Edelweiss pirates

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Wall graffiti at the execution site in Cologne-Ehrenfeld

In the German Reich from 1939 to 1945 , informal groups of German youths with inappropriate, sometimes oppositional behavior were described as edelweiss pirates . After the end of the war, the groups' activities in some occupation zones continued until around 1947.

The name comes from a corruption by Gestapo officials around 1939: the edelweiss was one of many characteristics of the Bündische Jugend, which was banned after 1936 . The part of the name “ Piraten ” is derived from the Kittelbachpiraten , an officially right-wing radical group in Düsseldorf that existed until 1933, most of which emigrated to the Hitler Youth (HJ) or the Sturmabteilung (SA). The mixing of the terms “edelweiss” and “pirates” was therefore initially a provocation for young people with oppositional behavior, especially for those with roots in the Bündische Jugend, in the left-wing nature lovers or in the communist Red Front Fighters' League , but was used by young groups towards the end of the war chosen as a self-designation.

Some of these groups, such as the Cologne Edelweiss group around Gertrud Koch , whose father died in the Esterwegen concentration camp , or the Ehrenfeld group around the concentration camp refugee Hans Steinbrück, actively participated in the resistance against National Socialism . In addition to this Cologne-Ehrenfeld Edelweiss Pirate group, whose activities were brought to public awareness only after 1980 by Jean Jülich , the Dortmund Edelweiss Pirates from "Brüggemannpark", published by the writer Kurt Piehl in 1980 , have become known.

background

The economic and social hopelessness of the time after the First World War brought massive problems for Germany's youth. While there was little prospect of education and work for economically weaker social classes, a vision of the “Roaring Twenties” was presented by the upper class.

For many, the way out was to join formal groups that on the one hand offered a program to structure their leisure time and on the other hand allowed the development of self-definitions through the experience of group membership. Youth associations from the tradition of the wandering birds from the time before the First World War put the focus of their actions on hikes and trips to the outskirts of the big cities, where young people's desire for independence was celebrated around the campfire with hiking guitar and field cooker.

Towards the end of the Weimar Republic , political influence on all youth groups increased. Many parties saw the development of party-loyal youth as essential. As diverse as the party landscape in the republic was, the range of youth groups was just as multifaceted.

In addition to the groups that were directly subordinate to the parties, the Catholic groups and the Naturfreunde youth, which were subordinate to the Friends of Nature, there was also the broad spectrum of the Bündische Jugend . These approximately 100,000 young people, summarized in 1200 groups, reflected the whole range of revolutionary to bourgeois ideals of the republic that was coming to an end. Together they had hiking trips , formal hierarchy, and elitist awareness.

The “alliance” features were thus in direct competition with the aspiring Hitler Youth under the leadership of the ambitious Baldur von Schirach . For a successful expansion of the HJ, which grew from 108,000 members in 1932 to 2.3 million in the next year, it was also clear that the HJ was dependent on the experience and personal participation of youth leaders of the Bündische Jugend.

After the Großdeutsche Bund , a combination of around 70,000 young people from various Bündische groups, and in 1936 all groups of the "Bündische" were banned in 1933, the persecution of the former members began. Regular HJ patrols, with reinforcements from the SA and Gestapo, were legitimized to intervene if there was any suspicion of so-called “allied activities”. Until 1938 integration offers were often taken up by the “Bündische”, as the image of the “youthful rebellion” of the Hitler Youth was still attached. Leisure activities and opportunities for advancement in the Hitler Youth were definitely attractive. After this advertising phase, the young people who were not enthusiastic about the Jungvolk, BDM and Hitler Youth were the main enemy images of the HJ patrol service . Young people who wanted to evade compulsory membership in the HJ after 1936 were criminalized. These included former Hitler Youth members who had resigned or excluded, youth gangs in the style of the “wild cliques” of the Weimar Republic, regional youth gangs, illegally maintained contacts with forbidden youth groups or groups with friends of nature and finally politically motivated resistance fighters.

Regional distribution and sphere of activity

From 1942 at the latest, Cologne can be considered the center of the edelweiss groups, as the preferred self-designation was, with over 3000 names mentioned in Gestapo files. During raids in Duisburg , Düsseldorf , Essen and Wuppertal , the Gestapo found 739 presumed edelweiss pirates. The Dortmunder Brugmann Square was the latest in 1943 the meeting place of the local Edelweiss Group. Such groups had arisen across the country in the big city centers.

