Else Himmelträger

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Else Himmelbahnen (born January 30, 1905 in Ostheim (Stuttgart) ; † November 30, 1944 in the Dachau concentration camp ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Else Himmelträger came from a working-class family. In 1911 the six people moved into a two-room apartment at Adlerstrasse 24 in Heslach . His father, Philipp Himmelträger, died of pneumonia on the way back from the First World War . The mother supported her four children by sewing.

Else Himmelträger attended elementary school for seven years and later became an office clerk . She joined the communist youth organization at the age of 13. From 1921 she was a member of the Naturefriends Youth, from 1924 of the KJD and from 1926 of the KPD . In addition, she was temporarily head of the Jungspartakusbund. In 1925 she gave a lecture on women's labor at the Reich Party Congress of the KPD , and in 1928 or 1931 she moved to Berlin . She was part of a delegation from the League of Friends of the Soviet Union who traveled to Moscow , where Else Himmelbahnen worked for a time as a saleswoman in a German bookshop. When she returned to Berlin, she had a job with the Reich leadership of the KPD and wrote articles for party newspapers. In 1931 Else Himmelträger was the main speaker at the Combat Congress of the Women of the Rhine and Ruhr in Düsseldorf . A year later, she finished her official work in the central committee of the KPD and registered as unemployed. After the transfer of power to the NSDAP in 1933, she began underground work for the KPD, which led to her arrest on November 20, 1933. First, it was two and a half years prison sentenced and then into Moringen admitted. Due to a pardon by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , she was released from the concentration camp in 1938 . Because Himmler only granted this act of grace to blonde women, Else Himmelträger colored her hair black in protest after her dismissal. She now moved back to her parents' apartment near Stuttgart , where she met Friedrich Schlotterbeck again in 1943 , with whom she had known since their communist youth work together. Schlotterbeck had survived a period of imprisonment in the Welzheim concentration camp from 1937 to 1943. In January 1944, an old friend, Eugen Nesper , who had allegedly been captured by the Allies and returned to Germany as an illegal parachutist, contacted Schlotterbeck. A circle of resistance fighters formed around this man, which initially consisted of Schlotterbeck, his younger brother Hermann, Karl Stäbler and Else Himmelträger and which soon expanded. Nesper, however, betrayed the group to the Gestapo , but admitted this to the resistance group when the reprisals against Schlotterbeck and his circle increased.

Else Himmelträger and Friedrich Schlotterbeck were engaged in the meantime. A week before the wedding date, they, like Karl Stäbler and Hermann Schlotterbeck, decided to flee. The four people wanted to cross the Swiss border one by one. After the Gestapo stole a radio from the group and sent false messages abroad on their behalf, it was particularly important that at least one member of the resistance group crossed the border and put a stop to this misinformation. While Friedrich Schlotterbeck was able to escape to Switzerland, Else Himmelbahnen failed to escape. Hermann Schlotterbeck, who was later murdered by SS men in a forest near Riedlingen , and Karl Stäbler were also unable to cross the border.

After interrogations at the Gestapo headquarters in Stuttgart, during which Else Himmelbahnen did not reveal anything about her connections to the Schlotterbeckkreis - presumably despite the torture - she became acquainted with the Schlotterbeckkreis together with her parents and sister, Gertrud Lutz , as well as some acquaintances and neighbors who had nothing at all to do with the resistance group had to do, but had also been arrested, taken to the Dachau concentration camp. There they were shot on November 30, 1944.

Honors

A stumbling block was laid in front of Else Himmelheber's former apartment at Adlerstrasse 24 . The Else-Himmelbahnen-Staffel to Karlshöhe in Stuttgart-Süd has been named after her since 1996.

Else-Himmelträger-Staffel in Stuttgart-Süd

literature

  • Friedrich Schlotterbeck, The darker the night ... Memories of a German worker 1933-1945 , Gabriele Walter Verlag, Stuttgart 1986
  • Siegfried Bassler, Else Himmelträger - resistance fighter, victim, admonisher
  • Sky lifter, Else . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. There are various reports about this, according to which she was either arrested on the train and transported back or had to turn back, went into hiding in Stuttgart and was only arrested later.
  2. ^ Bauer's dispatches of February 17, 2009, 287th dispatch