Bernhard Letterhaus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Left: Statue of Bernhard Letterhaus on the tower of Cologne City Hall

Bernhard Letterhaus (born July 10, 1894 in Barmen ; † November 14, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German resistance fighter from July 20, 1944 , a Christian union leader and politician ( center ).

Life

Bernhard Letterhaus grew up with two brothers in a deeply religious family. After completing elementary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a knitter from 1908 to 1912 and attended the higher technical college for the textile industry from 1912 to 1914. After he had returned seriously wounded from the First World War , in which he had participated from 1914 to 1918 and in which he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd and 1st class, he worked from 1921 to 1927 as a secretary in the Central Association of Christian Textile Workers . In 1927, at the request of Otto Müller in Mönchengladbach (from 1928 in the Ketteler House in Cologne), he became secretary of the Catholic workers' associations in West Germany and in 1928 a member of the Center Party in the Prussian state parliament and from 1928 to 1929 a member of the Barmen provincial parliament of the Prussian Rhine Province . In 1929 Letterhaus became an honorary member of the Catholic student association Langemarck (later Görres) Bonn in the KV . As the Vice President of the Katholikentag in Münster in 1931 he called for a defense against National Socialism and after 1933 he secretly campaigned in Catholic circles for resistance to the Nazi regime. Because he rejected the Enabling Act , he stayed away from the vote in the state parliament in March 1933. He criticized the conclusion of the Reich Concordat because he feared that it would not protect the institutions of political Catholicism.

In 1939 he was obliged to do military service, from 1942 he was employed as a captain in the press department of the Wehrmacht High Command . Here he made contacts with the conspirators around Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler . With friends from the KAB, Christian Trade Unions, Center, among others, he advised the so-called Cologne Circle , which met at the KAB association headquarters, the Kettelerhaus in Cologne, since 1942 at the latest on alternatives to the Nazi regime. He made his apartment in Cologne available to friends like Jakob Kaiser , Alfred Delp , Nikolaus Groß and Heinrich Körner for talks about the reorganization of Germany. Letterhaus belonged to the leading group of resistance fighters, was ready  to take over the office of political commissioner in military district VI (Münster) and was in talks as the construction minister of the new government. On July 25, 1944, a few days after the assassination attempt on Hitler, he was arrested, sentenced to death on November 13, 1944 after an hour's trial before the People's Court , and hanged the following day in Plötzensee .

family

Letterhaus was married to Grete Thiel and had a daughter.

Honors

Memorial stone in Wuppertal
Stolperstein in Bernhard-Letterhaus-Straße 28, Cologne
  • In 1984 in Wuppertal -Barmen a memorial plaque was attached to the house on the site of his former birthplace. As early as 1965, a memorial stone was laid in the settlement named after him in Wuppertal- Uellendahl . In 1956/57 the Bernhard-Letterhaus-Straße in Wuppertal-Barmen was named after him; The Bernhard Letterhaus School is also named after him.
  • In the vicinity of the Plötzensee execution site, the Letterhausweg has been a reminder of him since 1957 .
  • In 1999, the Catholic Church accepted Bernhard Letterhaus as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .
  • In 1948, Odenkirchener Strasse in Cologne was renamed Bernhard-Letterhaus-Strasse in his honor and a stumbling block was laid there. In 1965 a street in Bonn- Duisdorf was named after him. The Lower Rhine city of Neuss honors him with Bernhard-Letterhaus-Straße in Weckhoven. Bernhard-Letterhaus-Straße also reminds of him in Leverkusen and Vreden , and there is a Letterhausweg in both Münster and Oelde . In Recklinghausen, Emsdetten, Heek, Brühl (Rhineland) and Löningen streets were also named after him (Letterhausstraße). The Letterhausstrasse in Dülmen led to the now defunct Sankt-Barbara-Kaserne.
  • The Bernhard Letterhaus Catholic youth hostel is located in Cologne-Poll . A plaque was unveiled on July 9, 1994. The facility was originally built as a Hitler Youth home.
  • A grave of honor was inaugurated in 2010 at the Letterhaus family grave in the Schützenstrasse cemetery of the St. Antonius community in Wuppertal-Barmen , a few meters away from the final resting place of chaplain Johannes Flintrop, who was murdered in Dachau in 1942 .

literature

  • Jürgen Aretz : Bernhard Letterhaus (1894–1944) . In: Rudolf Morsey (ed.): Contemporary history in life pictures. From the German Catholicism of the 20th century . tape 2 . Mainz 1975.
  • Jürgen Aretz:  Letterhaus, Bernhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 357 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Vera Bücker: Bernhard Letterhaus . In: Karl-Joseph Hummel, Christoph Strom (Ed.): Witnesses to a better world. Christian martyrs of the 20th century . Leipzig 2000.
  • Ernst Kienast (Ed.): Handbook for the Prussian Landtag. Edition for the 5th electoral term, Berlin 1933, p. 357.
  • Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference ): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 382–385.
  • Ludwig Rosenberg , Bernhard Tacke : The way to the unified union. Edited by the DGB Federal Board. Printing: satz + druck gmbh, Düsseldorf 1977.

Web links

Commons : Bernhard Letterhaus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Members of the Rhenish Provincial Parliament 1888-1933 (by place of residence)
  2. ^ About the courage of Bernhard Letterhaus from Wuppertal. WZ, November 14, 2014, accessed December 30, 2018 .
  3. ^ Letterhausweg. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  4. ^ Letterhausstrasse in the Bonn street cadastre