Typical of the naming seems to be that the persecuted groups quickly accepted the labeling of their persecutors. For example, from 1933 to 1941, allegedly unadjusted young people in Cologne were given the nickname “ Navajos ” by the Hitler Youth , which was adopted by the persecuted. This is how a service leader of the 1936 Nachrichten-HJ understood Navajos:

"[...] such persons who are excluded from the Hitler Youth [...] and those who have violated Section 175 . Every young person who wears a brightly checked shirt, very short trousers, boots with rolled-up stockings is viewed by the Hitler Youth as a 'Navajo'. "

Opposition to the Hitler Youth can be seen as a connecting element across the entire Reich, stronger than the successor to a traditional, banned youth group. The behavior of the Bündische were often adopted, but without knowing their origin and without the typical hierarchical organization. Some groups looked for violent clashes with the HJ's stripes, with street fights against other youth gangs due to territorial claims. Other groups avoided any contact with the Hitler Youth, especially with the assisting SA.

External characteristics of the edelweiss pirates

The holding of hikes and trips to the surrounding area of ​​the big cities and less often to other cities was traditionally one of the activities of the youth groups that structured their leisure time. Songs from the Bündische Jugend were sung, some of them rewrote these or songs of the hostile Hitler Youth in an ironic way. Some of these texts contained a crude statement critical of the regime, and new songs were created, some with political content.

The youngsters, known as edelweiss pirates, stood out from the uniform uniforms of the Hitler Youth with their own style - often ski shirts, hiking boots , scarves and short lederhosen . Part of their identification was an edelweiss under the left skirt. Fantasy gowns, skull rings, belts studded with nails, jackets for boys were often worn and the kohte was used. In contrast to the Hitler Youth, some of them took on young women and adolescents.

persecution

The more reports from the Hitler Youth were received by the Gestapo, the harder the persecution became through arrests, interrogations, torture and incarceration. The Gestapo itself admitted that the HJ's patrol duty had aggravated the situation. On June 1, 1938, new guidelines for the HJ patrol service were issued, which authorized the HJ to "intervene" on the "open road" and in "closed rooms".

Immediately after the prohibition of the Bündische Jugend, Section 175 was abused as an offense to obtain a judicial conviction. This stemmed from the historical rivalry between the Hitler Youth and the Bündische Jugend, whose members were generally assumed to be homosexual. Soon the Nazi jurisdiction created the offense of " Bündische Umtriebe ", which made it possible to convict suspects on a broader basis. Nevertheless, the definition of “Bündische Umtriebe” was vague and the decision was made by the competent courts. Until the beginning of the war, relatively few reports led to a conviction.

With the beginning of the Second World War , more radical persecution methods were used, especially from 1941 onwards. Raids , eavesdropping, slander, incitement to betrayal, coercion, torture and imprisonment were all used to confront groups critical of the regime. In December 1942 there was a wave of arrests by the Gestapo in the Cologne area, apparently motivated by the leaflet campaigns by individual groups that began in the summer of 1942.

The offenses of the dismantling of military strength , defeatism , the weakening of the German national community, resistance to the Gestapo or state treason and high treason resulted in draconian sentences ranging from imprisonment in concentration camps to the death penalty . The transfer to a punitive battalion of the army or the navy was a means of exercising totalitarian power preferred by the Nazi regime for unadjusted young men. The use of such a command came close to execution.

Bruno Bachler , one of the surviving edelweiss pirates, told how, after serving his imprisonment in a concentration camp, he was assigned to a punishment company on the Eastern Front that was used to clear minefields . It so happened that the convicts had to march hand in hand across a minefield, some of them losing their lives.

The number of edelweiss pirates murdered is unknown. The documentation on membership, actions, interrogations and executions was almost exclusively with the perpetrators of the Nazi regime. The youth did not keep a record of their activities for fear of persecution. Many of the group members only knew each other by their nickname or first name, which was another protection against torture interrogations. The various methods of murdering opponents of the regime also make it difficult to record the victims completely. It can be assumed that only a minority survived the Second World War.

Actions of resistance

According to Detlev Peukert , the rejection of compulsory membership in the Hitler Youth is already considered a form of youth resistance due to the lived resistance to the ruling regime. Maintaining illegal contacts and maintaining networks of relationships, thereby claiming one's own social space, can be seen as dissidence and nonconformity. Attacks on representatives of the regime, including Hitler Youth functionaries, already represent acts of resistance in the narrower sense.

Politically motivated resistance was in particular hiding and caring for escaped prisoners of war and Jews. The Edelweißgruppe Steinbrück and the Edelweißgruppe around Gertrud Kühlem ( Gertrud Koch ) report on leaflet campaigns. The content of the leaflets was rather monosyllabic and very short compared to the writings of the White Rose . On the one hand, this was due to a lack of theoretical competence and, on the other hand, to practical considerations. Should a passer-by pick up a leaflet on the steps of Cologne Cathedral or in the main train station, he would hardly take the time to read a long text for fear of discovery. A text by the Edelweiß Group around Gertrud Kühlem at the beginning of their leaflet campaigns in the summer of 1942 read as follows:

"Finally put an end to the brown horde!
We perish in this misery. This world is no longer our world. We have to fight for another world, we perish in this misery. "

Such texts became known as "shit leaflets" and represented a special provocation for the Gestapo.

