Caesar Horn

Caesar Horn

Caesar Horn (born May 18, 1914 in Berlin , † March 19, 1945 in Brandenburg-Görden ) was a German communist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Horn was a commercial clerk and joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany early on. In 1932 he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany .

After the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists in 1933, he organized resistance activities among former members of the “Fichte” workers ' sports club. They printed and distributed the illegal newspaper The Spotlight . In January 1936 he was called up for labor service. In the Dreetz labor service camp near Neustadt (Dosse) he formed an anti-fascist resistance group with like-minded people that agitated among the labor service men. To this end, he regularly brought illegal pamphlets from Berlin. The Gestapo searched for Horn and finally discovered him in Dreetz. He was arrested because of his illegal membership in the " Kampfgemeinschaft für Rote Sporteinheit " and was eventually sentenced to 18 months in prison. His sentence was relatively low because the camp commandant von Dreetz, Oberfeldmeister Golczewski from Rathenow, testified favorably for him at the trial. He spent nine months in Moabit , the remainder of the imprisonment in Börgermoor concentration camp (Emsland).

After his dismissal, Horn worked again as a commercial clerk and got in touch with Robert Uhrig through Werner Seelenbinder . Horn escaped being arrested against this resistance group in February 1942 because he had already been drafted into a probation battalion of the Wehrmacht in 1939 . With the 67th Infantry Regiment from Berlin-Spandau he was forced to take part in the war against the Soviet Union . After being wounded, Horn remained stationed in Berlin and in 1943 contacted the organization around Anton Saefkow , in which he and Helmut Wagner were responsible for informing and recruiting members of the Wehrmacht. Horn campaigned among members of the Wehrmacht for the goals of the National Committee "Free Germany" (NKFD) and sent its leaflets and appeals, but also "soldiers' letters" to field post addresses. In these the Wehrmacht members were asked to help end the war and to switch to the side of the NKFD. Horn used his work on the patrol of the Wehrmacht on the trains between Berlin and Hanover as a liaison to resistance groups in this area. In Rathenow, for example, he met regularly with Willy Osterburg from the Dreetz group. Measures for political work in the end of the war and for its shortening were discussed here.

Horn was arrested on July 19, 1944, sentenced to death by the People's Court on January 23, 1945 and murdered with a guillotine on March 19, 1945 in Brandenburg-Görden.

Honors

Stolperstein , Jasmunder Strasse 13, in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen

• A memorial stone for the “victims of fascism” from 1948 in the green between Schillerstrasse and Goethestrasse in Wilhelmsruh is dedicated to Cäsar Horn and seven other anti-fascists.
• During the GDR era , the 6th POS in Berlin-Pankow was named after Cäsar Horn (today's Reinhold Burger High School).
• Until 1995, a memorial plaque in Lessingstrasse 53 in Wilhelmsruh commemorated Caesar Horn. The plaque was removed by the homeowner and given to Caesar Horn's wife.
• The graves of Caesar Horn and Karl Müller in the Pankow VII cemetery were added to the list of monuments in 2000 as a monument.
• A plaque commemorates him in the memorial of the socialists .
• On September 26, 2015, a stumbling block was laid for Horn in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen at Jasmunder Straße 13 .

literature

• Luise Kraushaar (Ed.): German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters . Volume 1. Dietz, Berlin 1970, pp. 414-418.
• Forward and don't forget ... A contribution to the history of the Rathenow labor movement from 1933 to 1945 . Edited by the district commission for research into the history of the labor movement at the SED district leadership in Rathenow, undated
• Werner Bethge, Kurt Libera et al. (Ed.): Bright stars in a dark night. Studies on the anti-fascist resistance struggle in the Potsdam administrative region 1933–1945 . Potsdam 1988.
• Hans-Rainer Sandvoss : Resistance in Pankow and Reinickendorf . GDW series of publications , Berlin 1992, pp. 142–145.
• Peter Steinbach , Johannes Tuchel (ed.): Lexicon of Resistance 1933–1945 . 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 96.
• Dieter Seeger: Rathenower Topography of Terror and Resistance 1933-1945 . LEFT City Council, Rathenow 2010, p. 28.

Web links

Commons : Caesar Horn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center