Christian Dennert

Christian Dennert (born around 1897 ; died on May 4, 1944 in Berlin ) was a manufacturer and an opponent and victim of National Socialism .

Dennert came from a family that ran a factory in Hamburg for the manufacture of surveying technology . During the First World War , he volunteered for military service at the age of 18 . He was assigned to the State Rifle Regiment 211 with his home base in Bayreuth . After being shot in the head, he was later considered a nerd with a slight mental defect.

As a result of the global economic crisis of 1929 and differences in the management, the company was split up. Dennert settled with his wife and mother in Weidenberg near Bayreuth. There he bought the former porcelain factory in the street In der Au and founded the company DEWE (Dennert Weidenberg). With a handful of semi-skilled employees, he manufactured precision slide rules, which were mainly sold to Great Britain and the USA .

Dennert was German-national . In 1933 he joined the NSDAP , because he hoped the National Socialists would support small businesses. After seeing this hope disappointed, and because he was supposed to scout out companies and spy on attitudes for the party , he resigned after a year.

Due to the persecution of Jews in National Socialist Germany, foreign markets collapsed. With his critical attitude towards the rulers, Dennert was a thorn in the side of Weidenberg NSDAP local group leader Georg Rumler. He made sure that the unpopular, who should have just saved his company, was drafted as an administrative sergeant to a course at the Army Supply Office in Bayreuth in May 1939. There Dennert railed against a new law according to which members of the armed forces had to greet high officials of the party. He was reported and temporarily arrested . Immediately before the attack on Poland , Dennert was drafted into the Wehrmacht again. At the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939, his business was ruined.

In July 1940 Dennert retired from military service for reasons of age. Since his work no longer existed, he first worked as a technical draftsman for a fire engine manufacturer in Bayreuth. Then he moved to the Tabel metal works in Creußen , where forced laborers were also used to produce armaments . In 1941 he lost one of his three children in an accident.

Dennert's company boss Carl Tabel, NSDAP local group leader and mayor of the small town since 1938 , persecuted the Nazi-critical pastor from Creußen and abused prisoners of war . There were informers and informers in Dennert's new work environment . A typist jotted down critical comments from colleagues and passed them on to her boss. These included Dennert's remarks that the war would only be over when "Hitler and his bigwigs were no longer at the helm" and that the war was only due to the "Austrian house painter" - an allusion to Hitler's poor beginnings. Tabel reported Dennert to the Secret State Police (Gestapo) for "grave insults to the Führer" and " high treason " .

Dennert was arrested on November 8, 1943. The indictment before the People's Court also contained the allegations of " undermining military strength " and " favoring the enemy ". Dennert threatened the death penalty . The trial , which was scheduled for February 29, 1944 , was postponed because a medical report about his mental state was missing.

In the period that followed, Dennert's wife noticed a rapid deterioration in his health. On May 8, 1944, the prison administration informed her by telephone that her 47-year-old husband had died four days earlier. The official cause of death was pneumonia , but the prison priest wrote "heart failure".

In 1949, Tabel was indicted before the Bayreuth Regional Court, among other things, for severe deprivation of liberty resulting in death in the Dennert case, but there was no trial. Although the court found that Dennert's death was the direct result of his imprisonment, Tabel successfully denied that he had reported them. The documents of the People's Court, which prove the opposite, only emerged after German reunification .

literature

• Jürgen-Joachim Taegert: Myrtles for thorns. Story (s) from Weindenberg 1919–1949. Episode 5 . Eckhard Bodner, Pressath 2018, ISBN 978-3-947247-19-6 , pp. 171 ff .
• Denounced as a traitor. in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of January 27, 2020, p. 17.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jürgen-Joachim Taegert: Myrtles for thorns. Story (s) from Weindenberg 1919–1949. Episode 5 , p. 205.