“Cologne is as brown as shit. Finally wake up! "

With school chalk, slogans were written on railroad cars and house walls. Slogans of the Wehrmacht were repurposed. Such a slogan can be found engraved on the wall in a prison cell of the EL-DE house in Cologne , in which members of edelweiss groups were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured:

"Children have to come to war.
Wheels have to roll for victory.
Heads have to roll after the war"

and directly below

"You can't me if I don't want to!"

Continuation of the criminalization and the forgetting of the edelweiss pirates after 1945

After the Second World War, the term edelweiss pirates continued to be used by some youths who were influenced by the National Socialists and who, in some cases, offered armed and violent resistance against the occupiers in the Soviet occupation zone . The edelweiss pirates on the Rhine and Ruhr existed until around 1947.

After the liberation, the struggle for survival continued for many edelweiss pirates, especially those from the working class. As groups they were and remained dissolved, some kept their preferences as much as possible, for example to travel as tramps . However, the composition of the investigative authorities, in which former Gestapo officials often served, and the courts had hardly changed. The behavior of the edelweiss pirates was not accepted by the American occupation authorities and led to renewed convictions and imprisonment in numerous cases. Those affected, who sought compensation, were intimidated by the reparations authorities in some places. Jean Jülich reports on such attempts on the part of the then responsible department head of the Cologne district president . The latter allegedly gave him openly to understand that for him edelweiss pirates were "Krahde", that is, dirt and mob, whose punishments by the Hitler Youth he had considered sensible.

Since the 1980s, some edelweiss pirates have published biographical texts that supplemented the investigation protocols of the Gestapo and the post-war period with an important perspective for historical research.

With Gertrud Koch died on June 20, 2016, the last known member of the Edelweiss Pirates.

Late honors and rehabilitation

Memorial plaque for victims of the Nazi regime
Edelweiss Pirates at the Edelweiss Pirate Festival 2005 in Cologne: Peter Schäfer (2nd from left), Jean Jülich (3rd from left) and Mucki Koch (2nd from right)

Jean Jülich and Wolfgang Schwarz as well as posthumously Barthel Schink , members of the Cologne Edelweiß group, were honored in 1984 in the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem as “ Righteous Among the Nations ” because the group hid Jews in the ruins of Ehrenfeld and with (often stolen ) Had supplied food and thus saved it.

In Cologne-Ehrenfeld, a memorial plaque has been commemorating the edelweiss pirates who were executed there in November 1944 since November 9, 2003. The plaque is attached to the arches of the railway underpass in Schönsteinstraße, near Venloer Straße - the execution took place nearby, in what is now Bartholomäus-Schink-Straße. The board had been completed years before, but was removed again under pressure from the Cologne CDU . Since the end of the war, the CDU had tried to prevent the Edelweiss pirates from being recognized as resistance fighters , in some cases with arguments that were quoted directly from Gestapo interrogation protocols.

"Here on October 25, 1944, eleven citizens of Poland and the USSR who were deported by the Nazi regime for forced labor and on November 10, 1944 thirteen Germans - among them youthful Edelweiss pirates from Ehrenfeld and other fighters against war and terror - were made public by the Gestapo and without a court judgment SS hanged. "

- Inscription on the memorial plaque in Schönsteinstrasse

In 2005, the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates were officially rehabilitated by the then District President Jürgen Roters :

“The administrative authorities treated us as victims of an injustice regime, but not as members of the political resistance. Even the Cologne district government, which was responsible for the Federal Compensation Act at the time, did not classify the Edelweiß members as politically persecuted. It was not until June 16, 2005 that we were recognized as resistance fighters during a ceremony in the plenary hall of the Cologne regional council. "

The actions of the Edelweißpiraten have meanwhile become the subject of a play and the film Edelweißpiraten from 2005. An annual Edelweißpiratenfestival has been taking place in Cologne's Peace Park since June 2005 .

Four former members of this group were awarded the Heine bust of the city of Düsseldorf in 2008. The award given by the Düsseldorf Circle of Friends of Heinrich Heine honors Gertrud Koch, Jean Jülich, Wolfgang Schwarz and Fritz Theilen for extraordinary activities in the sense of the critical and resistant spirit of the poet Heinrich Heine .

In April 2011, the five surviving members of the Edelweiss Pirates and the Ehrenfeld Group received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon from Lord Mayor Jürgen Roters for their commitment as contemporary witnesses : Hans Fricke , Gertrud Koch , Peter Schäfer , Wolfgang Schwarz and Fritz Theilen . Jean Jülich , the best-known member of the Cologne resistance groups, who had already been honored in 1991, was present as the guest of honor.

