Elise Hampel

Elise and Otto Hampel (1942)

Elise Hampel , b. Lemme (born October 27, 1903 in Bismark (Altmark) , † April 8, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism . She was married to the resistance fighter Otto Hermann Hampel since January 23, 1937 .

Life

After attending primary school, she worked as a domestic help. From 1936 she was actively involved as a cell leader in the Nazi women's group . After their brother fell during the western campaign against France, the couple became opponents of the Nazi regime. Between September 1940 and September 1942 they wrote postcards and around 200 leaflets calling for resistance to fascism and for hindering war planning. Despite investigations, it took two years for the authors to be caught on the basis of denunciation .

After being betrayed, they were arrested on October 20, 1942. On January 22, 1943 were from the 2nd Division of the People's Court for " undermining military force " and "preparation for high treason " sentenced to death and on April 8, 1943 Plötzensee executed .

postcard
postcard

Commemoration

The fate of the Hampels became the model for Hans Fallada's novel Everyone dies for himself in 1946 . The events of the novel roughly follow the trial files researched by Fallada, which he had received from Johannes R. Becher for this purpose. On April 8, 1989, the pictured memorial plaque for the couple was attached to the post-war building at Amsterdamer Strasse 10 in the Berlin district of Wedding ; the original home of the Hampels had been destroyed by an aerial bomb.

In April 2018, the section of Limburger Strasse between Genter Strasse and Müllerstrasse, which runs past the Rathauskantine as a pedestrian path, was named after Elise and Otto Hampel. On July 21, 2018, a memorial stele for the couple was inaugurated on the forecourt of the Wedding Town Hall.

Berlin memorial plaque on the house at Amsterdamer Strasse 10 in Berlin-Wedding
Memorial stele by Ingeborg Lockemann at the Wedding Town Hall
Title on the book cover

Web links

Commons : Elise Hampel - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center
Johannes Groschupf: The Hampel couple alone in Berlin . In: The time . April 16, 2011.

literature

Mandy Ganske-Zapf: Hampel, Marta Elise, b. Lemme. In: Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Women in Saxony-Anhalt, Vol. 2: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , p. 193-195.
Manfred Kuhnke: Fallada's last novel - The true story . Steffen, Friedland 2011, ISBN 978-3-941683-10-5 .

Individual evidence

↑ Andreas Mix: The guillotine also smashed your marriage . Hans Fallada's novel “Everyone dies for himself” has a true role model: the story of Elise and Otto Hampel, who distributed papers against the Nazis. In: Berliner Zeitung , number 112 (14/15 May), magazine . May 14, 2011, p. 8 .
^ Laura Hofmann: Memorial stele in Berlin-Wedding. "The stele commemorates the courage of this couple". In: tagesspiegel.de . July 18, 2018, accessed July 23, 2018 .

personal data
SURNAME	Hampel, Elise
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH	October 27, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bismark (Altmark)
DATE OF DEATH	April 8, 1943
Place of death	Berlin-Plötzensee

[bz-1] Andreas Mix: The guillotine also smashed your marriage . Hans Fallada's novel “Everyone dies for himself” has a true role model: the story of Elise and Otto Hampel, who distributed papers against the Nazis. In: Berliner Zeitung , number 112 (14/15 May), magazine . May 14, 2011, p. 8 .

[2] Laura Hofmann: Memorial stele in Berlin-Wedding. "The stele commemorates the courage of this couple". In: tagesspiegel.de . July 18, 2018, accessed July 23, 2018 .