row from the left (the eleventh stone).
In Hamburg-Altona, four stumbling blocks arranged in a square were laid in front of the entrance to the local court at Max-Brauer-Allee 89: for August Lütgens, Karl Wolff, Walter Möller and Bruno Tesch.
In Hamburg today there is an August-Lütgens-Park , a Walter-Möller-Park , a Bruno-Tesch-Platz (after the Bruno-Tesch-Schule was closed) and a Karl-Wolff-Straße .

Also Rostock praised August Lütgens: The training site of the DSR Rostock received its name in 1980, a memorial stone was in the courtyard of the vocational school in Krischanweg. The medallion with the portrait of Lütgens was created by the Rostock artist Wolfgang Eckardt . In 2001 strangers destroyed the memorial stone. The cultural office of the Hanseatic city has repeatedly assured that in the course of the development of the Krischanweg, a suitable reconstruction of the monument and public access should be guaranteed.

In the GDR , the central maritime training center of the GST (Society for Sport and Technology) for prospective regular and professional soldiers in the People's Navy and seamen in the GDR merchant fleet was called August Lütgens (see GST Naval School "August Lütgens" ). This was in Greifswald-Wieck . In the area between the school building and the workshops there was also a corresponding August Lütgens memorial stone . It was inaugurated on June 26, 1970 on the occasion of the naming of the then "GST-Seesportschule Greifswald-Wieck". The Greifswald artist Helmut Maletzke created a corresponding metal relief "Red Sailor" for the stone. The stone memorial was dismantled in 1990 during the time of reunification in the GDR. From 1964 until its decommissioning on October 1, 1990, a high-speed rocket boat of the Volksmarine was named August Lütgens.

literature

• Heinrich Breloer / Horst Königstein : blood money: materials for a German history. 1982.
• History commission of the industrial district management of the SED maritime transport and port management: August Lütgens. Sailor, communist, resistance fighter. Rostock 1988 ( entry in the digital history store at stadtteilgeschichten.net )
• Josef Schneider: August Lütgens - a red front soldier. Publishing Cooperative of Foreign Workers in the USSR: Moscow and Leningrad 1934. ( Online )
• Luise Kraushaar et al .: German resistance fighters 1933–1945. Biographies and letters. Dietz-Verlag: Berlin 1970, Volume 1, pp. 609-611
• Lutz Mohr : Between Ryck and Ruden. Socialist construction of our home on the example of the NPP "Bruno Leuschner" the GST Naval Academy "August Lütgens" and "Friedrich Loeffler Institute" Riems ... . New Greifswald Museum Issues No. 3, Greifswald 1978.

Web links

• Birgit Gewehr: The four execution victims of the Altona Blood Sunday: August Lütgens In: Stolpersteine ​​Hamburg , September 2015.