Adaptations

Movie

music

Youth novels

Further oppositional youth movements during the National Socialist era

literature

  • Wilfried Breyvogel (Ed.): Pirates, Swings and Young Guard. Youth resistance in National Socialism . Dietz, Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-8012-3039-2 .
  • Alexander Goeb: He was sixteen when he was hanged. The short life of the resistance fighter Bartholomäus Schink . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2001, ISBN 3-499-23026-7 .
  • Matthias von Hellfeld : Edelweiss pirates in Cologne. Youth rebellion against the 3rd Reich . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1983, ISBN 3-760-90787-3 .
  • Jean Jülich : Kohldampf, jail and camels. An edelweiss pirate tells his life . KiWi, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-462035-40-1 .
  • Alfons Kenkmann: Wild youth. The world of urban youth between the global economic crisis, National Socialism and currency reform . Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89861-086-1 .
  • Arno Klönne: Young opposition in the “Third Reich” . State Center for Political Education Thuringia. 2nd edition, Erfurt 2013 ( PDF )
  • Gertrud Koch , Regina Carstensen : Edelweiss. My youth as a resistance fighter. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-499-62093-5 (autobiography - written down by Regina Carstensen, original edition as rororo 62093, paperback).
  • Sascha Lange: packs, swings & edelweiss pirates. Youth culture and opposition under National Socialism , Ventil Verlag, Mainz 2015, ISBN 978-3-95575-039-8 .
  • Detlev J. Peukert: The Edelweiss Pirates. Protest movement of young workers in the “Third Reich”; a documentation . Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7663-3106-X .
  • Kurt Piehl: story of an edelweiss pirate . Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt am Main 1988.
  • Kurt Piehl: Sliders, tramps, normal consumers. Out and about in post-war Germany . Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt / M. 1989, ISBN 3-925798-89-7 .
  • Bernd-A. Rusinek: Society in disaster. Terror, illegality, resistance. Cologne 1944/45 . Essen 1989, ISBN 3-884741-34-9 .
  • Christian Schott, Sven Steinacker: Wild journeymen on the Wupperstrand, pursued by Schirach's bandits. Youth opposition and resistance in Wuppertal 1933–1945 . Edition Wahler, Grafenau 2004, ISBN 3-9808498-8-0 .
  • Winfried Seibert: The Cologne Controversy. Legends and facts about the Nazi crimes in Cologne-Ehrenfeld . Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1235-9 .
  • Dietmar Strauch : Your courage was limitless. Resistance in the Third Reich. Weinheim / Basel 2006, ISBN 978-3-407-80984-1 (paperback edition 978-3-407-74086-1). In it: They don't make soldiers out of us. Swing youth and edelweiss pirates. Bartholomäus Schink (1927-1944); Pp. 104-132.
  • Fritz Theilen : Edelweiss pirates . Emons-Verlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-89705-272-5 .
  • Jan Krauthäuser, Doris Werheid, Jörg Seyffarth (editor): Dangerous songs . (Book with CD); Emons-Verlag, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-897057425 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kittelbach pirates. Nazi Documentation Center of the City of Cologne, accessed on September 13, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Frank Bajohr: Pirates, Swings and Young Guard. Youth resistance in National Socialism .
  3. ↑ "We young people also tried to help after (air) attacks [...] Our group united the love of jazz, which was forbidden by the Nazis as" degenerate ". […] We secretly heard the music on the London radio, but also its reports about impending air raids […] Our meeting point was the cinema on Comenius Square. Some older of us wore an edelweiss badge as a mark, which they wore under the collar, and called themselves "edelweiss pirates". When the all-clear we went out in two groups to help save human lives. ”Ursula Kohlmeier (* 1932): I don't know how we survived all of this. In: The bombers flickered in the sky like silver fish. (Memories of the inferno of the war in Berlin-Lichtenberg 1940-1945) Edition Berliner Unterwelten, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-9809641-0-8 , p. 178.
  4. ^ Alfons Kenkmann: Navajos, Kittelbach and Edelweiss pirates, young dissidents in the Third Reich .
  5. ↑ Helmut Frangenberg: Obituary: The last known Cologne Edelweiss pirate is dead. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. Retrieved June 23, 2016 .
  6. ^ According to information in the report on the 2011 medal award in the Friday online of April 13, 2011 (accessed April 11).
  7. ↑ Gertrud Koch, née Kühlem.
  8. ↑ Mattias Pesch: Edelweisspiraten "Role models an civil courage" , in: Kölner Stadtanzeiger from April 14, 2011, p. 26 online (accessed June 23, 2016).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on April 23, 2006 .